ana otero
Since 2003
Works in Barcelona Spain

BIO
Ana Otero holds a M.A. in Museum Studies by the New York University, a Postgraduate Degree in Curatorial and Cultural Practices in Art and New Media by MECAD/ESDi and a B.A. in Audiovisual Communication by the Universistat Autonoma of Barcelona.

During seven years Ana was the multimedia art director for the broadcasting company based in Barcelona Media Park (now Teuve). Simultaneously to her professional career, Ana co-founded the collectives J13 (1998-2000) and no_a (2000-05) focus on the experimentation of art and new technologies.

In NYC, Ana worked on art education through new media for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, as part of Rhizome where she curated the online show “Google Art, or How to Hack Google” and participated in the site redesign, collaborated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art in the online curatorial-educational project Museum as Hub and as web manager for Art21, a non-profit organization focus on contemporary art.

Jeremy Blake, 35, Artist Who Used Lush-Toned Video, Dies


Jeremy Blake, an up-and-coming artist who sought to bridge the worlds of painting and film in lush, color-saturated, hallucinatory digital video works, has died, the New York City Police said yesterday. He was 35 and lived in the East Village in Manhattan.

[More...]

READ ON »


Call for Projects VIDA 10.0


VIDA 10.0 is an international competition created to reward excellence in artistic creativity in the fields of Artificial Life and related disciplines, such as robotics and Artificial Intelligence.We are looking for artistic projects that address the interaction between "synthetic" and "organic" life". In previous years prizes have been awarded to artistic projects using autonomous robots, avatars, recursive chaotic algorithms, knowbots, cellular automata, computer viruses, virtual ecologies that evolve with user participation, and works that highlight the social side of Artificial Life.

Please find the call for projects here http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com/at/vida/english

READ ON »


TEXT a::minima Feature on Molleindustria


Download PDF file

Molleindustria is a project that takes aim at starting a serious discussion about social and political implications of the videogames. Using simple but sharp games we hope to give some starting point for a new generation of critical game developer and, above all, to test pratices that can be easly emulated and virally diffused. So far we have published nine games (four of them are available only in italian), some theoretical essays and other web-based project like Mayday NetParade or where-next.com.

A spectre is haunting the net: the spectre of political games. Small and viral online games able to spread dissonant messages. They emerge and disappear in the ever-changing world of the blog, forum and mailing lists. Sometimes they are blended into the undeground gamedesign scene, sometimes they pop in the glossy pages of popular magazines, sometimes they are disguised as works of art.

I’m talking about a spectre because political games don’t exist, or better, they have always existed: every video game - as every cultural product - reflect author’s ideas, visions and ideologies. Every video game is essentially political.

Why super Mario is a plunder? Has anybody ever seen him fixing a pipe? He probably fit better into the shoes of a rampant Wall Street broker, a social climber who attack every being that comes across his path. His eternal dissatisfaction, his continuous run, his orderliness in killing enemies sounds suspicious. In the typical level-based structure of arcade games we can recognize some qualities of the yuppie ideology: success is like a ladder that gets harder and harder to climb. There are many partial achievements but the whole plan is often difficult to understand. Individualism, competition an accumulation of useless points are constant. It's the neo-liberal short-sightedness, the means that becomes the ...

READ ON »



Philip Ross, nature networks


Philip Ross was one of the artists featured in Rhizome’s Networked Nature exhibition earlier this year. His work consists of designed and constructed controlled environmental spaces which:

nurture, transform, and refine a variety of sculptural artifacts much as one might train the growth of a Bonsai tree.

Two works which look particularly spectacular on his website and employ ideas of networks are Junior Return and Jarred In.

Junior Return

Junior Return (image above) is:

a self-contained survival capsule for one living plant. Four blown glass enclosures provide a controlled hydroponic environment; one holds the plant, another the water reservoir for the plant, the third holds the electronics and pump that control the plant's resources, and the last for the rechargeable battery that gives the energy required to keep the plant alive in this container. An air pump goes off for a few seconds every minute, supplying air to the plant and to the water reservoir. A digital timer counts down from sixty to zero, displaying the time left until the pump will activate. Then, with little notice, a few bubbles appear in the water, the only indication that anything is actually going on.

The latest 'version' of Junior Return is titled Clone Army which consists of ighteen of the small hydroponic units networked together in different formations.

Jarred In

Jarred In (image above) is a sixteen feet tall and twelve feet wide hanging garden installation.

