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.

Collectible After All: Christiane Paul on net art at the Whitney Museum


The Whitney Museum artport has been an important institutional presence in net art and new media since its launch in 2002. Created and curated by Christiane Paul, artport features online commissions as well as documentation of new media artworks from the museum's exhibitions and collections. This year, artport as a whole was made an official part of the Whitney Museum collection; to mark this occasion, participating artist Marisa Olson interviewed Paul about the program's history and evolution over thirteen years.

 Douglas Davis, image from The World's First Collaborative Sentence (1994).

Collections like artport are a rare and valuable window onto a field of practice that, in some senses, was borne out of not being taken seriously. From mid-80s Eastern European game crackers to late-90s net artists, the first people working online were often isolated, by default or design, and were certainly marginalized by the art world, where few curators knew of their existence and fewer took them seriously, advocated for them, or worked to theorize and articulate the art historical precedents and currents flowing through the work. Help me fast-forward to the beginning of this century at one of the most important international art museums. Many of the US museums that funded new media projects did so with dot-com infusions that dried-up after 2000. Artport officially launched in 2001; the same year, you curated a section devoted to net art in the Whitney Biennial. What was the behind-the-scenes sequence of events that led to artport's founding?

I think artport's inception was emblematic of a wave of interest in net art in the US around the turn of the century and in the early 2000s. This more committed involvement with the art form interestingly coincided with or came shortly after the dot com bubble, which inflated from 1997–2000, had its climax on March 10, 2000 when NASDAQ peaked, and burst pretty much the next day. Net art, however, remained a very active practice and started appearing on the radar of more US art institutions. To some extent, their interest may have been sparked by European exhibitions that had begun to respond to the effects of the web on artistic practice earlier on. In 1997, Documenta X had already included web projects (that year the Documenta website was also famously "stolen"—that is, copied and archived—by Vuk Cosic in the project Documenta: done) and Net Condition, which took place at ZKM in 1999/2000, further acknowledged the importance of art on the web.

US museums increasingly began to take notice. Steve Dietz, who had started the Walker Art Center's New Media Initiatives early on, in 1996, was curating the online art Gallery 9 and digital art study collection. Jon Ippolito, in his role as Associate Curator of Media Arts at the Guggenheim, was commissioning net art in the early 2000s and in 2002, Benjamin Weil, with Joseph Rosa, unveiled a new version of SFMOMA's E-space, which had been created in 2000. This was the institutional netscape in which I created artport in 2001, since I felt that the Whitney, which had for the first time included net art in its 2000 Biennial, also needed a portal to online art. The original artport was much more of a satellite site and less integrated into whitney.org than it is now. Artist Yael Kanarek redesigned the site not too long after its initial launch and created version 1.1. Artport in its early days was sponsored by a backend storage company in New Jersey, which was then bought by HP, so HP appeared as the official sponsor. I think it is notable that sponsorship at that point did not come from a new tech company but a brand name that presumably wanted to appear more cutting edge.


booomerrranganggboobooomerranrang: Nancy Holt's networked video


Nancy Holt, Boomerang (1974), still from video.

In her time on this planet, Nancy Holt came to be known as a great American Land Artist, and certainly her brilliant installations, like Utah's Sun Tunnels and collaborations with her partner Robert Smithson and their peers, are profoundly significant, but it was her work in film & video that has had the greatest personal impact on me.

I somehow didn't see Boomerang, her 1974 video performance usually credited to her collaborator Richard Serra, until I was a Ph.D. student in Linda Williams's Phenomenology of Film seminar at UC Berkeley's Rhetoric program, but the time delay was more than made up for by the work's formative resonance. In the video, made during Serra's residency at a Texas television station, a young Holt is seen sitting in an anchor's chair before a staid blue background. Despite brief station ID graphic overlays and one minute of silence in the midst of the ten-minute piece (announced as audio trouble and reminding viewers of the work's live TV origin), the work is in many ways sound-centric.


