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While in Athens, i checked out the Mark Amerika retrospective at The National Museum of Contemporary Art. How could i miss it? I knew so little about Amerika, an artist who, as the press release reminds, had been described as one of the "Time Magazine 100 Innovators" of the 21st century.
Amerika describes himself as a "thoughtographer", an "artist-medium", a "fictional philosopher", a "remixologist", a "network conductor", a wonderer who constantly changes identities and roles in a fragmentary world where time acquires an a-synchronic and non real dimension. By trying to express the complexity and the interest of contemporary digital reality, he delves into different aspects of himself and draws on elements and traits that he transfers to the characters of his works, by using the media the technological platforms of our time. Developing projects on the net, filming with mobile phones, remixing common moments and figures of today`s culture in an VJ-like audiovisual rhythm, Amerika redifines the characteristics of today's culture and opens up the possibilities for new interpretations and thoughts from the audience itself. What is sure is that he's probably the only net artist who is not only responsible for a publication that Publishers Weekly described as "the literary publishing model of the future" but also the director of a feature-length film shot entirely on mobile phone. After having seen the digital videos -Society of the Spectacle (A digital Remix) is particularly good- and internet artworks on show at the museum, i feel more puzzled than ever. It's one of those shows that require a second viewing (at least in my case) because everything doesn't come to you at the first visit. Just like the OK TEXTS printed on stickers and hidden under the steps of the stairs when you go downstairs to see the Amerika retrospective. I only saw them on my way out of the museum.
I copy/pasted a couple of them below: We cannot process your information. Your information is corrupt and needs cleansing. Erase brain? OK An error has been detected in your consciousness. All source-code is corrupt. Continue? OK Revolutionary double-speak has engendered a new information war. The system is about to crash. Download drugs now? OK The application could not be opened because your genetic code is dysfunctional. Abort? OK A cyborg orgy is not valid. Only digicash transactions are available at this time. Would you like to pay for the privilege? OK The network is monitoring your Digital Being. Create alias? OK This document wants to blow you. Go to finder? OK A transfer of $247,789.40 is about to download. Are you sure you want to disconnect? OK
At least, I'll get a second chance with the online works which EMST has listed on one of its webpages and made accessible to visitors in their Media Lounge. Some images. P.S. You can also see Immobilité Remixes at the Vivo Arte.Mov festival in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, on November 12 - 15, 2009. |
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I normally don't blog about events i can't attend but some cultural initiatives call for exceptions. Cruel Weather. Arab Middle East Film Festival is a festival of recent film/video from the Arab Middle East that opens in Aberdeen on October 2 and will move to other Scottish cities afterward. In parallel with the movie, Peacock Visual Arts is setting up Identities in Motion, an exhibition of Ayah Bdeir's work, a media artist whose ingenious and sometimes tongue-in-cheek projects invite us to have another look at media's tendency to flatten the Arab identity and reduce it to a set of cliche images and iconographies.
Cruel Weather explores artistic responses to crisis and the role of the moving image in today's Middle East. The festival showcases a series of award-winning documentaries, experimental and mixed genre works, many of which have never before been screened in Scotland. I asked the curator of the festival, Jay Murphy, of the University of Aberdeen's Centre for Modern Thought a few questions about Cruel Weather: Why did you call the festival "Cruel Weather"? I hope it's an imaginative title. There is a sort of maelstrom going on in the Middle East, and it's cruel in that much of this suffering is avoidable. Although many of us may feel disconnected from it, it is directly related to U.S. and U.K. actions, and the acquiescence of the E.U. I have a writer friend in New York who feels when she's going down the street as if she is walking on corpses, but a profound dissociation is far more typical.
