Echoes, Whispers, and Memories
Beyond the Screens: City Digital Skin Art Festival (CDSA) 2024
Post: Expanding Horizons: Large-Scale LED Public Art at CDSA 2024
As an artistic duo in October, I joined my partner, Ina Conradi, as a guest artist at the CDSA 2024 festival exhibition. Our contributions to Asia’s evolving large-scale LED public art landscape were not merely aesthetic but deeply rooted in a decolonial approach to digital culture. This international event, dedicated to reimagining urban spaces as digital canvases, aligned perfectly with their artistic ethos, which seeks to challenge and reframe dominant narratives in visual culture.
Organized by the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, CDSA 2024 brought together a network of esteemed institutions, including Public Art Lab Berlin, Bauhaus University Weimar, Nanyang Technological University Singapore, Politecnico di Milano, MEET Digital Culture Center, and Elbphilharmonie Hamburg. The festival spanned 11 urban screens across nine cities and five countries, creating a global platform for dialogue between artists, audiences, and scholars.
The exhibitions and screenings began in Milan, Paris, and Singapore, presenting site-specific works that engaged the public through immersive storytelling. The festival then moved to Hangzhou, Beijing, and other cities, expanding its impact across Asia. As a participant, you would have witnessed how these vibrant LED screens, typically dominated by commercial media, were transformed into sites of cultural exchange, showcasing narratives that foreground diversity, interconnectedness, and resilience.
A decolonial perspective deeply informs our works, bringing forward ideas of cyclical temporality and indigenous epistemologies. They embraced the concept of Entropy — not as a chaotic breakdown but as a regenerative force that challenges linear, Eurocentric understandings of progress. They invited you, the viewer, to pause and consider the fluidity of order and disorder as a dynamic interplay rather than opposition.
Complementing these visual experiences were Academic Sharing Sessions at prestigious venues like the Shanghai Theatre Academy’s Changlin Campus, the Chinese Academy of Art (CAA) in Hangzhou, and the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing. These sessions invited you to engage directly with the artists and scholars, exploring the intersection of media art, urban spaces, and decolonial thought. This was an opportunity to share our vision and inspire you to think about how digital art can contribute to a more inclusive and equitable global narrative.
By the end of CDSA 2024, it was clear that large-scale public art is more than a spectacle — it is a medium for challenging conventions, bridging cultures, and fostering a shared sense of humanity. As an observer or participant, you are an integral part of this evolving story, helping to shape a future where public art is accessible and transformative, resonating with the diverse histories and experiences that make up our global community.
For full article, visit my site: https://giantmonster.co/2024/11/11/echoes-whispers-and-memories-at-the-3rd-cdsa-international-media-art-creative-competition-and-festival/
