IN SESSION: Hollywood to Heaven's Gate

Contemporary Artist Marco Brambilla, in conversation with Daniel Birnbaum (Acute Art) and John Slyce (RCA). Renowned for presenting his captivating digital artwork at the Sphere in Las Vegas, Marco discusses his crossover from Hollywood cinema to art and immersive virtual environments. Together they consider how VR is changing contemporary art and the impact of 3D imaging technologies on the art world ecosystem.

John Slyce and Daniel Birnbaum will be co-Leading a short course in May 2024, Present Futures: Virtual and Augmented Reality in Art.

Marco Brambilla

Artist

Marco Brambilla is a London-based artist known for his elaborate re-contextualisations of popular and found imagery, as well as his pioneering use of digital imaging technologies in video installation and art. Brambilla’s work has been internationally exhibited and is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum (New York); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; ARCO Foundation (Madrid); CENTQUATRE-PARIS (Paris); Kunsthalle Vogelmann (Germany); and the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington D.C). Notable shows include New Museum, New York; Santa Monica Museum of Art (Retrospective); Seoul Biennial, Korea; Broad Art Museum; and Borusan Contemporary, Istanbul; Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland.

Brambilla has worked with Creative Time and Art Production Fund in New York to present public art installations, including his Nude Descending Staircase No.3 presented at the Oculus world trade center during Frieze New York. Notable collaborations include 7 Deaths of Maria Callas, an opera by Marina Abramović first presented at the Opéra National de Paris, France; and Pélleas et Mélisande, presented by the Opera Vlaanderen in Antwerp, Belgium. Brambilla is a recipient of the Tiffany Comfort Foundation and Tiffany Colbert Foundation awards. His work has been featured at the Venice Film Festival and Sundance Film Festivals, as well as Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland.

Daniel Birnbaum

Artistic Director, Acute Art

Swedish art critic, theoretician, curator and the former Director of the Museum of Modern Art (Moderna Museet) in Stockholm, Daniel has been the Artistic Director of Acute Art in London since 2019. From 1989 until 1997, Birnbaum worked as an art critic at the leading Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter and also as an independent curator. In 1998, he obtained his doctoral degree from Stockholm University with a thesis on Edmund Husserl. Birnbaum is a contributing editor of the international art magazine Artforum, and has written extensively on art and philosophy for magazines including Parkett and Frieze.

Birnbaum has been director of IASPIS and in 2000, became Director at Städelschule, one of Europe’s most experimental art academies. During his time at this fine arts academy, he also presided over Portikus, Städelschule’s exhibition site which is also recognised as one of the leading places for contemporary art in Germany. Daniel was co-curator of the international section at the 50th Venice Biennale and the artistic director of the 53rd Venice Biennale. Birnbaum also worked as co-curator of the first and second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art and was a member of the jury for the 2008 Turner Prize. Daniel co-founded the Zero Foundation in Düsseldorf in 2008 and in 2010, became the Director of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Daniel has established a reputation for showing key artists very early in their careers including internationally recognised artists such as Olafur Eliasson.

John Slyce

Senior Tutor (Research), Painting MA, Admissions Tutor, School of Arts & Humanities, RCA

A writer and critic based in London, John works through producing writing and criticism with a specialist interest in art, language and sign within contemporary culture and economy. John’s practice is expressed in an equation, ideally balanced, comprised of the values and activities of writing + teaching + talking. He has written extensively on the work of Sarah Sze, Gillian Wearing, Michael Landy, Carey Young, Cullinan Richards, Allen Ruppersberg, Rodney Graham, Pipilotti Rist, Charles Avery and Becky Beasley and has regularly contributed essays, reviews and interviews to major art magazines and journals. For Slyce, the form of the interview is an important research method and essential starting point for his critical writing and engagement with an artist’s practice. John has taught and lectured widely across the UK and Europe since the 1990s. John read modern history and politics at the University of Florida, languages and history at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland and history and critical theory at the University of Michigan. These experiences were framed by an interest and engagement in social movements bracketed by '68 and '89. In the early 1990s he worked as an assistant to the artist William Wegman in New York and was fortunate then to play dog baseball with Fay and also come in contact with the work of Allen Ruppersberg, Rodney Graham and Mike Kelley. John has written on contemporary art and culture while living in London since 1996.