Marisa Olson
Since the beginning
Works in Brooklyn, New York United States of America

ARTBASE (7)
PORTFOLIO (3)
BIO
Marisa Olson is an artist, writer, and media theorist. Her interdisciplinary work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou, Tate(s) Modern + Liverpool, the Nam June Paik Art Center, British Film Institute, Sundance Film Festival, PERFORMA Biennial; commissioned and collected by the Whitney Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Houston Center for Photography, Experimental Television Center, and PS122; and reviewed in Artforum, Art21, the NY Times, Liberation, Folha de Sao Paolo, the Village Voice, and elsewhere.

Olson has served as Editor & Curator at Rhizome, the inaugural curator at Zero1, and Associate Director at SF Camerawork. She's contributed to many major journals & books and this year Cocom Press published Arte Postinternet, a Spanish translation of her texts on Postinternet Art, a movement she framed in 2006. In 2015 LINK Editions will publish a retrospective anthology of over a decade of her writings on contemporary art which have helped establish a vocabulary for the criticism of new media. Meanwhile, she has also curated programs at the Guggenheim, New Museum, SFMOMA, White Columns, Artists Space, and Bitforms Gallery. She has served on Advisory Boards for Ars Electronica, Transmediale, ISEA, the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, Creative Capital, the Getty Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Kennedy Center, and the Tribeca Film Festival.

Olson studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, and Rhetoric & Film Studies at UC Berkeley. She has recently been a visiting artist at Yale, SAIC, Oberlin, and VCU; a Visiting Critic at Brown; and Visiting Faculty at Bard College's Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts and Ox-Bow. She previously taught at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts' new media graduate program (ITP) and was Assistant Professor of New Media at SUNY-Purchase's School of Film & Media Studies. She was recently an Artist-in-Residence at Eyebeam & is currently Visiting Critic at RISD.

xxxboîte launch


xxxboite

If I was in Montreal tomorrow, I would certainly be going to this launch! It’s an event to celebrate the release of xxxboîte, a collection of critical writing and a DVD compilation of works celebrating the last 10 years of Montreal’s own new media and network arts centre for women.

First, the details:
Date: Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Time: 5:00pm - 7:00pm
Location: Gallery Yergeau, 2060 Joly, (one block west of St. Denis, just up from Ontario) Montreal, QC

Kick off the 2007 festival HTMlles with a toast to the community that made it all happen. New texts from one of the four founding mothers, Kim Sawchuk, as well as extraordinary artists, Anna Friz, J.R.Carpenter, Michelle Kasprzak, and Marie-Christine Mathieu, and a DVD compilation that is part humurous, part touching, and all guerilla girl action - a true portrait of Studio XX!

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TRANSITIO_MX02, CENART Opening


Friday October 12th was the big kick off for TRANSITIO_MX02, International Festival of Electronic Arts and Video taking place throughout Mexico City. Comprised of three curatorial projects - Free Synthesis, (dis)COMmunities and IM-POLIS, an open call competition, electronic music concerts, artist workshops and a conference, the festival is taking place at three locations: the National Center for the Arts (CENART), Laboratorio Arte-Alameda and Centro de la Imagen.

The initial opening and concert was at CENART which is housing the exhibition of finalists from the open call for the TRANSITIO prize. Many of the finalists were represented by video documentation such as Usman Haque’s “Open Burble.” There was a beautifully shot three panel video projection by Erik Olofsen titled “Drives”. Below are a few projects installed in the Art Center’s gallery.

My favorite project which is visually striking, conceptually intriguing and offers free packaged Mexican dirt is “Tierra y Libertad” (Earth and Liberty) (2007) by Ivan Puig based in Mexico. Puig has constructed a machine that deposits dirt taken from the base of CENARTS into red plastic cups that are then deposited into plastic bags that are sealed and stamped for the visitors to take.

SARoskop (2007) by Karin Lingnau and Martin Hesselmeier based in Cologne visualizes the electromagnetic waves in the immediate area. If one uses their cell phone near the grid-like installation SARoskop, the objects come alive, moving horizontally on a rail that each component is mounted on and displaying the frequency of the call.

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Participatory Dissent: Debates in Performance


dissent.jpg

Western Front Performance Art is pleased to present Participatory Dissent: Debates in Performance (October 18-22, 2007, Vancouver), an encounter between traditional forms of performance art (endurance/duration) and new forms of social practice and intervention. Produced in conjunction with the LIVE Biennial of Performance Art, the program looks to the overlaps between practices, modes of thinking, and opinions about contemporary performance. Viewers are invited to participate, enjoy and intervene in four days of individual performance art, social intervention, and discussion surrounding performance art practices that forge new relationships between artists, site and community. Facilitating the creation of new work by artists from across Europe and North America, Participatory Dissent: Debates in Performance will consist of individual and collaborative works (situated at the Western Front, online, and in various outdoor locations in Vancouver), online discussions, a round-table discussion event at the Western Front and a panel discussion at Emily Carr Institute. Works will address public intervention, alternative economies, the limits of the body, and cultures of fear in the post 9/11 era. This series of events is organised by Western Front Performance Art. Guest Curator Natalie Loveless.

