The workshop offers insight into the field of Media Archeology that explores obsolete, repressed or forgotten media technology in order to understand audio-visual culture in alternative ways. It further extends into DIY culture, hacking and art practice that relates to political economy. During the workshop the students will make hands-on art experiments with old record players and garbage. They will deconstruct this material as technical structures, as cultural objects and as sites that teach us about the relationships between humans, nature and consumerism.
Darsha Hewitt’s practice is situated across new media and sound and largely grows out of empirical material-based experimentation with obsolete technology. Her studio practice and teaching methods alike take an adventurous hands-on/media-archeological approach to art making, where hidden systems within technology are de/re-mystified as a means to trace out structures of economy, power and control embedded throughout western culture. Her artwork is presented internationally, with recent exhibitions at the Hong Kong City Hall (CN), Halle14 – Centre for Contemporary Art (DE), MU Artspace (NL), Museum of Art and Design New York (US), Hartware MedienKunstverein (DE),Gaitée Lyrique (FR), Ottawa Art Gallery (CA), Modern Art Oxford (UK), CTM Festival Berlin (DE) and WRO Media Art Biennale (PL). Alongside her art practice, she has worked as an Artistic Associate in Media Art and Design at the Bauhaus University and has been a guest Professor in New Media in the Visual Communications Department at Kunsthochschule Kassel and in New Media/Sound at Karlsruhe University of Art and Design.
