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.

From Cairo to cyberspace, from Main Street to Wall Street, today’s social movements have a creative new edge that’s blurring the boundaries between artist and activist, hacker and dreamer. But the principles that make for successful creative action rarely get hashed out or written down.

Until now.

Beautiful Trouble brings together ten grassroots groups and dozens of seasoned artists and activists from around the world to distill their best practices into a toolbox for creative action. Among the groups included are Agit-Pop/The Other 98%, The Yes Men/Yes Labs, Code Pink, SmartMeme, The Ruckus Society, Beyond the Choir, The Center for Artistic Activism, Waging Nonviolence, Alliance of Community Trainers and Nonviolence International.

Contributors include Rae Abileah, Ryan Acuff, Celia Alario, Phil Aroneanu, Peter Barnes, Jesse Barron, Andy Bichlbaum, Nadine Bloch, Kathryn Blume, L.M. Bogad, Josh Bolotsky, Mike Bonanno, Andrew Boyd, Kevin Buckland, Margaret Campbell, Doyle Canning, Samantha Corbin, Yutaka Dirks, Steve Duncombe, Mark Engler, Simon Enoch, Jodie Evans, John Ewing, Brian Fairbanks, Bryan Farrell, Janice Fine, Lisa Fithian, Cristian Fleming, Elisabeth Ginsberg, Stan Goff, Arun Gupta, Silas Harrebye, Judith Helfand, Daniel Hunter, Sarah Jaffe, John Jordan, Dmytri Kleiner, Sally Kohn, Steve Lambert, Anna Lee, Stephen Lerner, Zack Malitz, Nancy Mancias, Duncan Meisel, Matt Meyer, Dave Oswald Mitchell, Tracey Mitchell, George Monbiot, Brad Newsham, Gaby Pacheco, Mark Read, Patrick Reinsborough, Simon Roel, Joshua Kahn Russell, Leonidas Martin Saura, Levana Saxon, Maxine Schoefer-Wulf, Nathan Schneider, Kristen Ess Schurr, John Sellers, Rajni Shah, Brooke Singer, Matt Skomarovsky, Andrew Slack, Phillip Smith, Jonathan Matthew Smucker, Starhawk, Eric Stoner, Jeremy Varon, Virginia Vitzthum, Harsha Walia, Jefferey Webber and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

Beautiful Trouble puts the accumulated wisdom of decades of creative protest into the hands of the next generation of change-makers: www.beautifultrouble.org

Publication April 1st 2012

Together with the other programme strands – the exhibition Dark Drives: Uneasy Energies in Technological Times, the performance programme The Ghosts in the Mashine, the video programme Satellite Stories and the symposium in/compatible: systems | publics | aesthetics – the reSource constitutes a substantial part of the transmediale 2012 programme. It presents a constellation of workshops, talks and performances distributed into five different sub-themes: reSource Methods, reSource Activism, reSource Networks, reSource Markets and reSource Sex.

reSource Methods investigates intersections between artistic production and research, reflecting on methodologies of curating (post)media art as well as on experimental and speculative methods of in/compatibility through artistic practices.

With Martin Howse (uk/de), Anthony Iles (uk), Mattin (se/es), Jonathan Kemp (uk), Shu Lea Cheang (tw/fr), Cornelia Sollfrank (de), Geoff Cox (uk/dk), Florian Cramer (de/nl), Christian Ulrik Andersen (dk), Georg Russegger (au), Michal Wlodkowski (au), Luise Reitstätter (au), Joasia Krysa (pl/dk), Sidney Ogidon (au), Eva Fischer (au), Morten Breinbjerg (dk), Matthias Tarasiewicz (au), Rosa Menkman (nl), Morten Riis (dk), Marie Thompson (uk), Carolin Wiedemann (de), Robert Jackson (uk), Andrew Prior (uk), Magda Tyzlik-Carver (pl/uk) and many others.

reSource Activism sheds light on the practices of artists, activists and hackers who are rethinking critical interventions in the field of art and technology.

With Florian Wüst (de), Kathy Rae Huffman (us/de), Eckart Lottman (de), Pit Schultz (de), Roberta Buiani (it/ca), Alessandra Renzi (it/ca), Nicola Angrisano (it), and others.

reSource Networks reflects on viral and distributed strategies of networking, questioning the concept of networking itself and proposing alternative to proprietary systems.

With Dmytri Kleiner (ca/de), Baruch Gottlieb (ca/de) and the Telekommunisten Network, Aymeric Mansoux (fr/nl), Johannes P Osterhoff (de), Salvatrice Settis (it), Anna Adamolo (it), Victoria Estok (us), Nicholas Knouf (us), Wolfgang Spahn (de) and others.

reSource Markets reflects on the meaning of capitalism in a time of crisis, proposing both critical and playful alternatives to the capitalistic logic by intervening directly within the economical systems.