How did you get to be involved in films from Arab Middle East? I've been involved in Palestinian solidarity work of one kind or another from the late '80s on. It was the theme of an issue of the magazine I did at one time, Red Bass, in 1988, and then a book anthology I edited that was published in 1993. At first it was a matter of competing representations, since the Palestinian struggle on film was rare at one point, and Palestinian filmmaking a small handful of people, whereas now there are widening developments, and remarkable talents like Elia Suleiman who take things to another level altogether. "Cruel Weather" is in another period and concerns itself with another matter: it is not an issue so much of righting or balancing the censorship of points of view (not that this is resolved, far from it, especially in countries like the United States), but of providing a glimpse of a very inventive and wide-ranging creativity that has gained momentum especially just in the past decade. It's hard not to detect some political undertones in the festival's programme. Do you expect Cruel Weather to stir controversy? It would be very controversial in much of the U.S. and England, but there is a different political complexion in Scotland (due to its own colonized history perhaps?). There could still be a backlash, but I've only seen very solid support for this idea. It is also meeting a real need, since to our knowledge (and those of our partners in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dundee), none of these works have been screened here before.
The films you selected speak of dynamism, hip hop music, culture jamming, future, etc. They explore several regions of Arab Middle East. How did you choose the movies to be presented in the festival? I remained with the work from the Levant and Egypt, because I'm most familiar with that, also being mindful of the limitations of our resources and time, since there are many films emerging from the Middle East, and video is a tool used across the region. I also think much of the best work has come from those spots, although what the festival often reflects is more of a thoroughly globalized poetics of location from artists on the move rather than specific geography. I feel the selection is somewhat unpredictable and quirky (Roy Samaha's video is inspired as much by William Burroughs' "cut ups" and Carlos Castaneda as contemporary Beirut, Chahine's "Chaos" is not one of his best received films, other films have a raw and improvisatory quality, while "Slingshot Hiphop" is a very assured first feature from Jackie Salloum), even while including some of the usual suspects. Slingshot Hip Hop trailer: Could you tell us a few words about the state of cinema making in Palestine? Are there organizations, structures and schools for documentary, animation and feature-film directors in the country? There have been initiatives like the Cinema Production and Distribution Centre, started by filmmaker Rashid Masharawi in 1996, there is a virtual gallery at Birzeit University, and a number of filmmaking collectives, of which Annemarie Jacir's Palestinian Filmmakers Collective is only the best known; foundations like the A.M. Qattan Foundation, support residencies and awards and training for young artists, including filmmakers. But I think largely the infrastructure is still very embryonic, and most filmmakers study in the metropolises to learn their trade, and bring that knowledge back home to bear on its current realities.
An exhibition of artist Ayah Bdeir accompanies the festival. Can you tell us something about the works selected for the show? How does her exhibition complement the film festival? Ayah Bdeir was the choice of the outgoing curator at Peacock Visual Arts, Monika Vykoukal, and I think she is a perfect choice in her play with cultural expectations, her diversity, inventiveness and range, which goes from animation and visuals for music concerts (such as Guy Manoukian's August 9 at Beiteddine, Lebanon outside Beirut) to electronic lingerie (Teta Haniya's Secrets).
Bdeir was born in Montreal but grew up in Beirut, and is currently a senior fellow at Eyebeam in New York; the issue of 'tradition' and identities and their relations with the metropolis are all foregrounded and problematized in her work, as they have to be. Bdeir participates in this very radical questioning of identity (for example in Jayce Salloum's "there is no Arab art") or probing the "withdrawal" of tradition (as in Jalal Toufic's writings) that is also central to the film and video artists presented here. As Toufic has written, "We do not go to the West to be indoctrinated by their culture, for the imperialism, hegemony of their culture is nowhere clearer than here in developing countries." I think Bdeir's work often traffics in this counter-intuitive and shifting relation of centre/periphery, in the electronically-hacked items in her The Arab Store, for instance. Thanks Jay! See also Jay Murphy's essay about Cruel Weather (PDF). Previous entries about Ayah Bdeir's work: littleBits, pre-engineered circuit boards connected by tiny magnets, SP4M. D0 Y OU SWA1LOW? and Underwear for airport searches. Also this interview with the artist at How to Win. |
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In his book Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, Friedrich Kittler draws parallels between the introduction of a new media and spiritism. The Morse alphabet was quickly adopted in seances of spiritism to converse with the deceased. On some photographic plates one could sometimes discern the face of a ghosts. In 1893, Edison described the 10 uses he imagined for the phonogram and one of them was to record 'the last words of dying persons'.