Participating artists include: Artur Tajber (Poland), Jeff Huckleberry (US), Kevin Hamilton (US), iKATUN (US and Montenegro), Marilyn Arsem (USA), Michael Morris (Canada), Naufus Figueroa (Canada), Paul Couillard (Canada), Roddy Hunter (UK), Sal Randolph (US), The National Bitter Melon Council (US and Japan), Vassya Vassileva (Bulgaria), and Vincent Trasov (US and Germany), as well as a co-curated online performance-intervention event produced with Jeremy Turner of The Second Front, Skawennati Tricia Fragnito (xox Voyager) and James Morgan of Ars Virtua. The Western Front will provide the physical home for screenings of online intervention performances: Second LIVE in Second Life.

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Turbulence Commission: "Bonding Energy" by Douglas Repetto and LoVid


Turbulence.org:

October 15, 2007 Turbulence Commission: "Bonding Energy" by Douglas Repetto and LoVid http://turbulence.org/works/BondingEnergy/ Requirement: Enable Java in your browser

"Bonding Energy" consists of a set of "Sunsmile" devices that collect and measure solar energy from seven geographically distributed sites around New York State: Columbia University, NYC; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy; University of Buffalo; Colgate University, Hamilton; free103point9's Wave Farm, Acra; Experimental Television Center, Owego; and The Redhouse Arts Center, Syracuse. The light energy reaching the Sunsmiles' solar panels fuels a collaborative real-time data visualization on Turbulence.org.

Part of the larger "Cross Current Resonance Transducer (CCRT)" project in which the artists are developing systems for monitoring, manipulating, and interpreting natural signals such as tidal patterns and wind, "Bonding Energy" is focused on solar energy. "Bonding Energy" is a model for distributed microenergy generation, inspired by "SETI@home" -- which harnesses the collective power of personal computers distributed worldwide -- and "microcredit", a loan system that supports poor or unemployed people in underdeveloped countries. Small contributions from many individuals can produce significant results.

"Bonding Energy" is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. [More....]

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Neurotica_bioII


ana otero:

neurotica_bioII
a project by CAPSULA

with
eugene thacker
critical art ensemble

Saturday 20th of October 07 at Intermediea Matadero Madrid

4 pm. presentation of project Neurotica:bioII
4-7 pm. performance "The Body Proud" by Critical Art Ensemble
5.30 pm. presentation Critical Art Ensemble by Steve Kurtz & Lucia Sommer
7 pm. presentation "Extinction and Existence" by Eugene Thacker
+ open discussion moderated by Raquel Renno


neurotica:bioII is the second public manifestation of a research project that examines the anxieties of contemporary society, generated by the rapid advances made in science and technology. Neurotica:bio explores society's perception of advances in biotechnology and the hopes and fears associated with them.

Critical Art Ensemble is a collective of tactical media practitioners that explore the intersections between art, critical theory, technology and political activism.

The Body Proud is a live installation exploring the pathological impact of digital information and communication technology on the human body and mind. The visitors are invited to take a shiatsu session while while they are surrounded by monitors scrolling through the EU statistics on the explosive growth of psychiatric services in the time of digital ubiquity.

Eugene Thacker is the author of a number of books on the philosophy of science and technology, including 'Biomedia,' 'The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture,' and 'The Exploit: A Theory of Networks' (co-authored with Alexander Galloway). He teaches at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta (USA). Extinction and Existence will examine the theme of extinction and the way that is prompts us to reconsider the concept of life as a philosophical concept.

Raquel Renno holds a PhD on Communication and Semiotics ("Culture in Mediated Enviroments") by the Catholic University of Sao Paolo, she is researcher in the National Council of Technologycal and Scientific Research (CNPQ, Brasil) and ...