With Steve Lambert (us), Daniel Garcia Andujar (es), Jaromil (it/nl), Kate Rich (uk), Shintaro Miyazaki (jp/de) and Elanor Colleoni (it/dk).

reSource Sex reflects on the interference and overlapping between sex business and ‘alternative’ porn, aiming to explore and discuss the open interzona which exists in between the often male-oriented mainstream porn, and the more narrow scene of queer and alt porn communities.

With Sergio Messina (it), Karla Grundick (cz/de), Julianne Pierce (au/uk), Liad Hussein Kantorowicz (il/de), Kate Erhardt (za/de), Jacob Appelbaum (us), Zach Blas (us), Aliya Rakhmetova (kz/hu), Gaia Novati (it/de), Gabriella Coleman (us), Katrien Jacobs (be/hk), Francesco Macarone Palmieri aka WARBEAR (it/de), Shu Lea Cheang (tw/fr) and Martin Hug (ch/es).

WORKSHOPS IN THE RESOURCE PROGRAMME

The reSource for transmedial culture presents a series of workshop during transmediale, dealing with art and technology, hacktivism and politics.

Registration for all workshops is possible via the online form on our website!

Floppy Films Workshop. Moving Images on 1.44 MB
With Florian Cramer and guest tutor Dagie Brundert

This workshop will teach you how to revitalise floppy disks for moving images. Using extreme means of compression, we can squeeze whole movies on the 1.44 Megabyte provided by a single floppy disk, using run-of-the-mill video and image formats (MPEG and animated GIFs). Floppy films can be used for various inventive means.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012, 11:00–17:00, Upper Foyer
Thursday, February 2, 2012, 11:00–17:00, Upper Foyer
Friday, February 3, 2012, 11:00–17:00, Upper Foyer

in/compatible Material
Artistic intervention with Martin Howse, Anthony Iles, Mattin, Jonathan Kemp, Shu Lea Cheang, Baruch Gottlieb, and others

As an intervention within the flow of transmediale, the in/compatible Material Laboratory inserts itself in the cut between the compatible protocol(s) and an in/compatible/inverse divinatory materiality through the setup of a series of experimental situations.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012, 12:00–18:00, Café Global Stage and around the HKW

Activism Beyond the Interface: The Sandbox Project
Conceived and hosted by Roberta Buiani and Alessandra Renzi
With Nicola Angrisano and others

The Sandbox Project is a series of experimental production labs in different cities bringing together artists, activists and techies to reflect creatively on the in/compatibility and diversity of artivist practices.

Thursday, February 2, closed session: 10:30–14:30 / open session: 14:30–16:30, Café Global Stage

Google – One Week Piece Workshop
with Johannes P Osterhoff

During the workshop Johannes P Osterhoff and the participants will set up their browsers to automatically publish all their Google searches during transmediale on the web. They will interlink their searches so that they get good rankings and become visible for everyone in everybody’s search results. Participants can join the collaborative Google – One Week Piece and follow the example and communication of other public searchers. To participate you need a computer or mobile phone (Firefox or Chrome browsers).

Thursday, February 2, 2012, 11:00–13:00 / 14:00–16:00, K2

Fluid Nexus
with Nicholas Knouf

In this workshop participants will learn about historical and contemporary experiments in analog and digital network construction. Through activities using simple materials such as pen and paper, participants will create novel designs for information networks. Hands-on experience with Fluid Nexus will give participants a base to extend their explorations after the workshop. No programming experience is necessary.

Friday, February 3, 11:00–14:00, K2

R15N & Technologies of Miscommunication
Dmytri Kleiner and Baruch Gottlieb from the Telekommunisten Network will introduce the R15N system, try it out together with the participants, and discuss and explore possible technologies of miscommunication applications.

Friday February 3, 15:00–18:00, K2

Bio-Game
with Shu Lea Cheang and Martin Hug

The workshop focuses on the study and experiments in: human body as BioNet and blood cells as computing units; human (E)motion sensing using GSR sensor; body sensor data as algorithm to define rules of the game; hack and sabotage - devising collective game with multiple players.

Saturday, February 4, 11:00–14:00, K2
Must be 18 years old to attend!

Words of advice for young pornographers
with Sergio Messina

Sergio Messina, aging porn enthusiast and Realcore expert, will take you on a little tour about the joys of good porn, the pains of bad one, the reasons to make it and the ways to become stars - also trying to establish a few golden rules to make enticing smut.

Saturday, February 4, 15:00–18:00, K2
Must be 18 years old to attend!

Paperduino-Uno – a PaperPCB Workshop
with Wolfgang Spahn

In the workshop Wolfgang Spahn will teach how to create and modify PaperPCBs (Printed Circuit Boards). As an outcome of the workshop every participant will have designed and build his or her own Paperduino-Uno.

Sunday, February 5, 12:00–16:00, K2

ARTWORKS IN THE RESOURCE PROGRAMME

R15N
by Dmytri Kleiner, Baruch Gottlieb and the Telekommunisten Network

Telekommunisten present R15N as a working telephone-based interactive installation which is available as a mobilization and engagement platform for the transmediale community.

