My work investigates technology - a continuous spectrum spanning from mud-brick to machine learning - as a meeting point of concurrent, overlapping systems; a nexus of cultural, computational, biological, and economic forces. In uncovering, augmenting, and creating systems of entanglement, I am trying to uncover a sense of “liveness” or dynamism resulting from the unpredictable performances of various actants pulling independently in collective balance. The works are visual, but equally, choreographic and performative.
Through a variety of media - installation, kinetic sculpture, sound, and computational image-making - I often employ commercial technological readymades as a core vocabulary, displacing them into an artistic context. Placing technological processes and artifacts in unconventional and absurd relationships to one another, I aim to create a fissure in their normative functions, reflecting on their roles as contemporary prosthetics with which we co-exist in a hybrid ecology.
My research and creation processes involve a balance of qualitative and quantitative approaches. I am particularly interested in the interplay between the two seemingly polar-opposite, binary viewpoints, and strive towards a cross-pollination in which one feeds and complicates the other, and vice versa.
I view art-making as a form of continual search and discovery, a way of engaging and becoming in the world. This guiding principle - of continual change, risk-taking, and acquiring of new skills - underpins the diversity of practice, methodologies, and output media which result from it. Each work is an imperfect record of a particular moment, and the overarching thematic meanings are found in the discontinuities between various works and approaches.
Adam Basanta (b. 1985) is an artist, composer, and performer of experimental music. Born in Tel-Aviv (ISR) and raised in Vancouver (CAN), he lives and works in Montreal (CAN) since 2010.
Since 2015, his works have been exhibited in galleries and institutions including the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal (CAN), Optica Centre d’art contermporain (CAN), Fotomuseum Winterthur (CH), Arsenal Art Contemporain (CAN), Galerie Charlot (FRA), National Art Centre Tokyo (JPN), V Moscow Biennale for Young Art (RUS), Carroll/Fletcher Gallery (UK), American Medium Gallery (NYC), Serralves Museum (POR), Edith-Russ-Haus fur Mediakunst (GER), York Art Gallery (UK), and The Center for Contemporary Arts Santa Fe (USA).
His work has been awarded several international prizes, including the Japan Media Arts Prize (2016) and the Aesthetica Art Prize (2017). In 2018 he was longlistes for the Sobey Art Award (CAN), and in 2019 he was the winner of the Prix Pierre Ayot (QC). He is currently represented by Ellephant Gallery (Montreal, CAN). His work can be found in the institutional collections of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and the Ville de Montréal.
Remaining active as an experimental composer and performer, his concert music, live performances, and sound recordings are presented worldwide, including appearances in the MATA Festival (NYC), Gaudeamus Musicweek (NL), CTM Festival (GER), Akousma Festival (CAN), and Mutek Festival (CAN), and have been awarded multiple national and international prizes. His music has been released on Kohlenstoff Records (CAN), Farmacia901 (ITA), Important Records/Cassauna (USA), and Kasuga Records (GER).
He holds a BFA in Music composition from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver BC CAN) and an interdisciplinary Research-Creation MA in Fine Arts (Concordia University, Montreal QC CAN).
CV on request.