From October to December 2018, Chico MacMurtrie is Artist Resident at the Angewandte as well as Visiting Professor at the department Art and Communication Practices. The Angewandte is looking forward to working together with the renowned artist and director of Amorphic Robot Works from New York who causes sensation with his Border Crossers. The “Euro Border Crosser” by Chico MacMurtrie is an interdisciplinary project/course at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.
During his residency, MacMurtrie will lead a team of students, to create a light weight large scale robotic sculpture, as well as the autonomous vehicle which transports it. The students will be responsible for all aspects of the project, from design to deployment, culminating in the launch of the “Border Crosser” as part of several public performances, crossing our own campus “borders.” This inflatable sculpture, several stories high, will eventually be deployed at borders in Europe. Selected students are eligible to participate in a performance with the first Border Crosser (see image) the first week of November (Nov. 1st to 3rd to be confirmed) in Munich Germany.
Visionary in its scope, the work symbolizes the humanities in action and the empowerment that can be achieved through working together, overcoming obstacles and divides, and discovering creative solutions. It is the unique combination of our differences, our collective humanity that extends our reach towards brave new futures.
Since the late 1980s, Chico MacMurtrie has explored the intersection of robotic sculpture, new media installation, and performance. MacMurtrie has long been fascinated with the sculptural expression of soft-movement. Since 2005, he has pioneered the use of high-tensile composite fabric as an artistic medium in order to create large-scale organic soft-machines that evoke molecular structures and echo the movements of micro-organisms.
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Chico MacMurtrie and his interdisciplinary collective Amorphic Robot Works/ARW have received numerous awards for their experimental new media artworks, including five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation Grant, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, VIDA Life 11.0, and Prix Ars Electronica. Chico MacMurtrie was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts in 2016.
MacMurtrie/ARW’s works have been presented in major museums and cultural institutions around the world including the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC), Beijing; Hayward Gallery, London; Museo de la Reina Sofia, Madrid; Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, Paris; Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo (MUAC), Mexico City; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, NY; Shanghai Biennale; Tri Postal, Lille, (retrospective exhibition).
In 2016, Muffatwerk in Munich presented the first survey exhibition of MacMurtrie/ARW’s Inflatable Architectural Bodies series entitled Pneuma World. Upcoming exhibitions include: Mundos Alternos, Art and Science Fiction in the Americas, as part of Getty Foundation’s far-reaching exploration of Latin American and Latino Art, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA in Los Angeles in 2017.
Watch the trail runs of the new Border Crosser at the Amorphic Ranch, Arizona
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