R15N is an artwork in the form of an experimental mobile phone service which attempts to generate local community engagement and communication. After registering with the service participants will be joined together in the R15N community, able to initiate and share information about what is going on at transmediale and beyond. Every member thus eventually becomes engaged in a real conversation with another, and this engenders cohesion and complicity.

R15N is the Official Miscommunication Platform of transmediale 2012.

Please register yourself at www.r15n.net

Presentation of R15N at the opening of transmediale, Tuesday January 31, 17:00–18:30

Google – One Week Performance Piece
by Johannes P Osterhoff

From January 1 to December 31, 2011, the Interface Artist Johannes P Osterhoff has been publishing all of his search queries with the search engine Google in a One-year Performance piece called Google. Since for each search a website has been generated automatically, Osterhoff’s searches surface surprisingly well-ranked in Google’s search results. During the week of transmediale Osterhoff opens this hacking of Google’s business model to collaboration. Follow the searches of JODI, Olia Lialina, mspr0, Rene Walter and others or useGooglepublicly yourself.

Presentation as part of the panel Isolation and Empowerment after Web 2.0, Friday, February 3, 11:00–14:00, K1

PERFORMANCES IN THE RESOURCE PROGRAMME

Steam Machine Music
by Morten Riis

Steam Machine Music is a homebuilt mechanical instrument made mostly from vintage Meccano parts. The instrument is driven by a steam engine and the sound material is generated from various strings, dynamos and music boxes. But the most important sound generating part is the sound of the machine itself, the rhythmic patterns and pulsating drones of the steam engine, the squeaking of the gear trains. The instability of the entire mechanism is extremely noticeable, and displays and reflects the physicality of the machine to an extreme degree. Steam Machine Music questions the whole practice and conceptualizing of machine music in a historical perspective that points to the fact that machines always have been malfunctioning. The artist can be watched building up the Steam Machine at the opening night, followed by the performance Steam Machine Music later on. The perfomance will be repeated in a shorter version on Wednesday, February 1, in the framework of the in/compatible research practices event at K1.

Tuesday, January 31, live construction: 17:00–18:30 / performance: 20:30–21:00, K1

Watch Me Work
by Liad Hussein Kantorowicz and Kate Erhardt

Liad works as an erotic performer at an Israeli sex chat site. The usage of cameras, computers and projectors enables the viewers to peer into the live exchange of cyber sex work between sex worker and client, and compare between the sex worker’s actual experience and what is projected to the client. The performance seeks to de-exotify sex work, opting for a realistic perspective, and investigates the discrepancy between the hyped discussion about sex work as compared to the actual sex work experience.

The performance will be held in the context of the panel Commercialising Eros simultaneosly with a discussion with Jacob Appelbaum, Zach Blas, Liad Hussein Kantorowicz and Aliya Rakhmetova, moderated by Gaia Novati.

Saturday, February 4, 13:30 – 15:30, K1
Minimum age for admission 18 years!

RESOURCE LAUNCH AT TRANSMEDIALE 2012

Within the aegis of facilitating collaboration and the sharing of resources and knowledge between the transmediale festival in Berlin and the local and translocal scene engaged with art and digital culture, the reSource acts as a link between the cultural production of art festivals and collaborative networks in the field of art and technology, hacktivism and politics.

After four days of talks, workshops and performances, the reSource programme at transmediale ends with a special game: Zombie Play in the Ludic Salon, reSourcing an Exquisite Media Corpse. The Ludic Interface Research Group (L.I.R.G.) cordially invites all visitors of transmediale 2012 to partake in a contemporary version of the surrealist game Le Cadavre Exquis. In the course of this event, different projects from the reSource for transmedial culture initiative will be brought into a playful dialogue with each other through aleatoric, agonal and just plain ludicrous methods.

With Mark Butler (us/de) (host), Natascha Adamowsky (de), Georg Russegger (au), Daphne Dragona (gr), Mathias Fuchs (de), Gregor Sedlag (de) and other special guests.

This initiative will include the presentation of the OutResourcing project: a collaboration project between transmediale and CEMA – Center for Experimental Media Arts at Sristhi School of Art, Design and Technology, Bangalore.

With Prayas Abhinav (in), Linda Hilfling (dk/de) and an introduction by Kristoffer Gansing (se/de).

After transmediale 2012, reSource for transmedial culture will extend its activity into a series of events that will be held in the course of 2012 and beyond, as a way to gather and present the results as well as to continue the dialogue further, leading to the next transmediale festival in 2013. The methodology of the reSource as a peer production laboratory of knowledge, research and artistic projects, will be presented in the Auditorium of the HKW on the last day of the festival together with current reSource partners.

With Tatiana Bazzichelli (reSource for transmedial culture), Stéphane Bauer (Kunstraum Kreuzberg /Bethanien, Berlin), Oliver Baurhenn (CTM, Berlin), Clemens Apprich and Oliver Lerone Schultz (Post-Media Lab, Leuphana University Lüneburg).

