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January 06, 2007

January 2007 on -empyre- soft-skinned space

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"What is to be Done?" (Education)

January 2007 on -empyre- soft-skinned space: "What is to be Done?" (Education) with Ricardo Rosas (BR), Melinda Rackham (AU), Sharon Daniel (US), Chris Molinski (US), Andrea Sick (DE), Claudia Reiche (DE), Olivier Dyens (CA), Deborah Kelly (AU), Illyana Nedkova (BG/SCT), Christiane Robbins (US), and the collective Řjeblikket (DK). Subscribe.

"Artists educate themselves by working through form and subject matter; audiences educate themselves by experiencing things aesthetically. How to mediate the particular content or shape of those things without sacrificing their particularity is one of the great challenges of an exhibition like documenta. But there is more to it than that. The global complex of cultural translation that seems to be somehow embedded in art and its mediation sets the stage for a potentially all-inclusive public debate (Bildung, the German term for education, also means “generation” or “constitution,” as when one speaks of generating or constituting a public sphere). Today, education seems to offer one viable alternative to the devil (didacticism, academia) and the deep blue sea (commodity fetishism)." -- Roger Beurgel, artistic director, documenta 12

In collaboration with the documenta 12 magazine project, -empyre- soft-skinned space opens the third of three conversations on the three leitmotivs of the upcoming documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany next summer.

Are we at the margins of a huge flattening and empty-ing out process leaving the shells of modern structures yet producing something of an ethos, a critical space? A 'third space' (Soja) always destabilzing a dialectical or binary debate or opposition -- what Bojana Cvejic speaks of as 'affirming positive practices' and 'enabling a heterogenesis' ?

Please join our guests beginning January 6 for a month's reflection and debate surrounding the provocations in the third leitmotif of documenta 12.

Ricardo Rosas (BR) editor of the Rizoma e-magazine and a former member of the Midiatatica.org network. Rosas helped organize the Mídia Tática Brasil 2003 and the Digitofagia 2004 festivals in Săo Paulo, both of them aimed at discussing the tactical media scene, free software, and the creation of collaborative projects in art and activism involving new media. Rosas was the Net Art curator of the Prog: Me festival, in Rio de Janeiro (2005); and a lecturer at the fourth edition of the Next 5 Minutes festival, in Amsterdam (2003), the first international event dedicated to the mapping of tactical media. He also participated in the Super Demo Digital festival in Rio de Janeiro (2004); in the Networks, Arts, a Collaboration conference at the State University of New York, in Buffalo (2004); and in the 15th Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival. Rizoma, his edited website on arts and activism is currently taking part on the Documenta project of publications for the Documenta 2007.

Melinda Rackham (AU) Dr Rackham is the Executive Director of the Australian Network for Art and Technology (ANAT), Australia’s peak body for artists working with science and technology, creating opportunities for innovation, research and development both locally and globally. As an artist, writer and curator she worked with Networked Media for over a decade in web, 3d multi-user, game and mobile environments. Her award winning artworks are widely shown and her writing appears in diverse art and theory publications. Melinda founded -empyre- media arts forum in 2002 and in 2003-4 was curator of Networked Media at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne.

Sharon Daniel (US) An Associate Professor of Film and Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Sharon teaches classes in digital media theory and practice. Her research involves collaborations with communities that focus on the use and development of information and communications technologies for social inclusion. Her role as an artist is that of "context provider," - working with communities, collecting their stories, soliciting their opinions, and building online archives to make this data available across social, cultural and economic boundaries.

Chris Molinski (US) director of The Art Gallery of Knoxville, a community space devoted to discussions of new and emerging art in Knoxville, Tennessee. Recent exhibitions have involved collaborations with the Center for Urban Pedagogy, Max Neuhaus, and the exhibition "Distribution Religion" with Critical Artware, People Powered, and Temporary Services.

Andrea Sick (DE) Dr Sick has the management and artistic responsibility for the cultural lab Frauen.Kultur.Laboratorium thealit since 1993 (co-operation with thealit since 1990). he is research assistant at the University of Arts Bremen (Atelier für Zeitmedien) and responsible for the creation and concept of a network between art and science in new media technologies. Her research explores relations between technological media and cultural production, transitions between biological and information-technological discourses, interfaces of scientific and cultural activities; and gender studies.

