Take Me To The River is a project about change and exchange in the contemporary space of flows. Exploring the notion of “the current” within contemporary art, and the confluence of multiple temporalities within globalised culture today, it employs the metaphor of the river to examine the experience of being immersed in a world marked by an unprecedented diversity and depth of difference, by the coexistence of incommensurable viewpoints, and by the absence of an all-encompassing narrative (including those of modernity or post-modernity) that will enlist the participation of all. Within this convergence of different worlds that makes up the historical present, many different “currents” compete for ascendency, but with no clear vision of the future. At the same time, traditional notions of the self, as grounded in a communal sense of place, are being washed away, replaced by a “network culture” of emergent meanings and practices. The question arises, how will the singularity of the artist function and change in relation to these new conditions? What happens when the subjective self is set adrift in the “space of flows”-when you “take me to the river”?

Artists: Aki Sasamoto, Angus Fairhurst, Hito Steyerl, Melanie Gilligan, Melanie Jackson, Michael Stevenson, Peter Fend, Ryoji Ikeda, Shimabuku, Shitamichi Motoyuki, Simon Fujiwara, Superflex, The Play, Vermeir & Heiremans, Yuken Teruya