A final note in the spirit of networking: participate in discussions around the reSource for transmedial culture on twitter via the hashtag #tmresource!

transmediale is a project of Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH in cooperation with Haus der Kulturen der Welt funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation

The US Congress is about to pass an internet censorship bill written by the copyright and corporate music and film lobbies, claiming that this bill is written in your name to “protect creativity.” The law would allow the government or corporations to censor entire sites — they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

In fact, PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) are backed and largely written by the Hollywood film industry, namely the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which is trying to sell goods and ideas that are already free. Similar to its most well-known President, Jack Valenti, who represented Hollywood interests in Washington, and vice-versa, the current chairman and CEO of the MPAA is Chris Dodd, a prominent member of the Democratic Party and US Senator from Connecticut for 30 years.

Artists, musicians, actors, writers, and media-makers need to sign. Your statement is powerful because the corporate music and film lobbies push these laws to censor the internet in your name.

In solidarity, Turbulence.org will feature a block out page from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST today, January 18.

INTERNET GOES ON STRIKE: ALL SITES AND PEOPLE TO GO OUT

Major sites all over the internet have gone on strike due to SOPA and PIPA, the hot-button anti-piracy legislation. Experts expect strike to last 150 seconds, and agree this is a “near eternity” in internet time.

Congress is about to pass what has been called the internet censorship bill, even though the vast majority of Americans are opposed. The Senate is scheduled to vote on its version of the internet censorship bill on Tuesday, January 24th, and unless there are 41 senators to voice their opposition to allowing the bill to proceed, it is expected to pass.

Legislation called the PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House are purported to be a way to crack down on online copyright infringement. In reality the bill is much broader. It would empower governments and corporations to take down virtually any website, create new liabilities and uncertainties for web innovators, and make the web less safe. According to the varied and multitudinous reasons large numbers of sites and individuals are opposed to the bill, it betrays basic American tenets, such as free speech, prosperity, and national security. On top of all that, cybersecurity experts say it wouldn’t stop copyright infringement.

The legislation is backed and largely written by the MPAA, as they have said in media reports. They have also spent millions in lobbying dollars to pass this legislation.

To see the bills, go here:
www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/show
www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/show

NOW, IT’S YOUR TURN TO TELL CONGRESS NO TO WEB CENSORSHIP:
CALL (202) 224-3121

WHAT’S WRONG WITH SOPA / PIPA?

Free Speech

Takes down hosts of content and legitimate free speech. The legislation is overly broad and could block some of our favorite websites to Americans only over just one claim to an infringing link posted by users.

The Economy

Creates massive new legal uncertainties and liabilities for web startups, stifling job creation in our most vibrant sector. As 54 leading tech venture capitalists wrote to Congress, the censorship bills would, “stifle investments in internet services, throttle innovation, and hurt American competitiveness.”

Security / Privacy

A web security initiative that has been in development for more than a decade and is just beginning to be implemented, DNSSEC, would be illegal under the bill. The DNS filtering and anti-circumvention provisions in the bill would force a huge step backwards for securing critical national infrastructure from cyberattacks, preventing online identity theft, and stopping the spread of malware.

Copyright Infringement

People that want to share copyrighted content online would still be able to. To get around DNS blocking, all you have to do is enter the IP address of a website into your browser’s url bar.

Learn more:

americancensorship.org is supported by Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Free Press, Wikipedia, Creative Commons, Fight for the Future, Participatory Politics Foundation / Open Congress, Center for Democracy and Technology, MoveOn, Cato Institute, Don’t Censor the Net, Urban Dictionary, 4chan, Wikimedia Foundation, Mozilla, Demand Progress, Free Software Foundation, and see more at americancensorship.org/supporters.html

The bill is opposed by:

CEO’s of Huffington Post, Google, Twitter, and thousands and thousands more. To see a full list, go here.

SOPA becoming election liability for backers

To the ranks of same-sex marriage, tax cuts and illegal immigration, add this to the list of polarizing political issues of Election 2012: the Stop Online Piracy Act.

The hot-button anti-piracy legislation that sparked a revolt online is starting to become a political liability for some of SOPA’s major backers. Fueled by Web activists and online fundraising tools, challengers are using the bill to tag its congressional supporters as backers of Big Government—and raise campaign cash while they’re at it.

Among the fattest targets: SOPA’s lead author, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), and two of its most vocal co-sponsors, Reps. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has also felt the wrath of SOPA opponents.

Even GOP presidential contenders Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum were asked by voters recently to weigh in on the bill (neither gave definitive answers, though activists have interpreted Santorum’s response as more sympathetic to SOPA than Romney’s).

KEY POINTS ABOUT SOPA / PIPA

1. Leading constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe and internet law expert Marvin Ammori have argued that the bill violates the First Amendment because they would restrict considerable speech by people who are not engaging in infringement, either directly or indirectly.

