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.

Mapping the Local presents an overview of the major phenomena, trends and issues of contemporary art based on various subjects in each semester; a special emphasis will be placed on the East European region, in the form of seminars, presentations held by invited lecturers, field trips to museums, institutions and artist studios. The course is primarily directed towards Erasmus students as well as local students of the Intermedia and Fine Art Theory and Curatorial Studies departments.

While offering an insight into the Hungarian contemporary art scene, one of the course’s main intentions is to develop personal contacts and cultural interactions between local and foreign students fostering an emerging intercultural dialogue. It combines both theoretical and practical methods and is led by Zoltán Kékesi and Szabolcs KissPál, a scholar and an artist.

Site Specific Interventions in Public Space is a survey of the evolution of the different art practices relating to site specific and other public art projects or interventions which take place outside of the traditional museum environment, including sculpture, installations, graffiti and performances specifically conceived of as forms of artistic discourse situated in public spaces and/or within the routines of everyday life.

The class is taught by artist and author Allan Siegel and includes a discussion of selected theoretical works well as an analysis of significant specific projects and art work. Additionally, drawing upon the discussions and readings, students will apply their ideas to situations and locations throughout the city.

Invited speakers for the classes include:

Andreas Fogarasi - Golden Lion Award 52nd Venice Biennial; solo shows among others at Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; Grazer Kunstverein; Georg Kargl - Fine Arts, Vienna; Lombard Freid Projects, New York; Ludwig Museum, Aachen; Ernst Museum, Budapest. Tamás Kaszás - Recipient of Smohay Prize 2010 and Studio of Young Artists Association; exhibitions at W139, Amsterdam; NBK, Berlin; Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart; Istambul Biennial 2011. Eszter Lázár - art historian and curator of many international group exhibitions with a focus on Contemporary Central and Eastern European Art, lecturer on the Dept. for Art Theory and Curatorial Studies, former curator of kArton Contemporary Art Gallery. Little Warsaw - Collective name for artists András Gálik and Bálint Havas. The duo exhibited at the Venice Biennial; the Berlin Biennial; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam; GfZK, Leipzig; ApexArt Gallery, New York; and the 7th Manifesta. Their work is featured in Art After Conceptual Art published by MIT Press. Ilona Németh - Munkácsy-prize beholder, exhibitions at Modern Art Oxford; Kunsthalle Budapest; 49th Venice Biennial; Expo Hannover 2000; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; etc. Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Intermedia Dpt. Bratislava. János Sugár - Exhibitions among others at Annely Juda Fine Arts, London; Kunstverein, Stuttgart; Exit Art, New York; Jeu de Paume, Paris; Anthology Film Archive, New York; Documenta IX, Kassel; etc. professor at the Intermedia Dept. of the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts. János Szoboszlai - art historian and curator, adjunct lecturer and head of the Dept. for Art Theory and Curatorial Studies, chief curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Dunaújváros (ICA-D), former director of acb Contemporary Art Gallery. Tibor Szemző - graduate of the Hungarian Music Academy, musician, composer and filmmaker, founder of the acclaimed Hungarian ensemble Group 180 and The Gordian Knot Company.

The Hungarian University of Fine Arts joined the Erasmus Program in 1998. Over the past thirteen years the number of our partner institutions has grown to 48. Each year 40 students are selected to travel abroad on scholarship and nearly as many international Erasmus students arrive to study at the HUFA. Students studying at the HUFA, besides course work in areas such as sculpture, painting, Intermedia or photography, participate in, and organize, projects and exhibitions on an off campus.

Contact information for the International Office of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts: Zsófia Rudnay / International Coordinator / Hungarian University of Fine Arts / email: foreign [at] mke.hu / tel: +36 1 478 0980 / web: www.mke.hu

In the past decade, there has been a convergence of transdisciplinary thought characterized by geography’s engagement with the humanities, and the humanities’ integration of place and the tools of geography into its studies.

GeoHumanities maps this emerging intellectual terrain with thirty cutting edge contributions from internationally renowned scholars, architects, artists, activists, and scientists. This book explores the humanities’ rapidly expanding engagement with geography, and the multi-methodological inquiries that analyze the meanings of place, and then reconstructs those meanings to provoke new knowledge as well as the possibility of altered political practices. It is no coincidence that the geohumanities are forcefully emerging at a time of immense intellectual and social change. This book focuses on a range of topics to address urgent contemporary imperatives, such as the link between creativity and place; altered practices of spatial literacy; the increasing complexity of visual representation in art, culture, and science; and the ubiquitous presence of geospatial technologies in the Information Age.

