Guanaquerx pre-expedition performance, San Juan, Argentina, 2024, Paula Gaetano Adi. Photograph: Pavel Romaniko
Radical Robotics: Paula Gaetano Adi's Cosmotechnic Imagination
GETTY CENTER
Saturday, May 18, 2024, from 1:30 pm - 6 pm
The Getty Center
Advance ticket required
TecnoLatinx Lab: 1:30 pm–3:30 pm | Ada Louise Huxtable Lecture Hall (walk-ins welcome)
Artist Lecture & Reception: 4 pm–6 pm | Museum Lecture Hall (advance ticket required)
Paula Gaetano Adi's interdisciplinary practice interrogates the intersection of humans and technology, often in a confrontation between modern and ancient cosmologies. In this public program, Gaetano Adi will premiere her recent project Guanaquerx, a radical robotic expedition with an emancipatory mission and a collaborative aesthetic. Following the path of Jose de San Martin's revolutionary army across the Andes mountains in 1817, this freedom-seeking robot reimagines western narratives of technological development to promote an Andean cosmotechnics and decolonize robotics. Through sculpture, performance and film, Gaetano Adi's works endeavor to understand how technoscience is produced, appropriated and transformed in Latin America. Gaetano Adi will be joined by Pablo José Ramírez, curator at the Hammer Museum, for a conversation about her work, technology and indigeneity, and contemporary Latin American artists' engagement with the legacies of colonialism.
Before the lecture, visitors can experience TecnoLatinx's emerging technology lab (Re)Mixing Worlds. Guests are invited to embark on an explorative journey through the evolving landscape of spatial computing authoring technologies, from virtual and augmented reality to robotics and 3D printing. Displaying the collaborative works of local students, intergenerational artists, and technologists made in TecnoLatinx's labs, this showcase celebrates the way imagination is utilized across various platforms to foster a more inclusive, sustainable, and imaginative future.
Paula Gaetano Adi (b. Argentina) is an artist and scholar working at the intersection of art and robotics. Exhibited in museums, galleries, and festivals throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas, she is the recipient of the 2023 Creative Capital Award and is currently professor at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Pablo José Ramírez is a curator at the Hammer Museum, where he recently co-curated Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living. His work explores non-western ontologies, brown and Indigenous histories, and the politics of noncolonial aesthetics. He was the inaugural adjunct curator of First Nations and Indigenous art at the Tate Modern, and was awarded the 2019 Independent Curators International/CPPC Award for Central America and the Caribbean.
TecnoLatinx is an organization dedicated to integrating emerging technology into educational programs to create opportunities for underserved youth of color to pursue training in XR and STEAM disciplines. Their recent project PachucoXR exemplifies their mission to close the equity gap in technology via a multidisciplinary approach rooted in principles of cultural preservation, art, and immersive storytelling.
This program compliments the Getty Scholars Program's 2023–2024 annual theme of Art and Technology.
The conversation will be available on the Getty Research Institute YouTube channel following the event.
Visit the Getty Research Institute's Exhibitions and Events page for more free programs.