Donald Rodney: Autoicon Presentation + Panel Discussion

Join us for an afternoon event exploring the legacy of Donald Rodney’s pioneering art work Autoicon (2000) and converging experimental practices in digital and net art by Black artists happening in the 1990s and today.

The event will explore themes of Black and marginalised identites, cultural representation and digital technologies, and will begin with an introduction and demonstration of Rodney’s Autoicon by Curator Richard Birkett. This will be followed by a panel discussion with members of the organisation Displaced Data - an evolving association of UK based artists and writers of colour working with digital technology in the 1990s. This discussion will situation Rodney’s work within a wider network of activity happening amongst his peers in the late 90s.     

The event will end with presentations by artists who use digital and online spaces to explore notions of selfhood and critique hierarchies of race, gender and power.

Autoicon

Originally produced as both a website and CD-ROM, Donald Rodney’s Autoicon was conceived by the artist in the mid-1990s but not completed until 2000, two years after his death due to sickle cell anaemia. Referencing Jeremy Bentham’s infamous nineteenth-century Auto-Icon, the work proposes an extension of the personhood and presence of Rodney, while challenging dominant conceptions of the self, the body and historical authenticity. Consisting of a Java-based AI and neural network, the platform engages the user in text-based ‘chat’ and provides responses by drawing from a dense body of data related to Rodney, including documentation of artworks, medical records, interviews, images, notes and videos.

Access:

This event will be held in the Space.

Speakers will use microphones.

This event is wheelchair accessible.

If you have any questions around access or have specific access requirements we can accommodate, please get in touch with us by emailing info@nottinghamcontemporary.org or phoning 0115 948 9750.