Sound and Image in Electronic Harmony


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Image: Semiconductor: Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt, 200 Nanowebbers, 2005

On Saturday, April 11th, New York's School of Visual Arts will co-present the 2009 Visual Music Marathon with the New York Digital Salon and Northeastern University. Promising genre-bending work from fifteen countries, the lineup crams 120 works by new media artists and digital composers into 12 hours. If it's true, as is often said, that MTV killed the attention spans of Generations X and Y, this six-minute-per-piece average ought to suit most festivalgoers' minds, and the resultant shuffling on and off stage will surely be a spectacle in its own rite. In all seriousness, this annual event is a highlight of New York's already thriving electronic music scene and promises many a treat for your eyes and ears. The illustrious organizers behind the marathon know their visual music history and want to remind readers that, "The roots of the genre date back more than two hundred years to the ocular harpsichords and color-music scales of the 18th century," and "the current art form came to fruition following the emergence of film and video in the 20th century." The remarkable ten dozen artists participating in this one-day event will bring us work incorporating such diverse materials as hand-processed film, algorithmically-generated video, visual interpretations of music, and some good old fashioned music-music. From luminaries like Oskar Fischinger, Hans Richter, and Steina Vasulka to emerging artists Joe Tekippe and Chiaki Watanabe, the program will be another star on the map that claims NYC as fertile territory for sonic exploration. - Marisa Olson

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Tagalicious


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The National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in Athens, Greece, has committed itself to curating a number of recent exhibitions of internet art. Their current show, "Tag Ties and Affective Spies," features contributions from both net vets and emerging surfers, including Christophe Bruno, Gregory Chatonsky, Paolo Cirio, JODI, Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar, Les Liens Invisibles, Personal Cinema and The Erasers, Ramsay Stirling, and Wayne Clements. The online exhibition takes an antagonistic approach to Web 2.0, citing a constant balance "between order and chaos, democracy and adhocracy." Curator Daphne Dragona raises the question of whether the social web is a preexisting platform on which people connect, or whether it is indeed constructed in the act of uploading, tagging, and disclosing previously private information about ourselves on sites like Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook. Dragona asks whether we are truly connecting and interacting, or merely broadcasting. While her curatorial statement doesn't address the issue directly, the show's title hints at the level of self-surveillance in play on these sites. Accordingly, many of the selected works take a critical, if not DIY, approach to the internet. The collective Les Liens Invisibles tends to create works that make an ironic mash-up of the often divergent mantras of tactical media, culture jamming, surrealism, and situationism. In their Subvertr, they encourage Flickr users to "subverTag" their posted images, creating an intentional disassociation between an image's content and its interpretion, with the aim of "breaking the strict rules of significance that characterize the mainstream collective imaginary..." JODI's work, Del.icio.us/ winning information (2008) exploits the limited stylistic parameters of the social bookmarking site. Using ASCII and Unicode page titles to form visual marks, a cryptic tag vocabulary, and a recursive taxonomy, their fun-to-follow site critiques the broader content of the web ...

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Reappearance of the Undead


agatha_appears_lialina.gif

In 1997, internet art hall-of-famer Olia Lialina made a "net drama" called Agatha Appears that was written for Netscape 3 and 4 in HTML 3.2. One of the main features of the interactive narrative was the travel of the eponymous avatar across the internet. Let's just say the girl got around. But the magical illusion of the piece was that she appeared to stay still, even when links in the narrative were clicked and the viewer's address bar indicated movement to another server. But in time, both the browser and code in which the story was written became defunct and the piece unraveled as the sites previously hosting the links and files upon which Agatha was dependent disappeared or cleaned house. Such a scenario is common to early internet art (and will no doubt continue to plague the field), as ours is an upgrade culture constantly driving towards new tools, platforms, and codes. Many have debated whether to let older works whither or how it might be possible to update these works, making them compatible with new systems. For those who are interested, some of the best research on the subject has been performed by the folks affiliated with the Variable Media Initiative. Meanwhile, luddites and neophiles alike are now in luck because Agatha Appears has just undergone rejuvenation. Ela Wysocka, a restorer working at Budapest's Center for Culture & Communication Foundation has worked to overcome the sound problems, code incompatibilities, and file corruption and disappearance issues, and she's written a fascinating report about the process, here. And new collaborating hosts have jumped in line to bring the piece back to life, so that like a black and white boyfriend coming home from war, Agatha now offers us a shiny new webring as a token of ...

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

blog art (w/ abe linkoln)


http://blog-art.blogspot.com/

A new project on which Abe Linkoln and I are working.