2. 54 leading internet venture capitalists have signed a letter stating that legal uncertainties under PROTECT-IP would “stifle investment in Internet services, throttle innovation, and hurt American competitiveness.”

3. Contrary to its supporters’ claims, the bill will affect domestic websites. Any site that can be shown to enable circumvention of website blocking under the bill would face penalties. This could include sites where users have posted links to IP addresses or new domains for sites that have been blocked.

4. The bill would use DNS filtering to block sites, which is the same technique used for web censorship in China and Iran. The U.S. will no longer have a moral high ground when talking about protecting internet freedom globally.

5. An internet security initiative that has been in the works for more than a decade and is just starting to be implement, DNSSEC, would be considered an illegal circumvention tool under the bill. The DNS filtering and anti-circumvention provisions in the bill would force a huge step backwards for securing critical infrastructure, preventing identity theft, and stopping malware.

6. The bill has not received sufficient committee work and is not ready for floor action. The bill did not receive a single hearing and the mark-up session held by the Judiciary Committee on May 26th lasted less than 8 minutes and featured no amendments and no substantial debate.

Published by internet sites around the world. To get more involved see americancensorship.org

Low Lives launches new program in partnership with Occupy With Art and The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics.

On March 3rd, 2012, Low Lives: Occupy! an international platform designed to enable artists, audiences, and presenters in alliance with the Occupy movement to support the occupation, will transmit live performances, actions, and happenings online as they occur in real time around the world. Participating artists, artist collectives, Occupy groups, and presenters worldwide will expand the reach and visibility of the Occupy protests by broadcasting to an international community and audiences. The Occupy protests, and the myriad of perspectives and experiences related to this unique moment, will be amplified, explored, and experimented with, through Low Lives’ internet-based creative platform. Low Lives: Occupy! recognizes the powerful opportunity that is the presentation of performances from around the world, and invites artists to open eyes and minds by presenting a radical re-imagining of possible ways of existing and relating.

Over the past 4 years Low Lives has developed a platform that invites and enables artists, audiences, and presenting venues to “plug in and participate” from anywhere an internet connection exists. This technological platform brings a history of supporting artists’ full creative freedom to imagine new worlds and is now offered to artists interested to present work in solidarity with #OWS. Online documentation of the live event will allow Low Lives: Occupy! to inspire online audiences far into the future.

Eligibility:

Low Lives: Occupy! seeks projects including, but not limited to, performance art, public actions and interventions, happenings, acts of protest and civil disobedience, taking place in both real and virtual spaces.

Only proposals for live actions will be considered (streaming pre-recorded videos will not be considered)
Preferred duration of proposed works is 5 minutes or less, however if the work proposed is impossible to present in 5 minutes, up to 12 minute performances will be considered

All artists, artist collectives, individuals, and groups in solidarity with the Occupy protests are invited to submit proposals. Artists who have participated in previous Low Lives projects are eligible to participate.

Submission Requirements:

• Submit a written proposal for work to be considered, including: a description of the work; duration; how the works supports the Occupy movement; location where the work will be presented; and if the work proposed has been presented before
• If possible, include links to artist website/s or other relevant sites
• Include up to 3 jpeg images, no larger than 300 dpi, that support your proposal and/or up to 2 links to video work samples (videos should be 2-3min each, or note desire start time for 2-3 min of review of longer documentation)
- Include an Artist / Individual / Group Bio
• Optional: CV or Resume
• No entry fee

Email complete materials to lowlivesoccupy [at] gmail.com with Low Lives: Occupy! in the subject line. Incomplete applications will not be considered.

Selected artists/ individuals/ groups will be given instructions and guidance on how to transmit their performance through a live online broadcasting network. Performances will be projected in real time across the Low Lives network of Presenting Partners and venues.

Selections Committee:

Jorge Rojas- Low Lives Founding Director, Producer, Curator, Artist
Christina deRoos- Low Lives Co-Producer, Artist, Activist, Nonprofit Administrator
Juan Obando- Low Lives Co-Producer, Artist, Professor of Art and Art History at Elon University

Presenting Partner and official NYC venue:

Hemispheric Institute of Performance & Politics
New York University, 20 Cooper Square, Fifth Floor, New York, NY
Hemisphericinstitute.org

Presenting Partner and Online location:
Occupy With Art - Occupywithart.com

Important Dates:

• February 6: Submission deadline
• February 10: Submitting artists/Individuals/Groups notified
• March 3: Low Lives: Occupy! 6:00pm – 10:00pm EST

Process:

• Artists/Individuals/Groups broadcast performances from their location of choice (e.g., art venues, studios, public spaces) using live video streaming networks such as Ustream.tv
• Performances are presented consecutively, each immediately following the previous
• All performances are fed through one channel and projected at presenting venues, and available for online viewing in real time and after the event
• Online chat allows artists and online audiences to interact and comment on the work as it occurs

Co-Presenters:

• Low Lives: Occupy! invites any person, group of people, and presenters to “plug in and project” the broadcast in their homes, venues, building facades, and other public spaces for their local communities
• Technical support is provided in advance of the event date to facilitate Co-Presenters preparation and to coordinate overall production
• No fee to participate

Technical requirements:

• Computer to transmit and project the show
• Broadband internet connection
• Digital projector
• Projection screen/wall
• Sound system

Anyone interested in co-presenting Low Lives: Occupy! please email: lowlivesoccupy [at] gmail.com with Low Lives: Occupy! Presenter in the subject line.