In this garden pairs of plants are housed in life support pods suspended from a chandelier like armature. The roots of the plants swim in illuminated, water filled boxes. Water is pumped up from tall Plexiglas reservoirs resting on the ground. The reservoirs are attached to a central pod on the ground, referred to by the folks at The Exploratorium as "mother ship" and housing six Dwarf ...

READ ON »



Discussions (26) Opportunities (30) Events (90) Jobs (2)
EVENT

CALL FOR PAPERS - The Synthetic Aesthetics of New Media Art


Dates:
Mon Oct 01, 2007 00:00 - Wed Jul 18, 2007

// CALL FOR PAPERS
// The Synthetic Aesthetics of New Media Art
// Deadline: October 1, 2007

“The Synthetic Aesthetics of New Media Art”
Presented by The New Media Caucus in Association with the College Art Association
February 20-23, 2008, Dallas, TX
http://conference.collegeart.org/2008/

Contrary to traditional aesthetic theories that argue for the primacy of either the subjective and phenomenological, or formal and objective interpretations of artwork, the aesthetics of electronic media, like the logic of technical media itself, is thoroughly removed from anthropomorphic sensibility. One could say that electronic media aesthetics are marked by technical trauma.

However, much contemporary new media art criticism exemplifies a hermeneutic approach that seeks to rationalize and transform work into intelligible “art objects” for canonization and social theories. Is this approach problematic for the logic of technical media? Can certain attributes such as color, form, affect, or sound, effectively reconcile computer based artwork with the subjective and humanistic drives in art making?

The panel invites papers that address the aesthetics of New Media art in distinction to previous aesthetic models or media platforms. For instance, papers suggesting the ways in which color, sound, line, form, symbolism, affect, anti-aesthetics, or ideology may be distinct to new media aesthetics are all welcomed. Essentially the panel inquires: what do aestheticians address in New Media art, and why? Which artists and / or commercial work do you think best exemplifies these issues? Special attention will be given to those abstracts that are concerned with the use of color in New Media work.

• Timeline: Abstracts (max 500 words) and a brief bio due by October 1, 2007. Presenters will be notified by October 15, 2007. Final Papers due February 1, 2008. Send abstracts and papers to: clk267@nyu.edu

•Format: Presenters can propose brief lectures; media or artist presentations of their own, or other artists’ work; discussions; or other acceptable suggestions.

Contact me with any questions:
Carolyn Kane: clk267@nyu.edu

For CAA conference information visit: http://conference.collegeart.org/2008/


DISCUSSION

CORRECTION - INTERVIEW: Viral Communication Hotbed, by Claudia D'Alonso / Translation: Ian Bolton


CORRECTION to the post on 7/16/07: "INTERVIEW: Viral Communication Hotbed, by Claudia D'Alonso / Translation: Ian Bolton"

This post was a reblog from newmediafix.net originally published at July 11, 2007.

http://newmediafix.net/daily/?p73

-----------

This text is republished in collaboration with Digicult.it. It was released on March 2006, and has been edited for republication.

According to some scientists the word “virus” does not indicate a living being, but “information” contained in the DNA/RNA with various alignments at some point of the genome. The virus enters into the organism and taking advantage of vital cycles and nutriment it infects; it modifies the cellular morphology succeeding at times to prime modifications in the informative matrix of the host, represented by the DNA. From some years the macro international advertising organism has been suffering from a singular viral infection that has been slowly fighting internally in order to change of morphogenesis and reproductive mechanisms: cultural jamming.

The cultural jammers, cultural saboteurs, are advertising groups, communication artists and professionals that, taking advantage of an individual’s/consumer’s addiction to publicity, inoculate into mind television advertising, pseudo-events, posters, stickering, fake sites, underhanded viruses that replicate themselves among the minds provoking semantic short circuits and derailment of the advertising content from the straight path of produce-consume-die.

Born in Italy in 2003 Guerrigliamarketing.it , is an advertising agency that uses non-conventional communication techniques, like the creation of fictitious events or campaigns reaching the limits of legality, through which they “fuck the market in order to enter it”, entering the media system and taking away the automatism communication. Among the campaigns of the guerrillas: Rottama il Brand (Wreck the Brand), that promotes the appropriation of incentives for those companies that decide to junk their own obsolete marketing plans; Shock and Hoax, network of urban marketing actions on the national territory during which areas of various Italian cities have been swamped with alarming Military announcements of “prohibited Limits” and “military drills” in order to provoke in our life of western tranquillity a small shock and a lightning bolt of thought towards the war in Middle East; the creation of t-shirts Spazio Disponibile (Available Space) in order to make us think about the unpaid promotion of the brands through the clothes that we wear; the site of Espropriproletari (proletarian expropriation) that ironically promotes the actions of expropriation of companies as a tactic to obtain unexpected straightening of media antennas, ergo advertisement at zero cost.