GeoHumanties is essential reading for students wishing to understand the intellectual trends and forces driving scholarship and research at the intersections of geography and the humanities disciplines. These trends hold far-reaching implications for future work in these disciplines, and for understanding the changes gripping our societies and our globalizing world.

The show seeks to address issues of place in the environment, politics, the home, media and technology with work like Ben Bray’s periodic streaming video updates from his current expedition in the Arctic, John Craig Freeman and collaborators’ augmented reality installations famed for using their politically-minded virtual exhibitions to crash renowned venues such as the MoMA and the Venice Biennial, Ann Torke’s residual accumulation sculptures from the home, and much more.

With: Ben Bray, Miriam Dym, ecoarttech (Cary Peppermint and Leila Nadir), John Craig Freeman with Lily & Honglei, Mark Skwarek, Lalie S. Pascual, Caroline Bernard and 4Gentlemen, Jane Prophet, Ann Torke, and Dyllan Nguyen.

The artists hail from New York City; Berkeley, California; London, UK; China (exact whereabouts unknown); and our very own Boston, MA. They represent institutions as diverse as University of Rochester, University of California Berkeley, University of London, Emerson College, Mass Art, and MIT, and have work in the collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.

The mental image of the city has become more complex. Since mobile phones have become geo-social devices, location-based data is increasingly shaping the way we navigate, experience and define the urban environment. Media art practices have played an important role in shaping, investigating and problematizing this development. The Symposium and the exhibition will investigate the potential of experimental and artistic forms of inquiry for helping us making sense of the city, and discuss practices that create new public infrastructures and define new places. The panels explore the conditions and requirements for a new urban systems literacy -– a re-examination of what constitutes public space in the real-time city.

September 3; 4:30 - 7:00 pm

Welcome and opening notes: Katja Schechtner / Dietmar Offenhuber (A/USA), Stefan Mittlböck (Ars Electronica, Futurelab)

Keynote lecture: Usman Haque (UK)

September 4; 10 am – 7:30 pm

10:00 am – 12:30 pm: Panel 1: Senses – the perception of urban media
Sam Auinger (A/D) + Bruce Odland (US): The Sonic Commons
Malcom McCullough (US): Attention and Ambient Information
Chris Nold (UK): Designing for Responsive Communities

2:00 pm – 4:30 pm: Panel 2: Systems – new infrastructures for public space
Usman Haque (UK): Notes on the Design of Participatory Systems - for the City or for the Planet
Joi Ito (J/USA): Safecast.org
Natalie Jeremijenko (US): What is smarter than a smart city, googlier than a google power meter, whatsier than a Whatzon, greener than a green building, wiser than nuclear monitoring committee and faster than a speeding bullet?
Jose Luis Vicente (ES): Reverse-engineering the #Spanishrevolution: on the Hybrid Infrastructures of 15M

5:00 pm – 7:30 pm: Panel 3: Places – the aesthetics of hyperlocality
Susanne Seitinger (A/USA): Surfacing Opportunities for Engagement through Responsive Lighting Infrastructures
Sandrine von Klot (A): The Significance of Becoming Actors
Juha van ‘t Zelfde (NL): The Medium is the Metropolis

Symposium curated by Dietmar Offenhuber and Katja Schechtner. Exhibition and Symposium are part of the Ars Electronica Festival 2011.

In the 1990s, the mavens of high technology praised in breathless tones a new “placelessness.” Thanks to the Internet and the forces of globalization, we were told, physical location would become irrelevant to our public and private lives.

Perhaps these claims were exaggerated. Indeed, place has urgently reasserted itself in the last decade — most powerfully after deadly world events, from terrorist attacks to massive natural disasters. Still, a subtler kind of placelessness does seem to be growing. The ties of social stability and economic security that bind us to places are weak. Commerce and communication have diminished regional and cultural differences. And many new technologies seem to encourage ignorance of the real world or to tempt us with virtual ones.

In a collection of essays, we consider place and placelessness in modern American life. Ari N. Schulman explains how GPS and location-awareness technologies are transforming travel and the way we experience the world around us. And a symposium of essays examines the meaning and importance of place from a variety of angles: memory, mobility, transportation, politics, and home.

