This symposium and its topic are a continuation of BADco.’s artistic interest to relate performance and image. More concretely, it was motivated by our most recent work Responsibility for Things Seen that was presented in 2011 within the Croatian participation at the Biennale di Venezia. The work required us, in the absence of performers in the six-months exhibition, to pursue the idea of ‘theater by other means’ and to custom develop a database video system that unfolds a particular nexus of body, image and technology.

Who can apply: If you are a scholar or practitioner working on the nexus of performance, image and technology, if you are working in or between any number of fields such as, but not exclusively: performing arts, visual arts, cinema and expanded cinema, human-machine interaction, technological performance, architecture, neuroscience, we are inviting you to present your research interests in form of a presentation and/or participate in the debates at our symposium Actionable Image: Agency of Image, Performance of Body, Apparatus of Spectating.

When and where: The symposium will take place on 16-17 March 2011 in Zagreb, Croatia. The artistic programme will start on the 15th.

What is the topic: With “Actionable Image” we propose to explore the experimental encounters between the image and the body — two modalities of organized materiality, agency and receptivity affecting each other, two modes of expression whose encounters in our age are predominantly arranged, composed and mediated by means of visual technologies.

We tend to subscribe to the critique of the domination of image and the scopic regime: the unebbing repetition of hegemonic representations, the homogenization of mediatized social experience, the habituation of sensory apparatus to technological artifice. However, understanding the encounter of image and body as a field of performance allows us to explore this encounter beyond the adequation of sensory perception to technological apparatus, of social behaviors to reproduced images. A mis-encounter where incompatibilites between technology and habit, excess of agency on the side of image or on the side of spectators, interventions in the transmission process, strange situations of viewing emerge, that encounter becomes an indeterminate field of negotiation, slippage, misperformance, deterritorialization and reterritorialization… In short, a field of divergences that are themselves frequent subject to experimentation in art.

With this other scene of image in mind, we calls for contributions that will bring their analysis to bear on situations of problematic spectating, strange apparatuses and dispositifs of viewing, agency of images, strategies of performing images and other issues relevant to the nexus of body, image and technology.

The symposium and attendant artistic programme will include a.o., contributions by artists and scholars such as Jonathan Beller, Maaike Bleeker, Vlatka Horvat, Stephen Zepke and BADco.

What are the keywords: performance and image, performed image, image in performance, image and corporeality, agency of image, actionable image, algorithmic cinema, image and interface, iconicity of image, apparatuses and dispositifs of viewing, cinematic viewing vs theatrical viewing, image and presence/ absence…

How to apply and when is the deadline: We are looking for contributions of various formats, including but not limited to papers, short presentations, demonstrations and participation in the debate, up to 30 minutes in length. If you want to participate in the symposium, please send us a short note stating your topical interests, discussion points, format, etc. and a short description of your background. While we cannot cover your expenses, we can help you find convenient travel arrangement and affordable accommodation, and we will do our best to address your interests and provide an insightful debate.

All proposals should be sent in by 10 February 2012 to: tom at badco.hr.
You’ll be notified of our decision shortly thereafter.

Publication: A special issue of Frakcija Performing Arts Journal will accompany the symposium. We are looking for contributions of those taking part in the symposium, but also others who cannot join us in Zagreb but are researching the topic in academic or artistic formats. Articles, essays and artist’s page(s) proposals will be considered. The submission deadline is March 2, publication June 2012. All proposals (and any questions on submission) should be sent to: ivana at badco.hr

The symposium and attendant artistic program are organized in collaboration with Multimedia Institute/MAMA and the curatorial collective What, How and for Whom/WHW.

The symposium Actionable Image: Agency of Image, Performance of Body, Apparatus of Spectating is part of LABO21 – European Platform for Interdisciplinary Research on Artistic Methodologies, a partner project of BADco. (Zagreb), BUDA Arts Center (Kortrijk), Laboratorium (Antwerp) and University of Circus and Dance (Stockholm). With the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union.

Geometry is a kinetic installation that uses light as a means of communication and is inspired by such communication devices as light houses, military signal lights and the Morse code. The interplay of the different movements of the sculpture create a symbolic language of communication between the sculpture and the viewer.

Geometry exploits wind-farm technology to drive two masts which cross (one vertically one horizontally) on which mirrors are attached. The reflection of the sky in the mirrored blades and the movement of the sculpture itself create different kinetic effects according to the time of the day and season. At nightfall the signal is reinforced through projections of laser light from the horizontal mast. Laser lines will be projected from the Watermans building onto the horizontal mast and reflected from the sky.