DISCUSSION

Another Idol Wannabe


Hi, there. I feel I should preface this message with some sort of
apology for the vanity (or at the very least, self-celebritydom)
inherent in this post; nonetheless, it relates to a phenomenon I find
interesting, if only because it relates to me... :)

Jumoke Hill his just advertised his new American Idol audition
training site on MY American Idol Audition Training Blog. He's the
second person to do so and his musical stylings (probably the best and
most professional of all three of us) can be heard here:

http://www.jumokemusic.com/americanidol.htm

In case anyone is keeping tabs (and, if you are, can you please tell
me because this feels like mostly dust in the wind..?), here is the
other Idol candidate (Dani):

http://hometown.aol.com/socalblondie83/index.html

And here is my site:

http://americanidolauditiontraining.blogs.com/marisa/

Enjoy!
Marisa

DISCUSSION

Re: Re: NYT review of ArtBase 101


Lewis LaCook <llacook@yahoo.com> wrote:
>[...] What exactly IS the function of the critic? Does the
> critic preprocess the material that will eventually be
> written into the canon?

yes. hopefully.

> Or does the critic sniff out
> and discuss work that the reading public would be
> interested in?

yes. hopefully.

> I mean, wouldn't art be more effective if it actually
> engaged users instead of requiring users to go out and
> get a degree and read looooong boring essays on
> curatorial practices?

I'm not sure, now, if this is a critique of Rhizome Artbase 101, of
Sarah Boxer's review, or of my "looooong boring essay," but... The art
should not require that the general public "get a degree," nor should
the criticism. But the two are still separate and the critic should be
unpacking the work, helping the viewer to consider it from various
viewpoints, talking about what works/doesn't in the pieces (and why!),
contextualizing it.

The public can choose whether to look at art and they can choose
whether to read criticism or criticism of criticism. I think it was
Rob who pointed out that it's their loss if they don't do this. But
when I make the choice to read what a so-called critic has to say
about a piece, it's because I want to know something more. This is
what the practice of criticism is all about. Otherwise it's just
writing, and that writing has its place--in the lifestyle section...
(Of which i am a big fan, don't get me wrong!)

Marisa

OPPORTUNITY

ASCA Conference: Trajectories of Commitment and Complicity


Deadline:
Wed Jun 29, 2005 11:41

This is an interesting conference series. I reported, for Rhizome, on
their last conference, Sonic Interventions. This call doesn't mention
media art specifically, but I know that there's a strong interest in
new media and network culture, there...