'Awake Are Only the Spirits' - On Ghosts and Their Media, an exhibition currently open at HMKV (Hartware MedienKunstVerein) in Dortmund, explores the presence of the supernatural, the manifestations of spirits, and (trans)communication with the beyond facilitated by technical media. Curated by Inke Arns and Thibaut de Ruyter, the show aims to tell a 'ghost story' that explores the question of why, for all our enlightenment, irrational capabilities are regularly ascribed to the new media and technologies of a given time - for instance, the ability to act as a channel for messages from the beyond. The projects exhibited question the existence of ghosts, they explore the integration of new media and technologies in spiritualist contexts, make visible or perceptible the invisible and trace the political implications as well as the aesthetics of such contemporary transcommunication phenomena.
The selection of works is exceptional. It might sometimes seem that i'm disillusioned with media art and indeed i'm not finding much pleasure anymore in works and exhibitions that are more the result of techno-fetishism than of a meaningful and far-reaching reflection on technology. 'Awake Are Only the Spirits' has everything that makes me enthusiastic about media. The exhibition manages to be intelligent, spectacular (starting with walls painted in a mystic purple hue) and engaging in spite of what would look at first sights as a rather puzzling focus. 'Awake Are Only the Spirits' doesn't just introduce you to some exciting artworks, it also makes you question your beliefs and your perception of the world.
One of the starting points of the exhibition at HMKV is the audiotape archive of Friedrich Jürgenson who discovered in 1959 the Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP), electronically captured sounds that resemble speech, but are not the result of intentional voice recordings. In the 1950s, the painter, film producer and archaeologist found traces of extra voices on tapes with which he was trying to record birdsongs. He believed the voices were coming "from the other side." Over the years, Jürgensen made thousands of recordings of the voices of the dead, from his family to Vincent van Gogh and even Himmler's masseur.
Jürgenson died in 1987 but the hundreds of tapes he recorded have been preserved, archived at the ZKM in Karlsruhe and are now part of the exhibition 'Awake Are Only the Spirits'. The other archive in the show is the one of an anonymous Aachen-based researcher who recorded images of deceased persons he believed were appearing on a running tv set.
In the early '80s deceased relatives of Klaus Schreiber informed him via EVP: 'We're on television, too'. Thanks to much efforts, money and time, Schreiber developed a method based on video feedback for distilling relatively clear images of his loved ones -including his two deceased wives- from the infinite expanses of bleary reflections. The Archive of an Anonymous Ghost-Seer curated by Hans W. Koch and presented at HMKV bears witness to this process.
Donald Judd Faces of Death, by Joep van Liefland, responds directly to Schreiber's findings on Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC). A large silkscreen poster displaying the blown-up image of a scrambled TV screen evokes the untuned screens where Schreiber used to see faces. Watch it as much as you want, no face ever turns up on Van Liefland's installation. Not even on the video that is also part of the work. The installation also features an object made out of empty and glossy video cassette boxes, is an ironic take on Abstract Minimalism and Pop Art.
For some time, it was even rumoured that Black Sabbath's song-Into The Void contained secret Satanic messages if played backwards. Jason and Lucas Ajemian transcribed the music and text of the track to create a new version, a project called Out of Nowhere/From Beyond. In the new version, the track is played backwards by a ten-piece orchestra with Jason Ajemian as the conductor and his brother singing phonetically in reverse. Video of the artists discussing the idea and preparation behind From Beyond: The performance was documented on video, but you can also get your hands on an audio recording pressed into 10-inch vinyl record. HMKV is also exhibiting the score printed on plexiglass as well as an original Black Sabbath cover splashed with Yves Klein blue as a reference to Klein's work with voids.