About Low Lives

Founded in 2009, Low Lives is an international platform for live performance-based works transmitted via the internet and projected in real time. Low Lives examines works that critically investigate, challenge, and extend the potential of performance practice presented live through online broadcasting networks. These networks provide a new alternative and efficient medium for presenting, viewing, and archiving performances. Low Lives offers local and global audiences a contextual frame from which to consider live performance in both the physical and virtual space.

The platform celebrates the transmission of ideas beyond geographical and cultural borders, and opens multicultural and intergenerational dialogue through visual language, new technologies, and contemporary expressions. Low Lives is about both the presentation and transmission of performative gestures from a particular place and time. Low Lives produces an annual Networked Performance Festival.

About Occupy With Art

Occupy With Art (Formerly Occupennial) is an affinity group of the Arts & Culture working group. We are artists, writers, curators, and art professionals lending our skills to produce art, cultural events and projects, with a particular focus on OWS itself as a social art process. We work with organizations and artists that require a focused team to facilitate their projects. We produce art projects, large-scale events, and exhibitions. Our website serves as an information hub for current and past art-related activities in the OWS movement. We are committed to building relationships within OWS and with outside arts organizations.

About Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics

The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics is a collaborative, multilingual and interdisciplinary network of institutions, artists, scholars, and activists throughout the Americas. Working at the intersection of scholarship, artistic expression and politics, the organization explores embodied practice — performance — as a vehicle for the creation of new meaning and the transmission of cultural values, memory and identity. Anchored in its geographical focus on the Americas (thus “hemispheric”) and in three working languages (English, Spanish and Portuguese), the Institute’s goal is to promote vibrant interactions and collaborations at the level of scholarship, art practice and pedagogy among practitioners interested in the relationship between performance and politics in the hemisphere.

Note- the annual Low Lives 4 Networked Performance Festival is scheduled for April 27-28, 2012. A separate call for proposals will be issued in late January 2012.

Share, Post, and Distribute this call with cyber abandon.

*Low Lives: Occupy! logo designed for Low Lives by Juan Obando.

As part of its project entitled Promiscuous Infrastructures, the Artivistic collective invites submissions for the second phase of the project.

Artivistic is currently in the research-creation phase of a publication tentatively entitled Promiscuous Infrastructures: experiments in art + information + activism. Rooted in the work of Artivistic’s friends, allies, and past participants, the publication sets its sights on “autonomous infrastructures” by looking at radical education & the production of knowledge, intergenerational support systems, as well as sustainable financing.

For Phase 2, we will set up a temporary printing workshop at Skol. This intervention is meant to collectively visualize our concern, obsession perhaps, with what lies behind art, activism and knowledge production: (1) the ways in which we relate to each other, (2) organise to work together, and (3) the conditions in which things are being done. In other words, we are asking:

• How do we build value in affective relationships?
• How do we organise for that (models, processes, strategies)?
• How do we in turn outstretch these in the long-term?

In order to get a grip on autonomous infrastructures, Artivistic will turn its ideas, words and images into printable material that can be shared in such a way that others can contribute and engage their own approach.

By engaging in this convivial method of making printed stuff to be passed on, commented on, and remixed, we hope to bring ideas to life and to punctuate collective thought processes that have to do with autonomy. In parallel to the set up of a printing area, an office space and a documentation centre, the public will be invited to further engage with the process through activities and events. Works featured will be composed of material produced by Artivistic, collaborators and that selected from the present call for submissions.

Submission requirements: 3xA cells

Artivistic will accept submissions that will address the above interrogations, in the form of printable material, and produced by “3xA cells” composed of 1 artist + 1 activist + 1 academic.

Of course, participants need not exactly see themselves in these ways, but there should be in every cell a trouble-maker, someone that is obsessed with form (or that can make things look pretty), and another who more often thinks things through a bit too much.

What for

Our stance is not so much “what is to be done?” but “something is already being done.” And we not so much want to show it (off) but to actually come to value it better, to become more confident collectively. We believe that the fundamental predicament of our times is fear. It makes us defensive, it insidiously brings about isolation. In 1969, it was right after the initiation of the first Black Panther’s Free Breakfast for School Children Program that J. Edgar Hoover (FBI director) stated that the Panthers posed “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” This exemplifies the power of alternative infrastructures and brings us back to today’s (global) criminalisation of dissent. As we know, valuing is not an individual act, it is a collective one. We see this project as a kind of “work interruption”: to interrupt the current flow of things, of business-as-usual (not for an anonymous “system” but for ourselves, as artists, activists,
academics); to perhaps go back to some of our footnotes (left behind because we were too busy going forward); to take the time to think and to nourish each other, to be present, in order to live differently. By making stuff together, we can get to know each other better, to value our ideas better, to build affinity.

