BIFF OFFSCREEN: New Solar Monuments from the Heliotechnics/Heliotechniques Institute for the Study of Solar Practices

Thursday October 10 - Friday November 15 @ FITZ

Extended Run!

Opening Performance on Thursday October 10 at 5 PM!

New Solar Monuments from the Heliotechnics/Heliotechniques Institute for the Study of Solar Practices, site-specific interdisciplinary installation, 2024

This exhibition uncovers a recently discovered Solar Monument by the Heliotechnics/Heliotechniques Institute for the Study of Solar Practices. The occasion indexes the public release of www.solarpractices.org, the Institute's solar powered website.

Solar Monument #3 links the web-based speculative media project to a physical, earthly, space of public meaning-making: FITZ Books & Waffles.

The Heliotechnics/Heliotechniques Institute website is a solar powered website. It exists intermittently, in relation to solar activity at the local server site.

The Heliotechnics/Heliotechniques Institute for the Study of Solar Practices explores new ways of thinking about energetic entities, such as petroleum, whale oil, electricity, and the sun to decenter anthropocentric representations of nature, culture, and technology. The Institute takes a pluralistic approach to meaning making, providing critical and creative inquiries that pose a very basic question: why do Western humans presume that because energetic entities exist, they should be put to work for human economic productive means?

The Heliotechnics/Heliotechniques Institute for the Study of Solar Practices is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. This project is supported by The Generator Fund, a grant for artists administered by The Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art and funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. It is fiscally sponsored by Wave Farm, with partnerships from the Buffalo International Film Festival, Gray Area for the Arts, New Monuments Task Force, the Center for Emotional Materiality, and the Department of Media Study University at Buffalo, SUNY.

---

About the Artist:

Dr. Elia Vargas is an artist and a scholar working across multiple mediums, ranging from video and sound to writing and performance, focused on naturecultural media practices. He is a visiting assistant professor of Media Study at the University at Buffalo. In 2024, he received a NYSCA Artist Support grant for his work on Heliotechnics/Heliotechniques. He collaborates widely, was commissioned by Goethe Institute to create a podcast on global technocultural exchange, and is the co-founder of the SF Bay Area art and technology organization, the Living Room Light Exchange. He holds a PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Vargas’s work is critical, speculative, ecological, energetic, and technocultural. It is engaged in an interdisciplinary approach with contemporary and historical experimental media, digital cultural, and feminist science studies. Towards the pursuit of challenging historical forms of meaning-making, he is interested in concepts that perform change—a multi-species, or posthumanist practice of worlding. His work seeks non-representational ways to trouble the entanglements of nature, culture, and technology. His current work considers the cultural, philosophical, and techno-scientific conditions of the early American oil industry and argues for refiguring crude oil as media to decenter anthropocentric representations of nature.

Stills from New Solar Monuments from the Heliotechnics/Heliotechniques Institute for the Study of Solar Practices courtesy of the artist/institute.