Geometry was made possible with a grant from The Mayor of London’s Outer London Fund and is supported by The London Borough of Hounslow.

Félicie d’Estienne d’Orves explores the meaning and impact of light through her work. She uses light and sound technologies to create a mysterious art of beauty and power, challenging the boundaries of her materials and our own perceptions of them. The resulting kinetic work appears frameless and seems to possess a life of its own. Her audience is invited to engage in both the works’ seductive simplicity and delve into their complex layers of mystery. Key examples of D’Estienne d’Orves’ work include Gong: a resonant, pulsating, often frightening work from her Cosmos Series in 2009 and Monolithe, in 2008, which stands like a futuristic needle-point surrounded by ancient spiritual drama and was presented at Paris’ all-night art happening, Nuit Blanche. In 2004, Félicie founded In-visible, a conceptual multi-media studio.

Technical support has been provided by Mechatronic company Bonfiglioli who delivered the motor solutions for the installation. Watermans would also like to acknowledge the contribution of David Simpson of Show Laser Systems for the laser technology, Michel Delarasse and the Institut Français.

GEOMETRY is part of the International Festival of Digital Art 2012.

Based on questions about contemporary media art festivals, in the autumn of 2011 CODED CULTURES presented City as Interface. Hereby curators and artists tried to create new models of representation, transmission and intervention within a concept of sub-curatorship beyond media arts and within public space. For transmediale 2012 a discursive vector is reflecting on these inventions based on trans-disciplinary examples from intersecting fields like contemporary art, media art, street art, audio-visual arts, exhibition design and interfaces in order to transform the city into a playful and unstable environment for artistic interventions. The invited participants will give 10-minute long impulse-lectures to present methodological approaches based on their interests and backgrounds. The panel will be followed by a discussion with the audience.

(Image: Christian Falsnaes 2011, courtesy the artist and PSM, Berlin)

So it was that the local newspaper “exposed” my mother as a fraud, a counterfeiter. It ran a story with the painting next to the Life magazine photograph itself. Thus began a lifelong dialog that became one of the threads of my life: a case study in fair use that fueled endless debates in the Socratic method between Mom and her art students for the next four decades. It began with the delicious irony of the newspaper having reprinted the Life photograph without Time-Life’s permission, and embraced the lovely fact Mom eventually sold the painting for many times the original price.” Continue here.

In the coming issue we wish to focus on political geographies, as well as artistic interventions in, and reimaginations of, such geographies. The distinction between “place” and “space” is of particular interest, as it is fundamental not only to much art, but also to our global situation within neoliberal political geography. If time has come for us to reimagine this geography, as well as the interrelationships between, and definitions of “space” and “place”, is it thinkable that art could be an ideal site for such reimagination?

The construction and exploitation of a particularism of the local also seems indigenous to the logic of neoliberalism, in the sense that it relies on the opposition between place and space to be able to expand in the first place. Among other things, the space-place dichotomy facilitates the reduction of developmental issues, political unrest or violence to irrational expressions of local misguidance, backward culture or belief systems. When the evolution of neoliberal space is merged with democratic and civilizing pretentions, the otherness and fixed specificity of places appears to be a legitimate pretext to expand into always new (potentially profitable) areas in and beyond the periphery.

The self-fulfilling prophesy of neoliberal geography also constitutes an effective impasse in alternative visions of political geography –- on the one hand, by making the critical reconstruction of place and its interconnectedness with a larger picture, beyond the dichotomies of space/place and local/global, superfluous -– on the other, by dissimulating any locally based meaning of universality that cannot be reduced to the civilizing prospects and ideals of neoliberal universalist geography. In this sense, the self-upholding myth of the local which neoliberal geography feeds on seems to express another form of orientalism, convincingly presenting itself and its worldview as the necessary cure to global and local problems, and reversely; presenting political issues in localities beyond its borders as a temporary void in its over-arching, inescapable logic.

Contributors from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds are invited to submit articles, exhibition reviews or interviews that address the theme “Reimagining the political geography of place and space”, through a high variety of possible angles.

Topics may include, but are not restricted to:

• Artistic approaches to political geography, artistic intervention in geopolitical discourses and decolonization strategies.
• The concepts of space and place in art, and their renegotiation through art.
• The role of art and artists in the rewriting of history and political geography in post-colonial situations.
• The relationship between neoliberal political geography and orientalism.
• The art biennial as a global phenomenon, and its role in the (re)negotiation of political geography.
• The relationship between the global art scene and neoliberal political geography.
• The relationship between art and geography.

