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Media arts and technology laboratory run by a community in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. HONF's work at the Asian Art Biennial in Taiwan.
By Iris Shu-Ping Huang | Jan 2014HONF Foundation [House of Natural Fiber], is a media arts, open cultures and technology laboratory run by a community in Yogyakarta, Indonesia with cross-disciplinary experimental concentration founded in 1999, is composed of creative practitioners of different backgrounds, including artists, scientist, activists, designers, hackers, practitioners, etc. HONF Foundation’s creative projects demonstrate its young adventurous members’ concerns for the social living environment and various critical issues hidden in today’s society, as they collaborate with scientists and professionals of other academic fields in applying scientific research outcomes to create public interactive works. Their artworks are not just aesthetical; more importantly, they strive to expand the confined conventional parameter of art. With tangible social actualizations, their endeavors reflect the various efforts we exert in our daily lives, and how these creative actions could change and offer effective solutions for our lives.
Included in the 4th edition of the Asian Art Biennial [1], presented at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts until 5 January 2014, is HONF Foundation’s HELLO BIO! – CHRONICLE THERAPY (Art Without an Artist - Media Arts are Almost Dead). It is a project derived from interactions with researchers and laboratories resulting from a visit of HONF Foundation artist Venzha Christ to the Taichung District Agricultural Research and Extension Station and the National Chung Hsing University’s Department of Soil and Environmental Sciences, Department of Food Science and Biotechnology, and Department of Life Sciences. The work includes three key elements-agricultural, environmental, and bio-technological experiments and research contents. With HONF Foundation’s unique visual and audio structural sequence and aesthetic form, this project places emphasis on collaboration, institution, research, science, laboratory, human, recycling, interactivity, and activity. Aesthetical vernaculars are applied to convey the tangible realizations of personal creativities and social interventions. Moreover, the title, "Art Without An Artist," opens up for reevaluations of the definition of art making, as new collaborative relationships and aesthetical connections and contexts are discovered in the separate realms of science, technology, and art through bold experiments.
Notes:
Iris Shu-Ping Huang
Curator at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Curator of the Asian Art Biennial 2013.
The name House of Natural Fiber was conceived by Venzha Christ, for a place to share ideas and to make something real while it has a purpose and use for people and their environment. The concept of this community is not to become a permanent group with a static membership and a leader, but rather to focus on an awareness of integrity in doing anything which is meaningful to them and their surroundings. This awareness allows Venzha to encourage everybody to freely join in.
In 2013, besides of taking part of the Asian Art Biennial in Taiwan, HONF participated in: Biennale Jogja XII, Indonesia, and the 13th Istanbul Biennial, Turkey.