We had the opportunity to meet and have a chat with Andrea Natella, founder and chairman of the project Guerrillamarketing.it; this is what came out…

Claudia D’Alonso: how did Guerrigliamarketing.it come about: who are the members and after what experience did you reach the decision to start this project?

Andrea Natella: Guerrigliamarketing.it was born out of a bet. Is it possible to imagine modalities of radical participation on the universe of brands and at the same time present oneself as an advertising agency? Is it possible for the professionals of communication not to give up their own political ideas in carrying out their job? Guerrigiamarketing.it is still a bet that is up against demands of income and the need not to betray this projectuality.

Our backgrounds are diverse. Personally, I come from experiences of alternative transmission, from the Luther Blissett project and another strange experiment called Men In Red, a false collective of Radical Ufologia. The other members of the group have origins from the world of the political militancy, art, comic strips etc. We have always taken hand in hand these passions with average boring jobs, in the best hypotheses of little interest. With guerrigliamarketing.it we are trying to get away from some kind of schizophrenia. Objectively, however, we are precarious workers.

Claudia D’Alonso: what are the techniques of guerrilla that you prefer to use?

Andrea Natella: There is no preferred technique. Each time it all depends on the idea that must be communicated. We enjoy ourselves more when we play with what is false; we invent unlikely stories and the mass media bites.

Claudia D’Alonso: i have noticed that compared to historical organisations of culture jamming, like Adbusters, you don’t make use of television advertising. Can you explain the reason for this choice? How do you think the scene of culture jamming is changing in relation to the choice of media in which the viral communication is injected?

Andrea Natella: Actually, at the beginning we made a false ad for Esso. There is a couple that is coming back from a party in a car, they stop a garage and fill up the car. We see, however, that the petrol ends up in bottle and not in the tank. A moment after we see the man transform into black-block activist and he throws a petrol bomb. Then we see the slogan: “Esso good for war, better for guerrilla”. It was an attempt of repositioning the Esso brand during the war in Iraq to face the boycotting that came from the no global front.

But it is true that we don’t do many videos. This is because we try to keep a high profile and, nevertheless, keeping the technical costs down, making videos at an “advertising” level remains expensive from a productive point of view.

Claudia D’Alonso: I would like to talk about the birth of cultural jamming in Italy. What are the roots of phenomenon and what influences have characterised its development?

Andrea Natella: we can say that cultural jamming has always existed. In a certain sense also the futurists did cultural jamming. More correctly I would identify the metropolitan Indians and the experience of the magazine Il Male as more direct premonitory group of the CJ today. I think that the true impulse, however, came from the experience of Cyberpunk that represented a new position within the mainstream media.

Claudia D’Alonso: Speaking about psichogeomarketing, are there any general differences between the feasible strategies of guerrilla in Italy compare to those put into practice in other countries, for example compared to the United States?

Andrea Natella: More than anything else there are various inheritances. The European Cj tends to be more political. There is always a deeper consideration than is expressed in the United States. I would say although the label is American the European Cjs are more mature, they are not simply interested in raising a problematic question and each time they try to give an open reading which always remains complex. It sometimes seems to me that the American Cj stretches simplification to the maximum, this in some way facilitates the result but weakens the content: it is tinned more easily.

Claudia D’Alonso: Among the techniques of communication used, how much has it mutated from the tactics of commercial marketing and how much from the contra-culture, from street the cultures, like for example stickering, the horizontal word of mouth of the mailing-list…?

Andrea Natella: Innovation is always born out of conflict. If there is no conflict there is no development. For this reason the street is the territory where innovation is consumed. Marketing is always subordinate from the point of view of innovation; otherwise you would not be able to explain the necessity to hire cool hunters, the really true strike-breakers of stylistic innovation. What we try to do is to increase the awareness that true value is produced by the consumers. Marketing has an exclusively managerial ability to put value into this innovation. The true problem is that street cultures are the true research and development units of post-fordist Capitalism. A unit to which, however, no economical counterpart is recognized

Claudia D’Alonso: You are an advertising agency and as such realized similar campaigns on a commission basis. Do you give yourselves ethical limits regarding the jobs you accept?

