To mark the opening of Florian Hecker - Resynthesizers, an exhibition by Florian Hecker produced by Equitable Vitrines at the MAK Center’s Fitzpatrick-Leland House, Ina Blom will deliver a talk entitled Intramachinic Atmospheres: Florian Hecker and the Fabrication of Sensing. 

In Hecker’s compositions, the synthesis and resynthesis of sound at the granular level is oriented around processes whose complexity might well be described in atmospheric terms. They allow us to discuss what is at stake for environmental thought when computational systems produce realities that are not based on simulation, but on specifically machinic forms of sensing and being. Ultimately, these works give a contemporary spin on the processes of synthesis and abstraction that were key to late 19th Century aesthetic and industrial modernity.

An opening reception for Resynthesizers will follow the lecture. 

To register for this event, please click here.

Ina Blom is a professor at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo and Wigeland Visiting Professor in the Department of Art History, University of Chicago. Recent books include The Autobiography of Video. The Life and Times of a Memory Technology (New York: Sternberg Press, 2016), On the Style Site. Art, Sociality and Media Culture (New York: Sternberg Press, 2007/2009) as well as the edited volumes Memory in Motion. Archives, Technology and the Social (Amsterdam University Press, 2016) and Raoul Hausmann et les avant-gardes (Paris: Les presses du réel, 2014).  

Florian Hecker (b. 1975, Germany) works with synthetic sound, the listening process and the audience’s auditory experience to explore postwar compositional modernity, audiology, and psychoacoustical knowledge. Recent major exhibitions and performances include Synthetic Statistics, Porta 33, Funchal, Portugal (2019); Florian Hecker - Synopsis / Seriation, CU Art Museum, University of Colorado Boulder, CO, USA (2018); Florian Hecker - Halluzination, Perspektive, Synthese, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Florian Hecker - Synopsis, Tramway, Glasgow (both 2017); Florian Hecker - Formulations, MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main (2016); Florian Hecker - Formulations, Culturgest, Porto; and those at Künstlerhaus Graz, and Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (all 2015); Sadie Coles HQ, London; Galerie Neu / MD72, Berlin; Articulação, Lumiar Cité, Lisbon; documenta 13, Kassel; and Nouveau Festival, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (all 2012). Since 1996, Hecker has performed internationally, both in major concert halls and festivals for contemporary electronic music. His work Inspection (Maida Vale Project) has been commissioned by BBC Radio 3 as the BBC’s first ever live binaural broadcast and FAVN has been presented at Alte Oper Frankfurt in partnership with MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main (both 2016). His collaboration with Reza Negarestani, A Script for Machine Synthesis has been performed at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and at the Maison de la Radio, Paris, (both 2015); and Formulation (FLV Project) was presented as part of the inaugural exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2014). Hecker has an extensive discography, including: Inspection II (Editions Mego, Vienna & Urbanomic Falmouth, UK, 2019); A Script for Machine Synthesis (Editions Mego, Vienna, 2017); Articulação Sintetico (Editions Mego, Vienna, 2017); Hecker Leckey Sound Voice Chimera (Pan, Berlin, 2015); Speculative Solution (Editions Mego, Vienna & Urbanomic Falmouth, UK, 2011) and Acid in the Style of David Tudor (Editions Mego, Vienna, 2009).