GPS and the End of the Road
Ari N. Schulman on the transformation of travel and discovery

Symposium: What ‘Place’ Means to Us Today

• Wilfred M. McClay on the particularities of place
• Christine Rosen on the new meaning of mobilityGary Toth on place-conscious transportation policy
• Brian Brown on the rise of localist politics
• Justin Race on why home is where the frog is

The Suffolk Psychogeophysics Summit presents an intense week-long series of interventions, field trips, open workshops and evening discussions led by international artists and researchers exploring the Suffolk countryside through the interdisciplinary lens of psychogeophysics, defined as the combining of psychogeographic techniques (methods of wandering) with the study of geophysical traces (geophysical archaeology, the revealing of place).

Open events within the week include practical workshops in building simple geophysical measurement devices from recycled materials, the construction of ghost detectors to be tested on the streets of Ipswich and experiments within high voltage photography of rocks and minerals. Fieldtrips will build on discussions and techniques established during these workshops, undertaking studies at specific Suffolk locations of interest (such as Rendlesham forest, Bawdsey Manor, Orford Ness); the measurement and mapping of qualitative psychic, physical and geophysical data.

Provisional schedule:

Sunday 28th August : Arrival and setup.

Monday 29th August : Visit to radar at Bawdsey Manor.

Tuesday 30th August : Rendlesham UFO Field Trip. Collect materials for Kirlian Workshop. 4pm - 9pm Kirlian Geological Photography Workshop at CSV.

Wednesday 31st August : Languard Fort field Trip. 1pm ? 6pm Ghost Detectors Workshop at CSV.

Thursday 1st September : Grimes Graves & Devils Dyke Morning Field Trip. Red Barn Murders, Green Children & Gallows Hill Afternoon Field Trip.

Friday 2nd September : Orford Ness Atomic Bomb Field Trip (tue to fri open boats between 10 and 2 only).

Saturday 3rd September : Evening event at CSV.

Sunday 4th September : Take down and departure.

Partners: Arts Council England & CSV Media Ipswich.

Symposium Datapolis Mark Shepard: Pathetic Fallacies and Category Mistakes from CIANT Prague on Vimeo.

Symposium Datapolis Dimitris Charitos: Hybrid Urban Spatial Experiences from CIANT Prague on Vimeo.

Symposium Datapolis Katharine Willis: Hybrid Places: Flashmobs and Foursquare from CIANT Prague on Vimeo.

Symposium Datapolis Daphne Dragona: Mapping the Commons from CIANT Prague on Vimeo.

Symposium Datapolis Alessandro Ludovico & Paolo Cirio: Face to Facebook from CIANT Prague on Vimeo.

More talks here.

Systems/Layers is a half-day ‘Walkshop’, held in two parts. The first portion of the activity is dedicated to a slow and considered walk through a reasonably dense and built-up section of the city. What we’re looking for are appearances of the networked digital in the physical, and vice versa: apertures through which the things that happen in the real world drive the ‘network weather,’ and contexts in which that weather affects … what people see, confront and are able to do.

Participants are asked to pay particular attention to:

• Places where information is being collected by the network.
• Places where networked information is being displayed.
• Places where networked information is being acted upon, either by people directly, or by physical systems that affect the choices people have available to them.

This portion of the day will take around 90 minutes, after which participants will gather at CSM’s Innovation Centre to map, review and discuss the things they’ve encountered. An hour will be given over for this, but discussions can go on for as long as participants wish. Please bring a camera if you can.

Do Projects’s Adam Greenfield and Nurri Kim will run the workshop, with the assistance of Sam Kinsley from the Digital Cultures Research Centre.

Adam Greenfield was Nokia’s Head of Design Direction before recently forming his own company, and is author of ‘Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing.’

Systems/Layers ‘Walkshop’ is hosted by Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, and supported by the Digital Cultures Research Centre at the University of the West of England.

The event is ticketed and costs £24 per participant.

As there are limited places, early booking is essential.

The integration of mobile and locational technology into physical place has broadened the possibilities for the creation of new spaces of interaction and opened the disciplinary boundaries used to define and
understand the public arena. When real places are merged with virtual worlds, or augmented with interactive digital media, the result is a completely new “hybrid” environment where physical and digital objects coexist in real time. We seek proposals from artists, scholars, or interdisciplinary collaborative teams that engage art that incorporates cell phones, GPS, and other mobile technologies. What are the potentials of mobility spaces as new sites for integrating creative invention, public participation, and social interaction?

This panel focuses on emergent forms of mobile art that engage, subvert, or recombine perceptions of the definable (visible) and indefinable (invisible) aspects of place that simultaneously reveal and construct their stabilities and instabilities, their materiality and nonmateriality.

Session Co-chairs: Hana Iverson, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey; and Mimi Sheller, Drexel University; hiverson [at] rci.rutgers.edu and mbs67 [at] drexel.edu