Join us for a special screening event exploring sensory perception and altered states of consciousness on Friday 2nd September from 6:30pm! New Organs of Perception is a program as part of our current exhibition, Telepathine by Adele Wilkes, and features works by artists Ceri Hann and Bixiao Zhang.

The human being knows (themself) only insofar as (they know) the world; (they perceive) the world only in (themself), and (themself) only in the world. Every new object, clearly seen, opens up a new organ of perception in us.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Ceri Hann presents Shh/utter-release, a performance lecture that seeks to zoom out of our online mediation through a surreal time-juggling of sculptural photographic assemblies, meta-metaphors and linguistic pretzels in an attempt to reframe the breakdown of the bi-cameral mind.

Drawing from her project “The ElectroPoetics”, Bixiao Zhang screens a series of video performances engaging with interconnected and entangled relations of media-user, exploring possible techno-ecological modes of co-creation reverberating, dreaming, and interweaving with/as the electronic nervous networks.

Ceri Hann is a multidisciplinary arts practitioner who develops participatory art forms intended to enhance the conditions for collective idea generation. This approach to practice often avoids categorisation, as the outcomes are intentionally defused in the wonder/wander of everyday life. The gifting of metaphorical objects to instigate philosophical discourse stems from Ceri’s PhD research at RMIT entitled The Making of a Knowledge Casino (2016). Over the past ten years Ceri has been a sessional tutor and guest lecturer in the School of Art and School of Architecture and Design at RMIT and has an ongoing engagement within the Art in Public Space and MFA post-graduate programs. Ceri has presented work at Melbourne Comedy Festival (2017), Liquid Architecture (2015), RMIT Project Space (2014) and run workshops at West Space, Blindside Sound Series and Testing Grounds. Ceri is also one half of Public Assembly, an art and design practice focused on the dynamics of social space, investing time, investigating place and achieving unique creative interactions.

Bixiao Zhang is a digital artist and PhD candidate at RMIT. Her practice-led research, a fluid entity that she termed "The ElectroPoetics", explores a cross-pollination of eco-poetic, post-humanist readings of Emily Dickinson, aspects of Buddhism, and Quantum Field theory for guiding performative engagements with the emergent subjectivities of the digital environment. Bixiao engaged in public art projects and residencies in the Asia Pacific, such as Hong Kong Cattle Depot Art Village (2017), JMMK #12 media festival Indonesia (2020), and Hua Niao Island International Art Festival, China (2021). These projects are interested in the influence of the digital environment’s emergent subjectivities on a specific physical site. Bixiao won the 2021 Dean’s Award for her Master of Fine Art project at RMIT and holds a Bachelor of Media Arts at Flinders University. Her latest project in 2022 includes exhibitions at Blindside Mobile (Melbourne), Footscray Community Arts Centre (Melbourne), Bunjil Place (Melbourne), and a research residency at Posthumanist Art Network (San Francisco).