> Trajectories of Commitment and Complicity
> Knowledge, Politics, Cultural Production
>
> The Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA)
> invites proposals for the international workshop,
> Trajectories of Commitment and Complicity, to be
> held between 29th - 31st of March, 2006 in
> Amsterdam, the Netherlands. This interdisciplinary
> workshop will be dedicated to exploring the concepts
> of commitment and complicity as they manifest
> themselves at the intersections of knowledge,
> politics and cultural production.
>
> Confirmed Keynote Speakers: Prof. Timothy Brennon
> and Prof. Elleke Boehmer
>
> The concepts of commitment and complicity come into
> play when scholars engage with tensions between
> knowledge, world politics and everyday life. For
> example, if one asks how knowledge and methodologies
> in the humanities can travel to make a difference in
> everyday politics and vice versa. Although the two
> concepts are widely used in colloquial language,
> their intellectual trajectories have often been
> under-illuminated. Either commitment seemed (a) good
> in itself, or the so-called disinterestedness of
> knowledge production foreclosed any kind of
> assessment of the term. Equally, the uses of
> complicity have kept the concept outside the realm
> of examination. Either complicity was used to stress
> the accommodating roles of knowledge, intellectuals
> and cultural production in relation to dominant
> power structures, or it was celebrated as an
> enabling condition for research.
>
> Sparked by an interest in commitment as a form of
> self-reflexive, engaged and responsible knowledge
> production, while haunted by the hidden or explicit
> complicity of the theories and concepts with which
> we work, this workshop sets out to examine both
> concepts within their situated trajectories. In
> order not to turn blind - methodologically and
> conceptually - at the very moment we use commitment
> and complicity, both concepts need to remain subject
> to critical examination. Thus, the question is not
> whether one is a committed or a complicit scholar,
> but how the twin concepts crystallize and manifest
> themselves at the intersections of knowledge,
> politics and cultural production, and how they
> travel through space and time, institutions, and
> methods of analysis.
>
> Uncomfortably and paradoxically, 'individuality',
> 'freedom' and 'choice' are some of the constitutive
> conditions of intellectual practices. However, the
> position of the intellectual, the commitment and/or
> complicity of the knowledge s/he produces and
> her/his actions are not merely contingent upon these
> conditions, particularly when other notions such as
> autonomy, intellectual solidarity, critical thought
> and answerability are taken into consideration.
> Opening up a space for discussion for alternative
> conceptualizations of intellectual practices while
> keeping in mind that knowledge, politics and
> cultural production are discourses of power, we wish
> to develop an understanding that both works with and
> against commitment and complicity. In doing so, we
> intend to treat these twin concepts with the same
> kind of generous scrutiny bestowed on other
> traveling concepts in the humanities.
>
> * We encourage contributions surrounding, but by no
> means limited to, the following questions:
>
> Spatio-temporal Trajectories: Definitions of
> commitment and complicity are often dependent on the
> historical, political and cultural frameworks within
> which they are discussed. Due to this variation, the
> 'object' of commitment and complicity as well as its
> specific spatio-temporal cultural manifestations
> should not be taken for granted. Yet, commitment and
> complicity also seem to relate to universalisms such
> as 'human rights' and 'freedom of thought'. How can
> we think of commitment and complicity without
> running the risk of turning them into either master
> narratives or culturally relativist concepts? To
> what extent are commitment and complicity culturally
> specific concepts? How do specific forms of
> commitment and complicity arise in particular
> geographic, cultural and social locations, and how
> can they possibly move to other contexts? Regarding
> the genealogy of commitment and complicity, how, by
> whom and to what aims have both concepts been used?
>
> Trajectories in Cultural Production: Cultural
> artifacts as productions of knowledge are often
> informed by practices of commitment and complicity,
> and hence require to be analyzed in terms of them.
> In what ways do cultural products articulate or
> produce forms of commitment and complicity? How, and
> through which strategies, do cultural artifacts
> negotiate the ways in which they are committed or
> complicitous? How are reading/viewing practices
> informed by commitment and complicity? In what ways
> do overtly 'committed' cultural artifacts become
> expressions of complicity? Is there such a thing as
> a 'committed' cultural artifact or is it more apt to
> talk about committed or complicitous readings? How
> can we understand processes of cultural production
> and consumption in terms of commitment and
> complicity?
>
> Trajectories of intellectual production: While
> committed to socio-political causes, intellectuals
> are also mediated by that which they seek to resist.
> Through the concepts of commitment and complicity,
> the nature of the relationship between the
> intellectual, the knowledge s/he produces, and
> everyday politics can be scrutinized. How can we
> envision intellectuals to be committed and complicit
> in terms of their political (institutional,
> personal, cultural) situation? To what extent is
> their institutional situation an enabling or
> restrictive condition, and to what extent does that
> situation politicize or depoliticize the very
> material and ideas they work on? When do the
> commitment and complicity of knowledge and its
> production risk inserting one's scholarly production
> into the dominant ideologies one sets out to
> criticize? And to what extent could the concepts of
> commitment and complicity contribute to an effective
> methodology (e.g. self-reflexivity) for studying
> these questions?
> * Organizing Committee: Bregje van Eekelen, Begum
> Ozden Firat, Sarah de Mul, Ihab Saloul, Sonja van
> Wichelen
> * Practicalities: The Amsterdam School for Cultural
> Analysis (ASCA) is devoted to studying contemporary
> culture through detailed, historically as well as
> theoretically informed analyses of case studies.
> Participants should specify how the concepts of
> commitment and/or complicity are theoretically,
> politically, and culturally relevant and related to
> their own work. The concepts may be addressed
> together or separately and preferably in correlation
> with cultural objects such as film, artworks,
> television, literature, photography, music, museums,
> scientific objects/practices, religious
> objects/practices, etc. This conference is the
> latest in a series of ASCA graduate conferences and
> is inspired by the Theory Seminar organized by Mieke
> Bal in 2004-2005 on "Commitment in the Humanities."
> *The workshop format of the conference is designed
> to stimulate discussion in the panels. Instead of
> "reading" their papers at the conference,
> participants are encouraged to give a 15-minute
> presentation of their work, connecting their paper
> to the other papers in their panel and to the
> overall concerns of the conference. Please send your
> one-page proposal, accompanied by a short CV, by
> October 15th 2005. Proposals will be selected
> according to their relevance to the topics of the
> conference. Participants will be asked to send the
> final version of their papers (4000-word maximum) by
> January 30th, 2006. A reader will be prepared for
> each of the panels and will be circulated before the
> workshop. Keynote speakers are to be announced.
> * Please send your proposal to the ASCA office at
> the following address:
> Dr Eloe Kingma, Managing Director ASCA
> Spuistraat 210. 1012 VT Amsterdam. The Netherlands.
> Phone: +31 20 525 3874.
> Fax: +3120 525 3052.
> Email: asca-fgw@uva.nl .
> Website: .
>
>