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Discussions (281) Opportunities (10) Events (4) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Rhizome Today: A critic, with opinions about postinternet art


Great post, Michael! What an exciting (if facebook-thread-dramatic!) couple weeks for Postinternet discussion. I appreciate your breakdown of these three (obviously not mutually exclusive) approaches. To my mind, the results of approach #1 have only had fickle results. i.e. Ed, I actually talked about Postinternet Art before I read the "internet aware" comment from Guthrie--I believe first on a Rhizome panel Michael was on at EAI--but then again, Guth & I used to gchat every day then, as we were just about to start Nasty Nets when I brought it up. But moreover, as I recently posted in an FB thread, I truly believe there was a zeitgeist around recognizing these ideas (and using whatever word or phrase to do so; not just postinternet) in 2005-2006, as expressed in writings and talks by Lev Manovich, Steve Dietz, Sarah Cook, Josephine Berry Slater, Jon Ippolito, myself & Guthrie, etc.. (Christiane Paul touched on this in her responses to Karen Archey's Ullens questionnaire.) I don't think it's productive to construct/dismantle/bash origin myths, if only because it's led to a rash of ad hominem attacks on a number of artists & writers lately, completely sacrificing the point of critical writing.

My own effort in talking about Postinternet, at least in those early instances, as on the panel, was to (a) expand Rhizome's mission--I was then Editor & Curator--to cover and support a wider variety of practices; and (b) just to describe my own work and how a project like my Monitor Tracings (totally "offline" drawings) could be contextualized as internet art, or art 'after' the internet (i.e. In the style of & made after I log-off.) I think Michael puts it *perfectly* when he says, "we should understand all our gestures, 'online' and 'offline,' as actions in a network that is mediated and administered by computers." Perhaps this is obvious, but I'd say this applies to all of waking life, not just art production+reception.

I've personally moved from discussing Postinternet Art as "art after the internet" toward discussing Postinternet as "the symptoms of network culture." I am less interested in discussing PI Art specifically/exclusively, now that people have brow-beaten and/or branded the term into something far different than what I originally meant, and much more interested in discussing the social affects around the production of postinternet conditions and their manifestations. And, meanwhile, I have said (particularly in the Ullens catalogue & also in an interview in the Art and the Internet book put out by Black Dog) that, to me, Postinternet is just a 'placeholder' term around which to convene in having conversations around the latter symptoms. (I've started working on spelling these out more explicitly in recent & forthcoming writing-- including the keynote lecture I just gave at Pratt's UPLOAD conference, entitled "Postinternet is Dead. Long Live Postinternet.")

Likes/Dislikes around the word, aside, I hope this very long-running conversation around art and the internet can continue to incorporate careful consideration of the affects of network culture, as networks themselves evolve.


DISCUSSION

Breaking the Ice


Hi, everyone! Wow, I've got to say, it's nice to see some familiar names here! Michael, Congratulations on your new job. As someone who held that same title (and various permutations of it) for several years, I know you are in for a heavy load and I also know that you are also more than up to the task.

Like most of the folks above, I too am a "forever member," from the days of the Rhizome Communications ascii RAW listserv and, later, fancy Dreamweaver/Flash "Splash Pages," to the present. Reena Jana and I were the first two paid writers (poached from Wired!), when Alex Galloway was running "content," which at that time meant programming and editorial--though Rhizome was declaratively non-editorial, so they just commissioned book & exhibition reviews, and some interviews from us that were fed into the RAW stream and included in the Digest as Features. Oy vey, I can still remember the cross-eyed weekly ritual of trying to untangle parallel conversations to reassemble them into a coherent thread for the Digest, when I was editing it--and the race to get it out by noon one day each week!!

I've seen Rhizome go through so many changes, and I've been a part of the back channel conversations on years of them, including huge ones that we decided not to go through with. I have to say that it's always hard to serve a membership-based organization, which is what Rhizome has always thought of itself as. But I can say that every change in content or form has been discussed critically, at length, and typically not without a degree of passion.

I am also biting my tongue because I *really* do not want to put words in any staff member's mouth (past or present), but I can say that I believe everyone who's ever worked there has taken their position as a labor of love, with users/reader/members/community (everyone has their favorite self-identification; semantics trolls please don't hate today!) in mind, and everyone has collaborated with the staff to bring a unique take on how best to serve you in the current creative and technological climate. For instance, I remember that my big objective coming in the door was wanting to change the mission statement to reflect not only net art and not only highly technological art, but also art that "reflects" on technology in a meaningful way. In fact, I think contemplating this change was very much a part of my conceptualizing Postinternet.

There is so much to say here, but I think I'd best sign off. This is not my soap box, and in some way, it feels weird to comment so much. I used to be a Superusing Megaposter, but as soon as I became Editor & Curator, I stepped back to focus on trying to facilitate and amplify other voices, which I do believe every Rhizome Editor has done in their own way.

I'll end with this, then. I'd be surprised if every reader, writer, or editor loved everything that ever appeared (structurally or content-wise) in their newspaper of choice. I'd be surprised if every curator or museumgoer loved every artwork shown (or every exhibition design decision) in their favorite museum. But it's the day we stop reading, stop going to look at art that disappoints me. It's the day Rhizome stops experimenting that scares me. And I wish them well on this new experiment.

