Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future, / And time future contained in time past” – T.S. Eliot

Time, as it were, thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible; likewise, space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot, and history. This intersection of axes and fusion of indicators characterizes the artistic chronotope” – Mikhail Bakhtin

Nothing passes without leaving a trace. All foregone will be accounted for. What comes to light is only what was hidden inside” – A.A. Ukhtomsky

In pale moonlight/ the wisteria’s scent / comes from far away” – Yosa Buson

Moons, Castles, Trees welcomed both AI art and art about AI: image, photography, poetry, collage, code, painting, sculpture, glitch, ekphrasis, text, and hybrid analog-digital works.

Artists of all kinds: writers, poets, painters, photographers, calligraphers, illustrators, sculptors, printmakers, generative artists, and graffiti artists were invited to participate in the open call.

About The Wrong Biennale?

Counting its viewership in the millions, The Wrong just might be the world’s largest art biennale – the digital world’s answer to Venice.”
– The New York Times

The Wrong Biennale is a global art event that generates and showcases art across virtual, physical, and hybrid platforms.

Since its first edition in 2013, it has presented the work of over 10,000 artists through more than 800 curated digital and physical exhibitions worldwide.

The 7th edition titled “The Wrong Returns” features work by 16oo+ artists, selected by 18o+ curators, showcased in 1oo+ pavilions and embassies (physical exhibitions) in London, Trondheim, Mexico City, Münster, Porto, Matosinhos, Sunderland, Valencia, Budapest, Moscow, Harwich, Plymouth, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Caracas, São Paulo, Toronto.

Selected artists for Moons, Castles, Trees | AI Chronotopes

The following eight artists were selected from more than 800 submissions to take part in the exhibition:

Alexander Limarev

Baokang Zhao

Chaeyeon Kang

Jack Tuttle Snell-Ryan

Javier Aparicio Frago

Joseph Farbrook

Michele Rinaldi

Natasha Burenina

Curator

Kasper Bergholt

To mark its place in digital history, the open call has been permanently and immutably inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain, digital canvas, if you will, as ordinal 108650280.

The inscription also serves as a time-space stamp for what could be considered the final exhibition text.

I know myself well enough to recognize that changes will inevitably follow; it will be difficult to resist the urge to append paratexts to the various sections in the future.

“To write is to produce a mark that will constitute a kind of machine that is productive in the absence of the subject”, Derrida in ‘Signature, Event, Context’.

What does ‘Moons, Castles’, ‘Trees’ refer to?

The words ‘moons’, ‘castles’, and ‘trees’ refer to three verses from “Cinnamon Horses” by Nick Cave, featured on the 2024 album “Wild God”.

I told my friends that life was sweet
I told my friends that life was very sweet
And the cinnamon horses
In the turpentine trees

I told my friends some things were good
That love would endure if it could
And the cinnamon horses
Stroll through the castle ruins

I said we can love someone
Without hurting someone
And a dozen white vampires
Under a strawberry moon

The song and its lyrics made a deep impression on me in 2024, leading to a textual analysis that eventually inspired this open call. In developing it, I decided to soften the thematic framing to allow greater interpretive freedom.

What are chronotopes?

The term ‘chronotope’ consisting of Greek χρόνος (‘time’) and  τόπος (‘place’ or ‘space’) was coined by Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin in 1937, shortly before World War II.

“Art & literature are shot through with chronotopic values of varying degree and scope. Each motif, each separate aspect of artistic work bears value” — ‘Forms of Time and Chronotope in the novel’, Mikhail Bakhtin.

Bakhtin in turn was influenced by the work of Alexei Ukhtomsky, whose lecture on the chronotope in biology, he attended in 1925.

Ukhtomsky’s work on the dominant involves time and space in perception, as neural responses to stimuli (for instance light) persist and shape future responses, creating  temporal traces.

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