Founding members of the innovative Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence have been invited to present plenary keynotes at this year’s ELIA Biennial Conference in Milan. Up to five hundred delegates from 285 art schools based in Europe and around the world are expected to attend. Seats are selling out fast as the Early Bird deadline of 14 June for individual and institutional passes fast approaches.
ELIA Biennial 2024 Arts Plural takes place 20-23 November, 2024 and celebrates artistic intelligence in collaboration with the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence. Hosted by NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti over two days, with up to 80 different sessions in-person and online, ELIA Biennial 2024 will delve into questions about the concept, practice, and structures necessary for artistic intelligence to play a role in addressing planetary problems.
Established in 2019 and based in Toronto, Canada, the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence brings artists and artistic methods into parts of society where more imagination is needed. The company specializes in projects that propose and unpack ways of doing things differently in the world, led by artistic intelligence. Members and guests of the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence have worked together on art and research spanning astronomy, immigration, institutional change, impact evaluation, mental health, medicine, the digitalization of knowledge, and more. As 2024 officially marks the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence’s fifth anniversary, it is an especially celebratory moment for two of its founding members, artist Helen Yung and Dr. Mark V. Campbell, to be invited to present at this special conference devoted to the possibilities of artistic intelligence.
“We anticipate attendees to come away with new language for the important work they do as arts educators and researchers,” says Jørn Mortensen, Chair of the Steering Group of the ELIA Biennial 2024 Arts Plural. “In society, there are those who embrace the sublime artistic experience, and then there are some for whom the economic argument is what appeals. Between these two ways of seeing and valuing the arts, however, there is still a vast space that remains to be defined.”
“Artistic intelligence is developed by, and transcends beyond human intelligence,” says Helen Yung, Chief Artistic Officer of the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence. “Artistic intelligence includes embodied, inherited, and protected wisdoms — knowledge accumulated and transmitted through body, gift, and ritual. From this relational, embodied knowledge, the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence tries to rebalance and shift systems. We are delighted by this opportunity to share our thinking and frameworks with artists and educators from around the world.”
“This collaboration with the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence is an experiment for us,” says Maria Hansen, Executive Director of ELIA, “one that we are very excited about. ELIA is committed to strengthening the resiliency and innovative capacity of all those who work and study at ELIA member institutions. Insights gathered and experienced at this event will help with that.”
ELIA Biennial 2024 Arts Plural asks how artistic practitioners, designers, students, technical staff, researchers, and educators can be recognised as agents of change, innovation, and evolution. Artists and designers possess a particular form of intelligence. Although considered powerful in certain circles, artistic intelligence is frequently ill-defined or misread. As a system of capacities for perception, insight, sensing, creating, and decision-making, however, it has been driving human evolution beyond boundaries for centuries.
About NABA, ELIA & The Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence
Founded in 1980, NABA, Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, with campuses in Milan and in Rome, is the largest art academy in Italy. NABA was founded with the aim of challenging the inflexibility of the traditional academic world, introducing new visions and experiments. It is an academy that is evolving by looking to the future to perceive the signs of change, welcoming the diversities of the contemporary world.
ELIA is a globally connected European network that provides a dynamic platform for professional exchange and development in higher arts education. With 285 members in 54 countries, it represents over 350,000 students in all arts disciplines. ELIA advocates for higher arts education by empowering and creating new opportunities for members and facilitating the exchange of good practices. ELIA collaborates with partner networks around the world. Its aims are to promote, enable and facilitate: knowledge exchange and academic discourse; networking, collaboration and interaction; advocacy and representation; and academic leadership and professionalism.
The Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence specialises in reimagining how things work in the world using artistic intelligence. As technocratic values continue to shape and drive contemporary life at exponential rates, the Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence is mindful of what art knows. Founded in 2019, the company’s inventive artistic and social research projects often reach far beyond the arts, into health, science, immigration, technology and policymaking. Projects are led by artists and artistic methods. The Laboratory for Artistic Intelligence has worked with many institutions including University of Arizona, Canadian Mental Health Association, Toronto Metropolitan University’s Saagajiwe Centre for Indigenous Research Creation, University of Toronto, Seneca College, Aga Khan Foundation, and others.