The International Necronautical Society (INS), a pseudobureaucratic organization founded in London in 1999, aims to examine radio in all its (necro-)poetical and also political aspects. Black Box is comprised of a series of texts compiled by the author Tom McCarthy from local Dortmund radio shows, newspapers, and weather reports. These were transcribed and recorded onto a black box, from which the text lines are transmitted twenty-four hours a day via ultra-short wave (USW) which can be received in the vicinity of the PHOENIX Halle.
Nina Fischer & Maroan El Sani Fischer and El Sani took pictures of abandoned rooms which had been maintained throughout time. The site is represented from two viewpoints: colour photography shows the visible, whereas high-frequency photography depicts phenomena that usually remain invisible to the human eye. The photos refer to a 19th century belief that psychological activity generated discharges which could be recorded later. Could former occupants of the room really have left something there? Kathrin Günter has invented a number of so-called 'intraocular light eye cameras', portable devices consisting of a Polaroid camera back mounted on a small black box which is strapped over the user's head. Günter's Polaroids are thus produced by the light emanating from the sitter's eyes. The resulting picture is influenced by the interferences that occur during the 'transmission' process of the image from the retina to the instant photographic paper. Visitors are invited to wear the camera and record the images that have accumulated in their eyes.
The exhibition continues until 18 October 2009 at Hartware Medienkunstverein Phoenix Halle, Dortmund, Germany. It is accompanied by a series of film screenings, lectures and workshops. Check out the HMKV website for more details. More images on flickr, Derwesten and HMKV. Related: Spy Numbers at the Palais de Tokyo, an exhibition inspired by the shortwave radio stations that broadcast artificially generated voices mysteriously reading streams of numbers, words, letters, tunes or Morse code. |
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I never do event announcements on this blog. I guess that would make some people happy but i can't find the time to blog about every single event i'd like to share with you. I'm not even sure my blog is the best place for that so i'd rather make exceptions to my "no call no announcement" rule once in a blue moon. Here's this semester's exception.
You might remember that back in May i was throwing seedballs all over Amsterdam along with Adam Zaretsky, the Waag society and other eco-enthusiast. The VivoArts School for Transgenic Aesthetics Ltd. comes back to town in September and this time the focus will be biology and bacterial transformation. VASTAL is a temporary research and education institute that Zaretsky has created in Amsterdam following an invitation by the Waag Society. The lectures and workshops aim to show the public what it means to work both artistically and scientifically with living organisms and materials. VASTAL also aims to make this form of art-science accessible for a broader audience and invite them to discuss the ethical and aesthetic issues at stake.
Sadly i can only attend the September 15 sessions but i hope you'll overcrowd the school. Here's some details that Adam Zaretsky kindly forwarded to me: Friday 11 September - Alt-Biology: Solar Transgenics, Synthetic Biology, Nanotech Biomimicry, Post-Natural History and Green Biofuel Huub de Groot is a Professor of Biophysical Organic Chemistry at Gorlaeus Laboratories, Leiden University. His research on producing Solar Biofuels from Microorganisms has consistently been focused on appropriate and sustainable hi-tech replacement of fossil fuels. By engineering green bacteria whom can collect sunlight with high efficiency conversion to chemical energy, we may have a source of cheap, clean and ubiquitous energy. While working with plants and algae Huub is also interested in engineering carbon nanotube latticeworks of super bio-solar battery structures which mimic the very efficient light harvesting 'antennas in disarray' found in green bacteria. As a possible infection/effect of Huub's continued collaborations with Rob Zwijnenberg (art-philosopher) of The Arts and Genomic Centre and the artists in residence, which his lab welcomes, Huub has proposed a Genetically Modified Solar Transgenic Art-Sci fish project intended for collaboration and future research.
