Ground Zero Earth has been curated by Yasmine Rix in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER). The exhibition explores the work of CSER, a research centre based at the University of Cambridge dedicated to the study and mitigation of existential risks. It brings together five artists exploring anthropogenic themes to address what is at stake and ways in which we should be looking at the present and near future.
In a world of increasing technological power, and multiplying existential risks, art’s ability to help understand those relationships, and provoke dialogue about them, could turn out to be a critical component of our toolkit for survival.
In conjunction with the opening night, a panel discussion took place composed of Bob Bicknell Knight (Artist, Director and Curator) and David Lisser (Artist) Dr. Lauren Holt (CSER Research Associate, Bio-Risk) Dr. Beth Singler (Homerton College, Junior Research Fellow in Artificial Intelligence) moderated by Dr. Adrian Currie (University of Exeter, Research Affiliate CSER).
The exhibitions runs from 15th February-22nd March at the Alison Richards Building, (opening hours 9am-7pm) with a programme of events to include a film screening and curator tour.
Artists include:
- Olivia Domingos (b.1991 Leicester) is an artist and illustrator based in London. Domingos brings focus to celebrity culture and challenges the public domain of wellbeing. Her rendering of specific events and their detail brings attention to falling victim to voyeurism of celebrities or news sensationalism.
- Bob Bicknell-Knight (b. 1996, Suffolk) is a London-based artist and curator working in installation, sculpture, video and digital media. Using found objects and tools made readily available by the Internet, as well as drawing from a unique sensibility influenced by participation in online communities and virtual games, Bicknell-Knight’s work explores the divergent methods by which consumer capitalist culture permeates both online and offline society.
- Daniel Sean Kelly (b.1989, Leicester) is an artist and co-director of Two Queens artist led gallery and studios. Working largely in painting, printmaking and ceramics, his work seeks to create a speculative space for the imagining of other realities – a science fictional universe comprised only of objects existing in the world up to this point.
- David Lisser (b. Wolverhampton 1987) is an artist based in Newcastle who investigates our relationship with food and emerging technologies, playfully creating artefacts excavated from an imagined past, documentation of protests that haven’t yet materialised, and mechanisms for producing novelty meats.
- Jillian Mayer (b. 1986) is an artist and filmmaker living in Miami, Florida. Through video, sculptures, online experiences, photography, performances and installations, she explores how technology affects our lives, bodies and identities. Mayer investigates the points of tension between our online and physical worlds and makes work that attempts to inhabit the increasingly porous boundary between the two.
Related Cambridge University Science Festival events which can booked for free on EventBrite:
- 13th March, 3.30pm Curator Tour, Alison Richard Building
- 14th March, 6.00-8.00pm 'Rise of the Machines' Short documentary films on AI produced by Dr. Beth Singler, Alison Richards Building.
This workshop is supported by the Hauser-Raspe Workshop Series at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, ART at ARB, CRASSH, Arts Council England Lottery Fund, and Cambridge BID.