Andrea Natella: We will never make publicity for companies that produce weapons, furs or for any military forces or police forces. Having said this, our ethical limit is empiricist. Are we able to say something interesting with a campaign? If we accept the assignment, otherwise we try to refuse it.

Claudia D’Alonso: Let’s speak about proletarian expropriation. How did this come about and what is the concept of this campaign? Is it a type of “historical” action of the antagonist movement; through which communicative strategies have you reinvented it?

Andrea Natella: Espropriprolatari (proletarian expropriation) was born out of ascertainment. To endure expropriation in the society of show business is objectively an advantage for he who endures it. Objectively it would be an advantage also for he who realizes it if issues of the legal type did not arise. We wondered about this labile legal border, for example the issue of how legality can at the same time transform an illegal action into a value and an action that creates value in something illegal.

Claudia D’Alonso: You certainly expected the controversies that arose in the public opinion after some proletarian expropriations, but do you not think that for actions of this kind there is a risk of not reaching the people, not succeeding in communicating the message one wishes to communicate, but to provoke a closure in the average Italian, who is immediately ready to label you?

Andrea Natella: When the Corriere della sera (national Italian newspaper) titled with: “We offer an expropriation, it is worth more than an advert” a communicative short circuit was created. With this operation, we exposed ourselves as an advertising agency. We made people think that in order to sell a company it is ready to do anything, also on the border of illegality. We tried to confuse these borders. After that it is not always necessary that decode is linear. When we see a work of art by Duchamp we are not trying to find the one and only meaning. Works of art open worlds and this is one of the aspects of the things that we want to do, without necessarily being confined to the world of art.

Claudia D’Alonso: do you think that guerrilla techniques risk being, at times, reabsorbed by the advertisng trade? Think for example about the Diesel Wall, about football championships on the Nike roof… are you running the risk of being ripped off by the market again?

Andrea Natella: There is an issue that every culture jammer should ask themselves when they think about an action: is it aversive, radical and innovative enough? Would it be even if it were “sponsored”? If the answer to this second question is no, then the answer to the first question is probably negative, too. If an action is radical enough it would be even if it had a sponsor. For this reason truly radical actions find it hard to sponsors.

http://www.guerrigliamarketing.it/

------------------------------------

DISCUSSION

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION - LABworkshops, LABoral


LABoral Centre for Art and Industrial Creation

LABworkshops

Call for participation

Free Tools for Creators

Whether for ethical, economical or technical reasons more and more digital
artists are using, or interested in using, free software in their work.
This is despite the serious lack of specific training in the field.

LABoral in collaboration with Hangar, proposes a series of workshops for
all artists interested in learning to work with free software.

Hangar is a visual arts production centre from Barcelona and has over five
years experience working with free software in a creative environment.

Taken together, the three workshops provide a complete toolkit for the artist
wanting to working with interactive audiovisual environments.

/

VIDEO: RECORD, GENERATE, PERFORM

This workshop will focus on the creation of programmes for the use of real time
video-VJing, installations and interactive video. Participants will learn how
to capture video and prepare loops using Kino, and to manipulate them in real
time with Pure Data (PD). The generation of 3D visuals will also be taught.
Pure Data (PD) is a real-time graphical programming environment for audio,
video, and graphical processing. It is one of the most flexible tools available
for creators working with real-time media. PD runs on Linux, OSX and Windows.
The workshop is for beginners as well as experienced users.

Workshop led by:
Lluis GomeZ I Bigorda is a coder and responsible for free software in Hangar,
Barcelona. He has led PD workshops in Spain, Brazil, Palestine and France.
http://artefacte.org/pd/

Lituz (Carles Lopez) is an audiovisual performer. He has been playing video
internationally.