Deadline: Saturday, February 4, 2012

Examples of formats: zines, booklets, posters, maps, inserts, and anything else that can be printed on paper.

Please send your submission (including names and contact info) to: printme (at) artivistic (dot) org

Send any questions to: info (at) artivistic (dot) org

Artivistic is currently in transition, experimenting ways of being perpetually creative within a hostile political and economic context. From 2004 to 2009, the Artivistic collective organized thematic events including four large-scale, international and transdisciplinary gatherings on the interPlay between art, information and activism, bringing together diverse artists-organisers and other thinkers & makers. Artivistic emerges out of the proposition that not only artists can talk about art, activists about activism, and academics about theory. Artivistic aims to inspire, proliferate, activate.

Join us for an ethnographic report from deep inside the virtual public sphere. Gabriella Coleman (NYU, McGill) researches transnational digital social movements from Anonymous to the Debian Project. Her scholarship has focused on the formation of ethical and aesthetic identity within these movements, and how they are transforming the wider cultural understanding of law, property, and freedom. She has published widely, and has interpreted digital activism for the popular media, including Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, the New York Times, and many other venues. Her book, Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking, is forthcoming on Princeton University Press. Hosted by Building Better Speech & Globe.

About Art, Media, and Technology (AMT): In our dynamic world, art reflects conditional reality, and design contributes to further development of global societies. At Parsons The New School for Design, rigorous practice and critical scholarship prepares students to become leading agents of commentary and change.

At a time when many still consider the reterritorialisation of the classic Left as a possible response to the advancing neo-capitalistic cultural barbarism, Disobedience Archive, an ongoing video archive aims to provide an alternative model of thought and action, which is wide-reaching, though limited in its space-time dimensions.

It is an investigation into practices of artistic activism that emerged after the fall of the Soviet bloc, which paved the way for new ways of being, saying, and doing. What the Disobedience Archive intends to represent is the set of artistic strategies and dissent tactics that have been brought to bear over the past few years as a way of overcoming classic modernist dichotomies. In particular, this is a way to escape an idea of art and culture that, in a modernist manner, recognizes only its use — but not its intrinsic nature — in political terms. Disobedience Archive, on the contrary, shows how the political status of the image today is bound up with recognition of the aesthetic character of its manifestation. What matters in Disobedience is not so much an “alliance” between activist demands and artistic practices in order to achieve common goals, it is more that of a common space or a common base that is emerging. This space is not clearly defined, thus making it impossible to draw a precise line between forces and signs, between language and labor, between intellectual production and political action. Disobedience Archive brings together a series of practices and forms of self-representation whose practitioners are finding the key to their strength in an alliance of art and activism: a transformation in the languages that society produces as a political subject and as a media object. It does so using the format of an archive, in which all the materials on display share the same level of equivalence — without hierarchies and without exhibiting any preordained set of institutional rules. It is up to the public to make choices about how they visually organize the available material: turning the archive into a toolkit ready for use.

Marco Scotini writes that “the theoretical premises that underpin the idea of disobedience, mainly emerged from radical political thinking in Italy which, starting from the time of the societal events in Italy in 1977, viewed post-Fordism as the destiny of late global capitalism.”

Compared with previous presentations (Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin; La Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico D.F.; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham; Raven Row, London among many others), this version of Disobedience Archive installed at MIT will retrace many of the implications of this theoretical notion in the very subsoil of Italy, through a whole constellation of events and videos that intermittently transpire as the exhibition tour progresses. One section of the exhibition will be dedicated to 1977 Italy, while other rhizomatic series of videos will shed light on events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall; the social turmoil in Argentina in 2001; the ubiquitous nature of anti-globalist movements from 1994 onwards; the former Eastern European bloc; the Israel-Palestine affairs; the post-9/11 America; the recent insurrections on a global scale; and new research on the history of disobedience in the Boston area.

Curated by: Marco Scotini together with Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas
Assistant curator: Andris Brinkmanis

Display System by Urbonas Studio

Archival material from: 16beaver group, Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée (AAA), Gianfranco Baruchello, Bernardette Corporation, Beth Bird, Black Audio Film Collective, Copenhagen Free University, Critical Art Ensemble, Dodo Brothers (Andrea Ruggeri and Giancarlo Vitali Ambrogio), Etcètera, Marcelo Exposito, Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica, Grupo de Arte Callejero (GAC), Alberto Grifi, Ashley Hunt, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Kanal B, Laboratorio di Comunicazione Militante, Non Governmental Control Commission, Margit Czencki/Park Fiction, Radio Alice, Oliver Ressler with Zanny Begg, Joanne Richardson, Eyal Sivan, Hito Steyerl, The Department of Space and Land Reclamation (with StreetRec., The Institute for Applied Autonomy, Las Agencias and AffectTech/BikeWriters), Mariette Schiltz and Bert Theis, Ultra Red, Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, Dmitry Vilensky and Chto delat / What is to be done?