DISCUSSION

Re: Interview with Nat Muller


Thanks, Lauren. It was a very fun evening and an engagingconversation. We couldn't even include all of it in the interviewbecause it lasted for hours. Nat's a very smart woman who deserves tobe on everyone's radar, as far as cool curators/producers go.
It's hard for me to discuss my own brand of postfeminism (and it'sdefinitely in the post camp) because it is so super steeped in myhaving studied under Judith Butler, Kaja Silverman, Linda Williams,and Teresa De Lauretis, at various points on my educational career. Inother words, it's steeped in Freud, Lacan, and post(post)structuralistsemiotics, among other heavy discourses. I've had to go through my ownprocesses of rebellion and embrace in relation to that. I think thatmany women of my generation (I am 28) have had to struggle withidentifying with or finding resources in what feels not like a newwave of feminism but an anti-wave or post-wave. Seriously, I don'tknow that anyone on this list will have any interest in reading myrantings about this, but just in case... I think there's a whole setof intertwining issues, here, related to how one sees objects, how oneapproaches their field, and how one generally comports themselves.
This more theory-infused strain of postfeminism has trouble with thenotion of difference (not only sexual difference, but also a semioticplay of differences), now, because things are no longer concrete.Everything is a simulacrum. Things are not only not themselves, butnot even "fakes," let's say, of some other "real" thing. (I'll spareyou the Baudrillard lecture.) So it's hard to have the kind of economyor numismatics of difference that a feminism needs (or most other-isms, as I said to Nat, in the interview), when your currency is soliquid.
Regarding "Marisa's American Idol Audition Training Blog" and "Audit"(its iPod conversion), I guess this postfeminism plays itself out indirect & indirect ways. From the get-go, I was concerned with how theshow perpetuates certain gender normativizing stereotypes, beautymyths, etc--how should a woman act or not act, what is/isn'tattractive, what is the value of attractiveness, etc... I used anumber of double entendres and self-implicit "she"s (vs "he"s) toaddress language-based gender assumptions, but i think the deeperextension of these concerns is the fact that I really feel like thatproject is an autobiography, no matter how far-fetched it may seem.It's all true, and yet largely false, at the same time.
I guess my own postfeminism has me less concerned with who I can/can'tbe or what I am/am not entitled to than it has me believing that I canhave my cake and eat it to, since the solid categories of true, false,right wrong, equal, unequal, etc have become so wobbly. (Um, haspostfeminism made me greedy? Perhaps, but not in such a way as tothink I am more or less entitled to the things I want than a man oranotehr woman or whomever.) Yes, it's problematic that thesecategories still have some presence, and yes it's problematic that I'msaying categories of difference continue to have value. Thatdistinction, too, has become wobbly. I've never been a fan of the"cyber" prefix, per se, but to put the cyber into mycyber(post)feminism, I'd say that "new digital tools" have allowed meto make these barriers more wobbly, or to find new ways to jump overthem. This sounds murky to me, even as I type, but what I mean to sayis that the blog format and the ipod allowed me to make a true/falseautobiography that video and the boombox could not have allowed me tomake (despite the fact that both of the latter technologies have had ahuge impact on the life that would be encapsulated by my autobio).
Unfortunately, Rhizome's list has been less active in discussingfeminism(s) than other lists (and I know Rachel made distinct,personal efforts to work on this), but if anyone out there is readingthis (?) and has an opinion about the state of contemporary"cyberfeminism" or postfeminism--or postmasculinism! orpostqueerism!--let's open it up.
Marisa
On 6/29/05, Lauren Cornell <laurencornell@rhizome.org> wrote:> Hi MO - This is such a great piece. You cover a lot of ground and capture> the evening as well. I like how Nat frames cyberfeminism, and it makes me> wonder how you conceptualize your work - particularly 'Marisa's American> Idol Training Blog' and its extension 'Audit' - in relation to a feminist or> the notion of a postfeminist politics.> > Also - your reaction to the NYT piece was similarly compelling. I hope you> elaborate your 'criticism of repulsion' theory at some point.> > L> > On 6/28/05 7:25 PM, "Marisa S. Olson" <marisaso@gmail.com> wrote:> > > Interview with Nat Muller, by Marisa S. Olson> > Nat Muller is a Venezuela-born Dutch curator and writer living inRotterdam and> > working internationally. She went to High School inBelgium before earning a BA> > in English Lit from Tel-Aviv Universityand an MA in Lit at Sussex, in the> > Sexual Dissidence and CulturalChange program. She continues to work on a> > global scale, organizingexhibitions, performances, talks, and publications on> > a range ofthemes related to media activism and electronic art. She's> > workedquite a bit with V2, where she was formerly project manager andcurator.