DISCUSSION

Conference Report: NET.ART (SECOND EPOCH)


Hi, Josephine.

Thank you for these points of clarification. I actually tried to convey (and forgive me if I failed) that your presentation was unique in identifying multiple generations of networked artists, and I particularly liked the way you talked about artists working before the internet in ways that anticipated network culture.

You also made that great point (via Hal Foster) about the ways in which critics' work is influenced by what is/ was happening at the moment they entered the art world. I admire how you helped pioneer new media criticism and yet have continued to stay on the pulse of new work. This is what I had in mind when recalling your point about your relationship to a previous generation of net-dot-artists, versus the artists of the era Inclusiva was calling the "second epoch." I just really liked the way you fleshed out more than two epochs and I wanted to highlight your catalyzing role in the net-dot-art scene, in particular.

In my own presentation, my intent absolutely was not to dismiss any previous artists, movements, practices, etc. It was simply to flesh-out one niche of new media art practice. In fact, I really liked the pointed questions that the audience asked afterwards, because it helped us have a really meaningful discussion about the problematic relationship of pro surfer work to art historical discourse, and my calls to action revolved around getting those artists to participate in learning about their own pre-histories and writing historiographies that situate their own trajectories on their own terms.

So I don't think we're in disagreement. But I appreciate your call to fine-tune my articulation of these scenarios.

DISCUSSION

Go Ahead, Touch Her


Why are vocal remixes different than video? This is a very interesting distinction. Can you please say more about this and why one is ok and one isn't, beyond the rubric of industry standards? I think that remix and parody have the potential to be very useful and viable political tools. The best-known examples of such efforts would be the work of the Yes Men, but examples of parasitic media within the field abound. In your comments (i.e. "Here it seems the remix does imply ridicule") it seems as if you think that remixing automatically equals mockery but I don't agree and don't see that implied in the project. Laric's video simply shows us (or arguably amplifies) what's already there and gives both fans and critics a chance to say what they will. This is the pact that all artists make with their audience when they release their work into the world--that people will interpret it as they will, whether that means reading it a certain way, hearing it a certain way, or incorporating it into their lives in a certain way. This is how the popular preconscious works. I don't think it's fair to call this project a senseless derision of Carey, but I do still think that your vehement apprehension towards remixes says something interesting about the ways that certain corners of the cultural community (particularly academia) perceive the effects of these acts. I just think they need fleshing-out. There is a big difference between real violence towards women and perceived theoretical misdeeds towards a celebrity's highly-guarded public image. If this is the true issue, I think our energies are best directed toward prevention of the former rather than scandalizing the latter.

DISCUSSION

Go Ahead, Touch Her


Hi, Brittany.

I'm sorry that you found my article objectionable. I didn't intend to make the implications you suggest, but I believe your response cuts to the most interesting aspect of Laric's piece, which is the effect of remixing.

For those who care to review the lyrics to this song, they are here:
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/mariahcarey/touchmybody.html

They include the refrain:

Touch my body
Put me on the floor
Wrestle me around
Play with me some more
Touch my body
Throw me on the bed


So, in fact, I do think that Carey's lyrics (and video) invite sexual fantasy, but my article doesn't say that she is asking to be violated, it says that she's asking to be remixed. Of course, the slippage between the two that you identify is what's so interesting.

In an interview with Laric, he told me that he noticed that the video takes-on an increased sexual tone when all but Carey is masked out. He was interested in how this first-person invitation to "touch my body" could be construed as an invitation to remix the visage of her body (and/or the voice emitted from it), particularly given (a) the implicit link to digital culture embodied by both the lyrics and video, and (b) the fact that the remix is now such an important part of the media ecology of pop culture.

In the last 25+ years of pop music, lining-up celebrity remixes and making singles remix-ready has been an important part of the production cycle, often preceding the release of the original recording. Almost all historical accounts of Madonna's rise to fame cite her relationship with DJs and openness to remixing as a key factor in her success. So while you may see the remix as a violent act, clearly those participating in this industry see it as an imperative.

Discussions of why a remix is or isn't violent are interesting, as they get to questions of the status of the digital reproduction. Are we remixing a person or "just" her image, and what's the difference when thinking about how a person's identity--particularly a famous person's identity--hinges upon their image? Carey's image was already manipulated before it came to us. In the interview with Laric, he pointed to a segment in the original video in which the shape of a cup becomes distorted as a result of distorting the footage to make the singer standing behind the cup appear slimmer. So this is already not her. If you listen closely, I believe there is also a question as to whether all of the voiced parts of the song are her, so the audio issue adds another layer to the phenomenological question of the brute force of the remix.

These issues of the import of the remix, the relationship to broader pop culture (rather than an insular art world), collective authorship, and the nature of Carey's invitation are what I hoped to address in this article.