With contributions and material from: Mel King, Juliet Kepes, Sylvere Lotringer, Harvard’69, Urbano platform, ACT UP and Food not Bombs among others.

The Disobedience Archive research and exhibition project is produced in collaboration with the students from the ACT courses Art, Architecture, and Urbanism in Dialogue and Introduction to Networked Cultures and Participatory Media under the instruction of Gediminas Urbonas, with the assistance of Anna Bleuler (NABA, Milano), Slobodan Radoman and Sung Woo Jang (MIT, Cambridge, MA).

This exhibition is possible through the support of the Office of the Dean at MIT SA+P, Council for the Arts at MIT, the Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT), and NABA - Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milano.

NABA (Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano), founded in 1980, is an innovative Arts and Design Academy, the largest private Academy in Italy, and at the same time a dynamic artistic and cultural center.

The MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology operates as a critical studies and production based laboratory, connecting the arts with an advanced technological community.

This November, the action and research group Public Movement will present Positions, a choreographed demonstration that invites people to take a stand on any number of urgent issues. Presented in Warsaw, Holon, Bat-Yam, Eindhoven, Heidelberg, Stockholm, and now New York, the Movement invites the public to embody their preferences, aspirations, and beliefs — manifesting political and philosophical ideas as physical positions in Washington Square Park and Union Square South. This will be Public Movement’s first presentation in the United States.

In February 2011, Public Movement leader Dana Yahalomi began her research toward a project for New York, meeting with artists, historians, urban planners, memorial designers, politicians, government officials, and NYPD officers. The residency continues from January–April 2012, during which time she will initiate bi-weekly salons as part of the 2012 New Museum Triennial, “The Generational,” and will culminate in a newly commissioned action for New York City in April 2012, details to follow.

Public Movement is a performative research body that investigates and stages political actions in public spaces. The Movement explores the political and aesthetic possibilities that reside in a group of people acting together. It studies and creates public choreographies, forms of social order, and overt and covert rituals. Public Movement was founded in November 2006 and was led by Omer Krieger and Dana Yahalomi until August 2011, when Yahalomi became the sole group leader.

Presented by the New Museum and Artis Contemporary Israeli Art Fund

About Artis Contemporary Israeli Art Fund

Artis supports and promotes contemporary visual artists from Israel internationally. Advancing opportunities for cultural understanding, Artis helps to generate dialogue through artist commissions, talks, and events; offers professional development and research initiatives for artists and arts professionals; and provides project-specific grants as well as an online resource, www.artiscontemporary.org. Founded in 2004, Artis is an independent nonprofit based in New York with activities in Tel Aviv and Los Angeles.

Public Movement’s project is made possible with support from The Ostrovsky Family Fund. Public Movement’s travel is made possible through the Office of Cultural Affairs, Consulate General of Israel in NY.

About the New Museum

The New Museum is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to contemporary art. Founded in 1977, the New Museum was conceived as a center for exhibitions, information, and documentation about living artists from around the world. >From its beginnings as a one-room office on Hudson Street to the inauguration of its first freestanding, dedicated building on the Bowery designed by SANAA in 2007, the New Museum continues to be a place of ongoing experimentation and a hub of new art and new ideas.

Public Movement’s participation in the 2012 Generational is co-presented by the New Museum and Artis Contemporary Israeli Art Fund.

“The Generational” is made possible by a generous grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Additional support provided by the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Trust.

Major support is provided by the Friends of the Generational, co-chaired by Shelley Fox Aarons, Toby Devan Lewis, and Lonti Ebers.

Steering Committee Members: Mitzi and Warren Eisenberg, Susan and Leonard Feinstein, María José Garcés, Sunny and Brad Goldberg, Dakis Joannou, Tina Kim and Jaewoong Chung, Sueyun Locks, Shaun Caley Regen, Lyndley and Samuel Schwab, and Eve Steele and Peter Gelles. Friends of the Generational: Kathleen O’Grady.

Support for the accompanying publications is made possible by the J. McSweeney and G. Mills Publications Fund at the New Museum, and a grant from the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation. Curatorial travel and research for “The Generational” has been underwritten by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Asian Cultural Council.

The Museum as Hub Residency Program is made possible through the lead support of the Rockefeller Foundation.

Additional funding is provided by Laurie Wolfert. Artist travel is supported, in part, by a grant from the Ford Foundation.

Museum as Hub and public programs are made possible, in part, through the support of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts. Endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund, and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for Education Programs at the New Museum.

Education and public programs are made possible by a generous grant from Goldman Sachs Gives at the recommendation of David and Hermine Heller.