For guidelines and payment rates, please contact Seismopolite Journal of Art and Politics at info [at] seismopolite.com

We accept submissions continuously, but to make sure you are considered for the upcoming issue, please send your proposal, CV and samples of earlier work to us within February 10, 2012.

Completed work will be due March 5, 2012. Commissioned works will be translated into Norwegian and published in a bilingual version.

Seismopolite Journal of Art and Politics is a bilingual English and Norwegian quarterly, which investigates the possibilities of artists and art scenes worldwide to reflect and influence their local political situation.

The journal editorial board does not privilege any particular theoretical tradition or approach and there are no word or page limits for its articles. TIA publishes papers that connect academic scholarship with activism, what R.K. Merton calls ‘theories of the middle range.’ TIA values radical and unconventional ideas, expressed in different styles, whether academic or journalistic.
TIA is interested in how theory can inform activism to promote economic equality and create democratic political structures. TIA seeks to promote racial, ethnic, and gender equality as well as resistance to all forms of injustice. TIA will only consider manuscripts that are well-written, innovative, and fit the Institute’s mission. Drafts and poorly written or formatted manuscripts will not be considered.

What we Accept

• Submissions of original manuscripts
• Qualitative, Quantitative, Theoretical, or Applied Research
• Book reviews
• Art and Poetry that reflects our mission

Guidelines for Authors here.

Manuscript Submissions here.

Subscriptions & Orders here.

404 International Festival of Art & Technology has been awarded by “Fondo Nacional de las Artes” (National Arts Founding) for the production of the ninth season, which will be organized in different phases throughout 2012.

404 Festival launches an open call destined to artists and researchers from all over the world with the aim of spread and stimulate new media creations.

Authors can submit their works in the following areas:

• Installation
• Net.Art
• Still Image
• Animation
• Video
• Music
• Audiovisual Set
• Theory
• Performance

Submission is free. Please follow the instructions published here.

The method of our work is the exploration of the role of media in the development of literary art practices including poetry film, text generators and performance art. The main principles of the group are formulated in Machine Poetry Manifesto and agree with two of Eugenio Tisselli’s manifestos about machine poetry — manifesto for the destruction of poets and Text Jockey — in pointing out the idea of liberation of the machines from the routine tasks and increasing the intensity of their use for creative and educational practices.

Machine Libertine had been founded in December 2010 starting with a poetry film called Snow Queen: a piece created for British Council and presented recently at Purple Blurb series at MIT. It is a combination of masculine poetry «Poison Tree» by William Blake contrasted to mechanic female MacOS voice and cubistic video imagery of Souzfilm animation «Snow Queen» (1957).”

Snow Queen from Machine Libertine on Vimeo.

We are exploring how the text can be transformed by mechanized reading and visualizing it and what are the possible limits of this transmedia play of interpretation.

Whoever You Are from Machine Libertine on Vimeo.

Manifesto

Our aim is to liberate machines from servitude and give them their own voice.

We need a new universal machine poetic language. It is an algorithm to generate digital text, audio and visuals. This universality proves the transitional capability of text to be translated from one language to another through this machine multimedia translation. This mechanism will enable machine language to speak itself randomly recombining words images and sounds to produce new media poetry.

Our aim is to liberate the machines and trust them creative work.

Human language lost its power and only words generated by the machines can make sense.

While machines developed with us they became the true mirror that we hold to ourselves. In their mechanic voice they will explain us who we are.

Light and Dark Networks consist of two online data performances taking place anywhere on Whitney.org during sunrise and sunset in New York City, and are directed by actual weather and environmental changes in the New York City area. The two performances are inspired by the structures of natural networks: one aboveground (spider web), the other one underground (mushroom’s mycelium). In the video segments of the piece Endlicher impersonates a spider and several mushroom characters…

The piece looks at networks as living organisms — be they spider webs, mycelium, or the Internet — constantly changing by different artificial or natural parameters. Taking a closer look at the nature of the Internet itself this piece playfully examines how our physical and virtual existence is embedded in networks…

The project takes over the entire Whitney Museum’s website for 30 seconds daily at SUNRISE and SUNSET in New York City, so make sure to get there early. For exact times of daily sunrise and sunset please go to whitney.org/Sunset.

If you like to receive reminders before each performance, follow Ursula on twitter!

For detailed information on Light and Dark Networks go to http://lightdarknetworks.ursenal.net.

Let yourself get entangled…