Philosophy of adaptation

Max Kesteloot, Christian Lagata, Katarina Zdjelar, Tommy Malekoff, Carl Andre, Matteo Cremonesi, Zhou Li Yang

At Nighttimestory, Los Angeles, US

June 23 — July 07, 2021

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.’’
— George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright.

 

The world we’ve constructed, created, and coerced for ourselves is far from the real world — the raw, raucous, rough one. The scorching sun has yielded hats, sunglasses, and air conditioning. The wild wind has produced walls and sturdy shelter. The flurry of snow has demanded coats, shovels, and furnaces. The crashing rain has created umbrellas, windshield wipers, and rubber boots.
Adaptation (from the Latin adaptio) is a process in which the adaptation of the system (i.e., maintenance of its basic parameters) is established or maintained when the conditions of the external and internal environment change.
Often the adaptation is also called the result of such a process – the availability of the system’s fitness for a certain factor of the environment. Much like a biological organism, the field of Culture is also constantly evolving in response to changes in its environment.
On a basic level, the field is concerned with the “transport of form and/or content from a source to a result in a media context”.
For theorists such as Linda Hutcheon, the term adaptation has a multi-layered application, referring simultaneously to the entity or product which is the result of transposing a particular source, the process through which the entity or product was created (including reinterpretation and re-creation of the source), and the process of reception, through which “we experience adaptations as palimpsests through our memory of other works that resonate through repetition and variation”, or in other words, the ways in which we associate the entity or product as both similar to and a departure from the original.

Exhibition view, Philosophy of adaptation, Nighttimestory, L.A.
Exhibition view, Philosophy of adaptation, Nighttimestory, L.A.
Exhibition view, Philosophy of adaptation, Nighttimestory, L.A.
Exhibition view, Philosophy of adaptation, Nighttimestory, L.A.
Matteo Cremonesi, Sculpture / Printer #13 (2014) - 50х40cm, print of photo paper Archive. Еdition 1/3
Matteo Cremonesi, Sculpture / Printer #2-#3 (2014) - 50х40cm, print of photo paper Archive. Еdition 1/3
Exhibition view, Philosophy of adaptation, Nighttimestory, L.A.
Exhibition view, Philosophy of adaptation, Nighttimestory, L.A.
Zhou Li Yang, Column #1, Steel, cotton, pvc 2021, 277x97x86 cm
Exhibition view, Philosophy of adaptation, Nighttimestory, L.A.
Exhibition view, Philosophy of adaptation, Nighttimestory, L.A.
Exhibition view, Philosophy of adaptation, Nighttimestory, L.A.
Matteo Cremonesi, Sculpture / Printer #4 (2014) - 50х40cm, print of photo paper Archive. Еdition 1/3
Katarina Zdjelar, Act I, 5min, 2010
Katarina Zdjelar, Act I, 5min, 2010
Exhibition view, Philosophy of adaptation, Nighttimestory, L.A.
Max Kesteloot, TROPICAL NIGHT, Belgium/Spain 2019, 4:3, colour, stereo, text. 12’01”
Exhibition view, Philosophy of adaptation, Nighttimestory, L.A.
Exhibition view, Philosophy of adaptation, Nighttimestory, L.A.
Exhibition view, Philosophy of adaptation, Nighttimestory, L.A.
Exhibition view, Philosophy of adaptation, Nighttimestory, L.A.
Zhou Li Yang, Column #3, Steel, cotton, pvc 2021, 277x97x86 cm
Christian Lagata, Untitled (Haría), 6 x 7 negative scan and digital, Inkjet printing on paper, 2017, 80 x 70 cm
Christian Lagata, Untitled (Haría), 6 x 7 negative scan and digital, Inkjet printing on paper, 2017, 80 x 70 cm
Exhibition view, Philosophy of adaptation, Nighttimestory, L.A.