Hans-ChristophSteiner composes music with computers, builds networks with free
software, and works on interactive software. Putting the emphasis on
collaboration, he has worked in many forms, including sound, robotics and
sensors. He is an active member of the Pure Data. http://at.or.at/hans/

Dates: 06 - 10.08.2007
Hours: 4 - 9 pm
15 participants, age +18, selected by CV and motivation letter
Registration fee: 50 euros
Registration: www.laboralcentrodearte.org

/

AUDIO: FROM REALTIME TO THE STUDIO AND BACK AGAIN
This workshop will combine live audio performance and generation with the
skills required to record and mix tracks. In addition, the workshop will cover
interaction with audio, based on methods like pitch tracking and beat
detection. Participants will learn to create programmes (patches) for audio
generation and performance using Pure Data (PD), a real-time graphical
programming environment for audio, video, and graphical processing.
They will also learn the basics of the audio studio in Linux -- multitrack
recording and mixing using Ardour and Rosegarden. These are robust free
alternatives to commercial programmes such as ProTools. The workshop is for
beginners as well as experienced users.

Workshop led by :
Yves Degoyon. Is a musician, mapmaker and PD coder. He is the author of the
PiDiP video objects for PD as well as many other useful objects.
http://ydegoyon.free.fr/software.html
Lluis Carbonell is a musician and co-founder of http://costellam.net.He is a
member of the dark-hop group Acoprova, producer of Jalea Real and co-producer
of the soundtrack for the film El Taxista Full. He investigates new
configurations to optimise the low latency linux kernel.

Dates: 13 - 17.08.2007
Hours: 4 - 9 pm
15 participants, age +18, selected by CV and motivation letter
Registration fee: 50 euros
Registration: www.laboralcentrodearte.org

/

HARDWARE: ARDUINO AND OPEN ELECTRONICS
Arduino (http://arduino.cc/) is an open-source physical computing platform that
is revolutionising the interactive arts. It is based on a simple i/o board, and
a development environment for writing Arduino software. The Arduino programming
language is an implementation of the language used by Wiring, while the Arduino
environment is based on Processing. Arduino can be used to develop interactive
objects, taking inputs from a variety of switches or sensors, and controlling a
variety of lights, motors, and other outputs. Arduino projects can stand alone,
or communicate with software running on your computer (e.g. Flash, Processing,
Pure Data). The boards can be assembled by hand or purchased preassembled; the
open-source IDE can be downloaded for free.
Arduino received an Honorary Mention in the Digital Communities section of the
2006 Prix Ars Electronica.
The workshop is for beginners as well as experienced users.

Workshop led by:
David Cuartielles is co-creator of the Arduino Open Hardware Platform and has
directed numerous workshops. He exhibits his own artistic work regularly.
Marcos Yarza is an industrial engineer and collaborates on Arduino Project
since September 2005 (hyperlink "http://www.libelium.com"
www.libelium.com).

Dates: 20 - 24.08.2007
Hours: 4 pm - 9 pm
15 participants, age +18, selected by CV and motivation letter
Registration fee: 50 euros
Registration: www.laboralcentrodearte.org

/

Conception: Hangar
Organised by LABoral

Activities will take place at the labs and workshops of the LABoral.

LABoral is a space for artistic exchange.
It is set up with the purpose of establishing an effective alliance
between art, design, culture, industry and economic progress and the goal of
becoming a space for interaction and dialogue between art, new technologies and
industrial creation. It throws a special spotlight in production, creation and
research into art concepts still being defined.

Opening Hours: Wednesday to Monday, from 12 noon to 8 pm
Universidad Laboral s/n, 33394 Gijon, Asturia/Spain
T. +34 985 185 577 F. +34 985 337 355
info@laboralcentrodearte.org
www.laboralcentrodearte.org

DISCUSSION

INTERVIEW: Viral Communication Hotbed, by Claudia DaAlonso / Translation: Ian Bolton


This text is republished in collaboration with Digicult.it. It was released on March 2006, and has been edited for republication.

According to some scientists the word “virus” does not indicate a living being, but “information” contained in the DNA/RNA with various alignments at some point of the genome. The virus enters into the organism and taking advantage of vital cycles and nutriment it infects; it modifies the cellular morphology succeeding at times to prime modifications in the informative matrix of the host, represented by the DNA. From some years the macro international advertising organism has been suffering from a singular viral infection that has been slowly fighting internally in order to change of morphogenesis and reproductive mechanisms: cultural jamming.

The cultural jammers, cultural saboteurs, are advertising groups, communication artists and professionals that, taking advantage of an individual’s/consumer’s addiction to publicity, inoculate into mind television advertising, pseudo-events, posters, stickering, fake sites, underhanded viruses that replicate themselves among the minds provoking semantic short circuits and derailment of the advertising content from the straight path of produce-consume-die.