Richard Pell, a professor of art at Carnegie Mellon is one of the founding members of the Center for PostNatural History. Rich will speak about the Center's investigations into the geographic placement of transgenic plants and animals and the cultural and ecological effect on their cartographic areas through such museum displays as Transgenic Organisms of New York State and Strategies in Genetic Copy Prevention. Rich will also speak about Synthetic Biology and his role as a iGEM Judge. Tuesday 15 September - Tissue Culture Lab What does it mean to grow disembodied cells from a former organism? Why do people want to keep samples and parts of beings well fed and free from contamination? How is a cell line kept alive and healthy after isolation from the living or the dead? This is a hands-on wet lab for public practical and experiential tissue culture technique. We will isolate primary tissues (bone marrow, scar tissue, muscle and, possibly, embryonic stems cells) in a sterile hood and then incubate them separately from their original corporeal context. The emphasis is on zombie fetish rites versus the general living rights of the undead vampiric matrix. Growing Politics: Tissue Culture and Art meets Urbanibalism Oron Catts is co-founder and director of SymbioticA will speak about the politics of tissue cultured artworks also known as semi-living extended body artworks. With such challenging projects as Victimless Leather, Semi-Living Worry Dolls and Disembodied Cuisine, Oron continues to challenge conventional readings of tissue culture as well as the general culture of eating, using and explaining life politics. Matteo Pasquinelli is a writer, curator and researcher at Queen Mary University of London. He wrote the book Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons (2008) and edited the collections Media Activism (2002) and C'Lick Me: A Netporn Studies Reader (2007). He writes frequently at the cross of French philosophy, media culture and Italian post-operaismo. His current project is a book about the history of the notion of surplus from biology to knowledge economy and the environmental discourse. In Amsterdam, together with Katrien Jacobs and the Institute of Network Cultures, he organized the Art and Politics of Netporn conference (2005) and the C'Lick Me festival (2007). Matteo will be presenting "Parasitic life, fermenting yeasts and cybernetic DNA: The art of living matter versus biodigitalism." Before the discovery of DNA, chromosomes were considered containers for an obscure fermentation activity. Today biotech hobbyists have reduced 'life' to a predictable copy-and-paste of numeric codes. How does the so-called bioart cover the parasitic and decaying process at the basis of life and the negative entropy of the cell that was discussed by Erwin Schrödinger in 1944 together with his prophetic hypothesis of a genetic code? Matteo Pasquinelli shows how there is more know-how in the most ancient practice of fermenting ambrosia than in contemporary bioart. Saturday 19 September - (De)Mystified DNA: Sequencing Lab Join us for the random creation of a sequence of DNA. This lab is about understanding the Genetic code and the online freeware available to 'read' DNA. Our sequence is arrived at through chance. We will then creatively explore software options like BLAST for finding where the random sequence is already embedded in the genomes of sequenced nature. We will also explore the online tools of plasmid design including DNA text to flesh online ordering and the anatomy of a DNA sequencing machine. As a group we will arrive at a symbolic reading of our chance strand of potential life alteration. Discussion in risk assessment in both chance based and knowledge based systems of hereditary difference production. (This is not a Wet Lab) Registration is possible via info at vastal dot eu. There are limited number of places available, so be in time! All courses and lectures will be in English. Previously: Day 1 at the VivoArts School for Transgenic Aesthetics: Seed broadcasting workshop. |
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Biorama 2 was a sequel of the one that saw us hike through rain and wind in Marsden Moor, West Yorkshire. This edition still explored new directions in art, science and technology but with a focus on the biology of the underground through the notion of umwelt developed by biologist Jakob von Uexküll and its influence on the development of biosemiotics by Thomas Sebeok.
The event, organised last month by Derek Hales from the University of Huddersfield and Andy Gracie, was described as follows: Using the underground of caves and mines and the organic life they contain as a form of parallel terrestrial biology, we develop a 'parallel science' through the study of extreme and/or 'removed lifeforms' and through the science of astrobiology. Biorama II will explore a rich contextual and conceptual background against which to investigate some of the outer (or inner) limits of terrestrial biology and strategies for life. Framing itself as a platform for exploring these and related imaginaries - via literary luminaries, various heretics and other visionaries of the underworld and the potential of life (immanent, alien, emergent and other) Biorama2 will stage a series of discussions, workshops and expeditions which will serve to examine how organisms living independently of sunlight develop a sensory and informatic relationship with their strange environments.
