Screening and conversation with Dr. Laura Forlano
e-flux Screening Room
172 Classon Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11205
In conjunction with Itziar Barrio’s solo exhibition at Smack Mellon, did not feel low, was sleeping, e-flux will present the full-length premiere of Barrio’s 2023 film ROBOTA MML. The film is the second in Barrio’s Material trilogy–on view in its expanded iteration at Smack Mellon from March 11-April 23, 2023–that employs speculative narratives and non-linear timelines to investigate the intersections between technology, labor, identity, and matter. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Dr. Laura Forlano, who is a social scientist, design researcher, and collaborator to Barrio on a series of sculptures that accompany the film in the installation at Smack Mellon.
ROBOTA MML (2023, 62 min) looks at the many valences of work and traces the etymological origins of “robot.” Coined by Czech writer Karel Capek in his science fiction play R.U.R. (1920), which is set in a factory where robots are built to free humans from work, the term derives from the word robota, meaning forced labor. Barrio relocates R.U.R.’s characters into a contemporary setting sensitive to biopower, class consciousness, identity, and gender fluidity. In Barrio’s interpretation, the agent capable of affecting the human psyche appears in physical form as smoke. Barrio complicates the narrative through the nonlinear narrative structure as well as aesthetic references to Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa and queer night clubs. Continuous with the rest of the trilogy, this film involves collaborations with different experts including a robotics engineer and a professional Bodybuilder.
Bios:
Itziar Barrio
Itziar Barrio is a multimedia artist based in NYC. She is internationally recognized for her contributions to the intersections of art, film, and technology. Her interdisciplinary, boundary breaking work has been exhibited at art institutions across the United States, Latin America, and Europe including: PARTICIPANT INC (NYC), MACRO Museum (Rome), MACBA Museum (Barcelona), Belgrade’s Contemporary Art Museum, Museo del Banco de la República (Bogotá), Salzburger Kunstverein, and the Havana Biennial. She teaches at the School of Visual Arts (NYC) and Sarah Lawrence College (NY), and has lectured internationally. Her monographic exhibition, BY ALL MEANS (2018), was curated by Johanna Burton, and her forthcoming monograph will be published by SKIRA in 2023. Barrio’s work has been written about in ARTFORUM, Art in America, The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, ART PAPERS, and BOMB among others. She has been awarded the Spanish Academy in Rome Fellowship and is currently a fellow at the New Museum’s NEW INC incubator, where she began developing the robotics works that will be on display at Smack Mellon.
Dr. Laura Forlano
Laura Forlano, a Fulbright award-winning and National Science Foundation funded scholar, is a disabled writer, social scientist and design researcher. She is Professor in the departments of Art + Design and Communication Studies in the College of Arts, Media, and Design and Distinguished Senior Fellow at The Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University. Forlano is also an Affiliated Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School. She received her Ph.D. in communications from Columbia University.
Forlano’s research is focused on the aesthetics and politics at the intersection between design and emerging technologies. She has used participatory workshops, collaborative games, exhibitions, speculative videos, prototypes and performances to imagine alternative futures for living with data and computation. She is the author of Cyborg (with Danya Glabau, forthcoming MIT Press) and an editor of three books: Bauhaus Futures (MIT Press 2019), digitalSTS (Princeton University Press 2019) and From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen (MIT Press 2011).
Prior to her current position, she was Associate Professor of Design at the Institute of Design and Affiliated Faculty in the College of Architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology. In 2019-2020, Forlano was Institute of Advanced Study Fellow (IAS) at Durham University (UK), working on a project called “Material Imagination”. In 2018-2019, she was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Digital Life Institute at Cornell Tech and Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
Image: Itziar Barrio, ROBOTA MML (video still), 2023, 4K video. Courtesy of the artist.
This exhibition and program are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York City Council Member Lincoln Restler, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Robert Lehman Foundation, Select Equity Group Foundation, many individuals and Smack Mellon’s Members.
Smack Mellon’s programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and with generous support from The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of The New York Community Trust, Jerome Foundation, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc., and Exploring The Arts. In-kind donations are provided by Materials for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs/NYC Department of Sanitation/NYC Department of Education.
Itziar Barrio, did not feel low, was sleeping is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Since 2020, Barrio has been developing ROBOTA MML and Particle Matter as a member at the New Museum’s incubator NEW INC.
Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.
Smack Mellon would like to extend a special thanks to all of the individuals, foundations, and businesses who have contributed to the NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund.