Born in Italy in 2003 Guerrigliamarketing.it , is an advertising agency that uses non-conventional communication techniques, like the creation of fictitious events or campaigns reaching the limits of legality, through which they “fuck the market in order to enter it”, entering the media system and taking away the automatism communication. Among the campaigns of the guerrillas: Rottama il Brand (Wreck the Brand), that promotes the appropriation of incentives for those companies that decide to junk their own obsolete marketing plans; Shock and Hoax, network of urban marketing actions on the national territory during which areas of various Italian cities have been swamped with alarming Military announcements of “prohibited Limits” and “military drills” in order to provoke in our life of western tranquillity a small shock and a lightning bolt of thought towards the war in Middle East; the creation of t-shirts Spazio Disponibile (Available Space) in order to make us think about the unpaid promotion of the brands through the clothes that we wear; the site of Espropriproletari (proletarian expropriation) that ironically promotes the actions of expropriation of companies as a tactic to obtain unexpected straightening of media antennas, ergo advertisement at zero cost.

We had the opportunity to meet and have a chat with Andrea Natella, founder and chairman of the project Guerrillamarketing.it; this is what came out…

Claudia D’Alonso: how did Guerrigliamarketing.it come about: who are the members and after what experience did you reach the decision to start this project?

Andrea Natella: Guerrigliamarketing.it was born out of a bet. Is it possible to imagine modalities of radical participation on the universe of brands and at the same time present oneself as an advertising agency? Is it possible for the professionals of communication not to give up their own political ideas in carrying out their job? Guerrigiamarketing.it is still a bet that is up against demands of income and the need not to betray this projectuality.

Our backgrounds are diverse. Personally, I come from experiences of alternative transmission, from the Luther Blissett project and another strange experiment called Men In Red, a false collective of Radical Ufologia. The other members of the group have origins from the world of the political militancy, art, comic strips etc. We have always taken hand in hand these passions with average boring jobs, in the best hypotheses of little interest. With guerrigliamarketing.it we are trying to get away from some kind of schizophrenia. Objectively, however, we are precarious workers.

Claudia D’Alonso: what are the techniques of guerrilla that you prefer to use?

Andrea Natella: There is no preferred technique. Each time it all depends on the idea that must be communicated. We enjoy ourselves more when we play with what is false; we invent unlikely stories and the mass media bites.

Claudia D’Alonso: i have noticed that compared to historical organisations of culture jamming, like Adbusters, you don’t make use of television advertising. Can you explain the reason for this choice? How do you think the scene of culture jamming is changing in relation to the choice of media in which the viral communication is injected?

Andrea Natella: Actually, at the beginning we made a false ad for Esso. There is a couple that is coming back from a party in a car, they stop a garage and fill up the car. We see, however, that the petrol ends up in bottle and not in the tank. A moment after we see the man transform into black-block activist and he throws a petrol bomb. Then we see the slogan: “Esso good for war, better for guerrilla”. It was an attempt of repositioning the Esso brand during the war in Iraq to face the boycotting that came from the no global front.

But it is true that we don’t do many videos. This is because we try to keep a high profile and, nevertheless, keeping the technical costs down, making videos at an “advertising” level remains expensive from a productive point of view.

Claudia D’Alonso: I would like to talk about the birth of cultural jamming in Italy. What are the roots of phenomenon and what influences have characterised its development?

Andrea Natella: we can say that cultural jamming has always existed. In a certain sense also the futurists did cultural jamming. More correctly I would identify the metropolitan Indians and the experience of the magazine Il Male as more direct premonitory group of the CJ today. I think that the true impulse, however, came from the experience of Cyberpunk that represented a new position within the mainstream media.

Claudia D’Alonso: Speaking about psichogeomarketing, are there any general differences between the feasible strategies of guerrilla in Italy compare to those put into practice in other countries, for example compared to the United States?

Andrea Natella: More than anything else there are various inheritances. The European Cj tends to be more political. There is always a deeper consideration than is expressed in the United States. I would say although the label is American the European Cjs are more mature, they are not simply interested in raising a problematic question and each time they try to give an open reading which always remains complex. It sometimes seems to me that the American Cj stretches simplification to the maximum, this in some way facilitates the result but weakens the content: it is tinned more easily.

Claudia D’Alonso: Among the techniques of communication used, how much has it mutated from the tactics of commercial marketing and how much from the contra-culture, from street the cultures, like for example stickering, the horizontal word of mouth of the mailing-list…?