I couldn't attend the workshop but i greatly enjoyed the symposium. This time, Biorama's quest for exoticism brought us for a series of talk inside a cave. The programme was exceptional: Microbiologist Dr Paul Humphreys gave a fascinating talk about bacteria (all i knew about bacteria came from acne and toothpaste commercials so i was amazed to learn that bacteria can be grown to repair concrete cracking and marble monuments, it can also block pollution or indicate the industrial past of a landscape that today might look pristine, etc.), Andy Gracie gave a wonderful talk about the Hollow Earth and biotech artists as science amateurs (all the juicy details are coming soon), Agnes Meyer-Brandis was her usual quirki/awesomness, Oron Catts showed a new project likely to surprise those who would enclose Symbiotica in a biotech art box, Ulla Taipale told us about Capsula's adventure towards a total solar eclipse in Siberia and Anthony Hall gave us the lowdown on fish-human communication. The day finished with a truly moving sound performance by Joe Gilmore in a deep cavern.
I'll blog in detail some of the presentations over the next few days. But first, allow me to set the tone. Castleton is postcard pretty village in gorgeous Peak District:
People there bake lovely cakes: And cook other delicacies: Now the cave was The Peak Cavern, which also bears the exquisite name of "Devil's Arse". Until 1915 it was home to Britain's last troglodytes, who lived in houses built inside the cave mouth, and made a living from rope making, while the depths of the cave had the reputation of being a haven for bandits.
More photos: my flickr set, Iman Moradi's and Rob Lycett's. Read also The Arts Catalyst's account of Biorama cave trip. Previous entries about Biorama 1: Biorama Huddersfield, Biorama (Part 1), Biorama (Part 2), Biorama (Part 3). |
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Back to my posting about Postopolis, the amazing 5-day blogathon of discussions, interviews andpanel talks themed around landscape and the built environment and brought to us, lucky bloggers, by Storefront for Art and Architecture in collaboration with the adorable people of Foryourart. I prayed the Twelve Olympians, i cursed and almost cried but i have irremediably lost all the notes i took during the second day of Postopolis. Dan Hill has however posted a series of thoughts he gathered on the second day of his visit of LA and he's going to blog the talks more extensively over the next few days. At least that's his plan. Let's flock to City of Sound this week then. Below is a meager overview of Day 2 on planet Postopolis (with, i'm afraid heavy emphasis on the people i had invited):
David Basulto and David Assael from Archdaily and plataforma architectura did a live interview of Sarah Johnston & Mark Lee. Basulto and Assael were only doing live interviews. They basically asked the same questions to each architect "What is architecture for you?" "What is the role of an architect?", etc. So at the end of the series we could compare and discuss the wide range of answers provided by the speakers (some came prepared, others seemed to be somewhat nonplussed by questions they didn't see coming.) Sarah Johnston had the most wonderful combination of shoes-socks i've seen in ages. Oh! and btw, the work of Johnston MarkLee studio is worth a few jaw drops. Robert Miles Kemp gave a compact and compelling talk about the way robotic technologies and interactive interfaces might impact architecture in the very near future. There will be more of that in his upcoming book about Interactive Architecture
They didn't mention the cow-powered methane collector they developed in 2006 but i can't resist linking to it. Bryan from the absolutely wonderful Subtopia had invited the editor of Polar Inertia, everyone's favourite website for anyone interested in seeing photos that reveal the networks and patterns that define the contemporary city. The talk was dense and as packed with idiosyncrasies as the website itself. The evening ended with a lively debate about Stephanie Smith's project to turn America into a nation of commune members. The idea is obviously not new and comes with all sorts of hippi-esque connotations but Stephanie aims to infuse it with a new spirit: the individual as well as the common good will be kept in balance. People should this time adopt the balance because she will show them how much sense it makes: they will save money and time by entering or forming a commune. Besides the project Wanna Start a Commune starts with a business plan because Stephanie believes in doing well by doing good. Check out NPR's podcast about the project.
Sigh! That was a lame post, let's hope i'll do something better tomorrow. |