Claudia Reiche (DE) is a media theorist, artist, and curator. Her work focuses on (cyber)feminist approaches to questions of how man/machine relations are designed with words and images. She is a member of the alit Frauen.Kultur.Labor, Bremen (http://www.thealit.de) and of the first international cyberfeminist alliance 'old boys network' http://www.obn.org. She has been director of the European project 'Cyberfeminism.Lab' (Culture 2000 programme of the European Union). Currently she is curating with Helene von Oldenburg The Mars Patent, the first exhibition site on Mars http://mars-patent.org, and with Andrea Sick, do not exist, europe, women, digital medium, a transnational European conference and exhibition lab, http://thealit.de/lab/donotexist/program.htm.

Ollivier Dyens (CA) is Chair of the Department of French at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He is the founder and webmaster of Metal and Flesh 1998-2003, as well as Continent X. He is also the author of Metal and Flesh, The Evolution of Man, Technology Takes Over, published by MIT Press Ollivier Dyens has lectured in Europe, the United States and Canada. His digital artwork has been exhibited in Brasil, Canada, Venezuela, Germany, Argentina and the United States.

Deborah Kelly (AU) has been making socially engaged artwork since 1983. Collaborative projects include the ongoin artists gang boat-people.org, and the prize-winning public artwork series, “Hey, hetero!”, with Tina Fiveash. She has given lectures and workshops around Australia and in Berlin, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Ottawa. She was invited by Martha Rosler to a political artists' residency in 2002, and produced a large collaborative artwork with that crew for Utopia Station in the 2003 Venice Biennale. Her current project, Beware of the God, was commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. It is a cross-media artwork considering the rise of religiosity in public life; documented and extended at www.bewareofthegod.com More work can be seen at: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/yours/artists/kelly.htm http://abc.net.au/arts/visual/stories/venice/hh_01.htm
http://www.mca.com.au/default.asp?page_id=10&content_id=1947

Iliyana Nedkova (BG/SCT) Iliyana is a Sofia-born Edinburgh-based curator, producer and critic of contemporary art and design. Currently, Creative Director New Media at Horsecross, Perth where she is responsible for curating the Threshold artspace, Scotland's first dedicated gallery for digital public art. A founding Co-Director of ARC: Art Research Communication (with Chris Byrne), a curatorial practice working nationally and internationally with artists, exhibitions, art fairs, editions and critical context. Latest ARC Projects include the international symposium of curating new media Art Place Technology, Liverpool and a series of limited editions by artists Susan Collins, Alla Georgieva, Pravdoliub Ivanov, Ivan Moudov and Dan Perjovschi.

Christiane Robbins (US) is a visual/media artist and scholar working in video, digital imaging, database aesthetics, and locative/spatial studies. Her work is found in permanent collections including the Stedlijck Museum, Amsterdam, Museum of Modern Art, NY, the Kitchen, NY, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Getty Museum. Her films have won international awards including best in category at the San Francisco International Film Festival. She is a Visiting Fellow at Stanford University and Associate Professor at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. She was the Executive Producer of the AIM Festival, a co-organizer of Race in Digital Space (MIT/USC's multi-year project including conferences and exhibition. ) and a co-Director of the On-Line Against Aids Project, one of the first on-line global cultural events.

Řjeblikket (DK) (editorial collective: Karin Hindsbo, Mikkel Bolt, and Kristina Ask) is a magazine based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1993, it is dedicated to the theory and critique of contemporary art. Throughout its existence the journal has tried to address issues of significance to the present situation, thereby hoping to contribute to the creation of a critical public sphere. Each issue of Řjeblikket features a theme that is approached from different angles - philosophical, political, and feminist; recent themes have been propaganda, exclusion, and drawing. Kristina Ask, visual artist is engaged in tv-tv, UKK (Association of Young Artworkers in Denmark) and the project Free Floating Faculty. Mikkel Bolt is Assistant professor at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, Copenhagen University, and author of The Last Avantgarde: Situationistisk Internationale beyond Art and Politics (2004).Karin Hindsbo, art historian is director of Den Frie, Contemporary Art Gallery, and chairman of UKK (Association of Young Artworkers in Denmark). Řjeblikket is a participating magazine in the documenta 12 magazine project.

Posted by jo at January 6, 2007 11:52 AM

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