Andrea Natella: Innovation is always born out of conflict. If there is no conflict there is no development. For this reason the street is the territory where innovation is consumed. Marketing is always subordinate from the point of view of innovation; otherwise you would not be able to explain the necessity to hire cool hunters, the really true strike-breakers of stylistic innovation. What we try to do is to increase the awareness that true value is produced by the consumers. Marketing has an exclusively managerial ability to put value into this innovation. The true problem is that street cultures are the true research and development units of post-fordist Capitalism. A unit to which, however, no economical counterpart is recognized

Claudia D’Alonso: You are an advertising agency and as such realized similar campaigns on a commission basis. Do you give yourselves ethical limits regarding the jobs you accept?

Andrea Natella: We will never make publicity for companies that produce weapons, furs or for any military forces or police forces. Having said this, our ethical limit is empiricist. Are we able to say something interesting with a campaign? If we accept the assignment, otherwise we try to refuse it.

Claudia D’Alonso: Let’s speak about proletarian expropriation. How did this come about and what is the concept of this campaign? Is it a type of “historical” action of the antagonist movement; through which communicative strategies have you reinvented it?

Andrea Natella: Espropriprolatari (proletarian expropriation) was born out of ascertainment. To endure expropriation in the society of show business is objectively an advantage for he who endures it. Objectively it would be an advantage also for he who realizes it if issues of the legal type did not arise. We wondered about this labile legal border, for example the issue of how legality can at the same time transform an illegal action into a value and an action that creates value in something illegal.

Claudia D’Alonso: You certainly expected the controversies that arose in the public opinion after some proletarian expropriations, but do you not think that for actions of this kind there is a risk of not reaching the people, not succeeding in communicating the message one wishes to communicate, but to provoke a closure in the average Italian, who is immediately ready to label you?

Andrea Natella: When the Corriere della sera (national Italian newspaper) titled with: “We offer an expropriation, it is worth more than an advert” a communicative short circuit was created. With this operation, we exposed ourselves as an advertising agency. We made people think that in order to sell a company it is ready to do anything, also on the border of illegality. We tried to confuse these borders. After that it is not always necessary that decode is linear. When we see a work of art by Duchamp we are not trying to find the one and only meaning. Works of art open worlds and this is one of the aspects of the things that we want to do, without necessarily being confined to the world of art.

Claudia D’Alonso: do you think that guerrilla techniques risk being, at times, reabsorbed by the advertisng trade? Think for example about the Diesel Wall, about football championships on the Nike roof… are you running the risk of being ripped off by the market again?

Andrea Natella: There is an issue that every culture jammer should ask themselves when they think about an action: is it aversive, radical and innovative enough? Would it be even if it were “sponsored”? If the answer to this second question is no, then the answer to the first question is probably negative, too. If an action is radical enough it would be even if it had a sponsor. For this reason truly radical actions find it hard to sponsors.

http://www.guerrigliamarketing.it/

EVENT

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS - Political Remix Videos


Dates:
Sat Sep 15, 2007 00:00 - Tue Jul 17, 2007

// CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
// Political Remix Videos (24/7@USC)
// Entry Deadline: September 15, 2007 (+ earlier!!)

This three-day event in February 2008 will bring together DIY video creators, activists, policy makers, internet companies, and scholars to celebrate new forms of creative practice. During the event, we will showcase new genres of DIY media, including political remix videos.

Political remix videos are critical or satirical media works focussing on political, social or cultural topics (such as race, class and gender) created by remixing footage from movies, TV shows, commercials and/or broadcast news. Because political remix videos are critical commentaries, they commonly rely on fair use and the First Amendment, and creators do not ask for permission to remix works.

We are looking for innovative and interesting work that represents the best current offerings (made in 2006-2007) or is of historical significance to political remix practice.

A competitive selection process will be conducted by a diverse team of creator/curators. Selected Festival works will be featured in large-scale screenings at USC campus venues, on kiosks and via links on the 24/7 site.

We will primarily screen shorter works (5-15 minutes) and excerpts from longer works.

Please submit your entry online at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=_2fSIQfEtfNEgp5DwmmdqKcg_3d_3d

For consideration, works should be currently streaming on a public site (youtube, google, yahoo, myspace, etc.) or on your own website. If the work was removed from the web, please note that in the comments section of the online entry form.

There is no entry fee to submit work.

Contact curator Jonathan McIntosh with questions at jonnymcitntosh@gmail.com

Watch political remix video: http://politicalremix.wordpress.com/