> > Amongst others she co-curated the Dutch Electronic ArtFestival (DEAF) in 2004,> > and has participated and organized programsfor Transmediale 2005, ISEA 2002,> > and many other major festivals. Nathas also collaborated on projects in> > Eastern Europe, such as "TheTrans_European Picnic: The Art and Media of> > Accession", and otherfestivals across Europe. All of this made for a very> > interestingconversation.> > I flew from New York to Amsterdam and took a train straight toRotterdam, where> > I was to spend the evening at Nat's in a sort ofblind date interview scenario.> > I woke up from a jetlagger's nap tofind that she'd cooked me an amazing meal> > and after several glasses ofwine we started recording our conversation about> > her work and aboutnew media, in general. We discussed the relationship of food> > tocurating, the status of cyberfeminism, the status of Holland and> > ofindependent curators in Europe, the hidden dangers of databaseaesthetics,> > the unusually vibrant sound art scene in Jerusalem, andthe challenges of> > curating and collaborating in the Middle EastS> > MO: Your bio says that you are a freelance writer,> > curator,producer/organizer, critic, and a foodie/delight-maker. That's> > manyhats to be wearing, but I'm especially curious about thedelight-making> > role. Food seems to be a running theme in your work,from the collaboration> > with FOAM to the Open Brunch you organized atDEAF, to the Trans-European> > picnic, and other projects you'vedeveloped. Why is food so important to you?> > NM: I started cooking really late, at the age of 25. Before that Iwould refuse> > to cook out of hardcore feminist conviction. I grew up ina very multi-cultural> > household with parents of Jewish/Middle Easternand Dutch/Asian origin. It was> > a very rich environment where foodalways set the scene for a particular social> > context. I guess I ammost interested in the set of codes and protocols coming> > with thepreparation and consumption of food: it is so much based> > oncommunication. When I organize an event I always try to get thepeople> > involved to share a meal together beforehand, because it doesshed certain> > facades or inhibitions when people break bread together.To me the best social> > interface is still the dinner table. People canshow themselves a bit more at> > the dinner table and that's fundamentalin collaborations. It's also the> > pleasure principle: food is verysynaesthetic. It's similar to working with> > alternative interfaces,wearable media or mixed reality environments where you> > are trying toget people to use and extend their sensual faculties and> > perceptions.> > MO: So is food preparation, for you, a metaphor for curating or somekind of> > cultural production?> > NM: Well, I guess you could put it that way: you're working withbringing raw> > ingredients together and working towards "a dish" that isbalanced, and "works"> > from the perspective of tastes, textures,colours, fragrances. If one> > ingredient or flavour sticks out toomuch, then it dominates the dish. This is> > not quite the ideaS.not infood, nor in project coordination.For me cooking is> > very much methodological, and is somehow based on aprinciple of synthesis:> > where the combination of various elementsengender something newS.and of course> > allow for a pleasurableconsumption. It is particularly the issue of pleasure> > that I wouldlike to see brought back more strategically within artistic> > practice,without making it populist or light. The food thing is similar to> > myinterest in sexuality. It's sensual and tactile. Next to tacticalmedia, we> > definitely need tactile and tangible media.> > MO: It also seems like a good way to stay grounded in the midst ofyour busy> > life. You travel so much and work with artists from so manybackgrounds, and> > you have written and organized events around a numberof themes. Is there one> > overarching idea that thematizes yourcurating?> > NM: Well, I don't come from an arts background. For me thesocio-political> > context is always the most important. To me art offersa lens through which to> > view socio-political conditions. I'm notinterested in aesthetics for> > aesthetics' sake.> > MO: What about the issue of feminism? A minute ago you handed me areader> > called CTRL-SHIFT-ART/ CTRL-SHIFT-GENDER (published by Axis in2000) and you> > said "this is something I did when I was still acyberfeminist." Why are you> > not, anymore and what do you think aboutthe status of contemporary> > cyberfeminism?> > NM: It's dead!!! And the question is, also, was there ever such athing to> > begin with? What I found really attractive, in the mid-90s,with groups like> > VNS Matrix, is that they had this really sexy kind offeminism. It was> > certainly different from that second wave separatistBirkenstock/we-hate-men> > kind of thing or that third wave, intellectualCixous or Irigaray kind of> > feminismSof which