Rio de Janeiro, 1962.
Eduardo Kac
Eduardo Kac is recognized internationally for telepresence and bioart. Pioneer of the art of telecommunications in the 1980s before the web, Eduardo Kac (pronounced “Katz”) created in the early 1990s six radical works that combine telerobotics and modern organisms. This visionary integration of robotics, biology and context explores the fluidity of subject positions in the postdigital world. His work addresses themes ranging from the mythopoetics of the online experience (Uirapuru) to the cultural impact of biotechnology (Gènesi), from the changing condition of memory to the digital era (Time Capsule) to the distributed collective agency (Teleporting an Unknown State). , from the problematic notion of all “exòtic” (Rara Avis) to the creation of life and evolution (GFP Bunny). At the dawn of the 21st century, Kac will take a new direction for contemporary art with his “transgenic art”, first with an innovative piece titled Genesis (1999), which includes an “artist gene” that he will invent, and then with “GFP Bunny”, his fluorescent icon named Alba (2000).
Kac’s work has been exhibited internationally in exhibitions with Exit Art and Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, Castello di Rivoli, Torí, Mori Art Museum, Tòquio, Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, Zendai Museum of Art Modern, Xangai and Museu d’Art de Seül. Kac’s work has been shown in biennials such as Yokohama Triennial, Biennial of the End of the World, Ushuaia, Gwangju Biennal, Sao Paulo Biennial, International Triennial of New Media Art, National Art Museum of China, Beijing and Havana Biennial.
His work is in the permanent collections of the Tate in London, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Modern Art of New York, Frac Occitanie—Collections regional d’art contemporani, Les Abattoirs—Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Tolosa. , the Museum of Modern Art of Valenci, Spain, the ZKM Museum, Karlsruhe, Art Center Nabi, Seoul, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of São Paulo, among others.
Kac has won numerous awards, including the Golden Nica Award, the most prestigious award in the field of arts media and the highest prize awarded by Ars Electronica.
The seventh work “Time Capsule” will win the 1st edition of the ARCO-BEEP Electronic Art Prize
http://www.ekac.org/
Time Capsule, 1997
On November 11, 1997, Eduardo Kac created the “Càpsula del temps” seva at the Casa das Rosas cultural center in Sao Paulo (Brazil). Transmitted via live television and the Internet, the artist will implant a digital microxip leading to a series of photographs in red color that document the life of his family in Europe before 1939. In this way, Kac will become the first human bearer of a microxip. To celebrate its 10th anniversary and with the piece in its seventh final form, including all the various original elements of this live performance, a webcast and a web scanner will be activated to allow an interactive and telerobotic transfer of the xip to the Internet.
ADSUM
Which consists of a 1x1x1 cm glass cube. that carries within your interior a missatge in symbols, which will travel to the Moon aboard Firefly’s Blue Ghost on the moonlit day, worth the redundancy, perfectly.
Eduardo Kac is one of the references of contemporary art. Throughout his long career, he has carried out numerous works at the confluence of art, technology and organic and biological processes. ADSUM is a trip to the Moon but also to the processes of territorialization and deterritorialization characteristic of the Smithsonian dialectic.
It is an anthropological and cosmological work the title of which ADSUM, here, talks about the processes of terraformation and to our knowledge of the universe. The trip to the moon to the fons ens allows us to locate both the WORK that is on the Moon and the object that is exposed to ARCO, to think about the dimension of destiny and also in our existential cruïlla.
Premi XX – ARCO_BEEP d’Art Electrònic 2025.
Premi NewArtAward@ARCO First Edition 2025.