We are pleased to announce the keynote speakers for The Material Image: The 8th International Transdisciplinary Imaging Conference at the Intersections of Art, Science, and Culture, which will be held at the National Art School from 1-3 November 2024.
Justin Paton is an acclaimed writer and curator who is the Head Curator of International Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. His recent project, the exhibition Louise Bourgeois: Has the Day Invaded the Night or Has the Night Invaded the Day?, has garnered widespread acclaim. Paton writes extensively on painting and is the author of several notable books, including the Montana Book Award-winning How to Look at a Painting, McCahon Country – a study of New Zealand painter Colin McCahon, and Dreamhome: Stories of Art and Shelter.
Janine Randerson is an artist, film and video maker and writer based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, New Zealand. A strong thread in her research concerns art-based mediation in ecological systems, in collaboration with scientists, activist citizens and Tangata whenua and Tangata Tiriti. Janine is currently a curator of Te Tuhi’s programme for the International World Weather Network platform that brings artists and writers together on topics of climate change. She often works with environmental scientists, collaborating with urban meteorologists at the University of Auckland, satellite meteorologists at the Bureau of Meteorology (Australia) and climatologists at the National Institute of Environmental Research (Denmark) and NIWA in Aotearoa New Zealand (2022-2023). She is interested in issues of weather, water, ecological politics and art practices on whenua (land) and ecological art practice. Janine’s book Weather as Medium: Toward a Meteorological Art (MIT Press, 2018) examines artworks that offer possible engagement with our future weathers, while creating openings for immediate action in the present. She values and promotes Indigenous, feminist and gender non-binary approaches to ecology in her research. She is the co-host of the Auckland LASER talks (Leonardo Art-Science Evening Rendezvous).
Christiane Paul is the Curator of Digital Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Professor Emerita in the School of Media Studies at The New School. She is a leading figure in digital art curation who has received numerous accolades, including the 2023 Media Art Histories International Award and the Thoma Foundation’s 2016 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art. Her influential publications include Digital Art (Thames and Hudson, 2003; 4th ed. 2023), A Companion to Digital Art (Blackwell-Wiley, 2016), Context Providers – Conditions of Meaning in Media Arts (Intellect, 2011), and New Media in the White Cube and Beyond (UC Press, 2008). At the Whitney Museum, she has curated groundbreaking exhibitions, including Harold Cohen: AARON (2024), Refigured (2023), Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art 1965-2018 (2018/19), Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools (2011), and Profiling (2007). She also oversees artport, the Museum’s portal to Internet art.