mark cooley
Since 2002
Works in United States of America

ARTBASE (5)
PORTFOLIO (4)
BIO
Mark Cooley is an interdisciplinary artist interested in exploring the intersections of art, activism and institutional critique in a variety of contexts. Subjects of particular interest are U.S. foreign policy, corporate culture, and the political economy of new technologies. Recently, Mark has focused his attention on food production and consumption and the ways in which artists may mediate in these processes.

http://www.flawedart.net


The New American Dictionary


The Boston-based performance group Institute for Infinitely Small Things has published a book called The New American Dictionary.

The dictionary highlights the terminology of fear, security and war that has permeated American English post 9-11. It includes 68 new terms i.e. Preparedness and Freedom Fries as well as terms that have recently been redefined i.e. Torture.

The dictionary also has an interactive dimension. 58 terms are left undefined for the reader to pencil in their own definition. Furthermore, readers are invited to submit their additions to the institute for a possible inclusion in the 2nd edition.

The New American Dictionary is available at several online stores.

www.newamericandictionary.com

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exhaust emissions balloons


exhaust_emissions.jpg
a huge balloon, tied to a car�s vent-pipe, depicting the amount of exhaust emissions a car releases a day.

the "bursting earth" project is similar, but more dynamic. activists attach world globe balloons on exhaust pipes of cars in Berlin. the exhaust gas inflates the ballons. after the message becomes readable, there is a big "bang".

[link: frederiksamuel.com & adsoftheworld.com & 20to20.org]

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WoW!


Aram Bartholl is a german artist renowned for making physical abstractions of the digital world, particularly game-worlds.

One of Aram's not-to-be-missed performances is inspired by the popular computer game World of Warcraft (WoW).

In WoW, the nickname of the player's avatar is constantly hovering above the head of the player so that the identity is visible for everyone else in the game.

Aram took this little feature out of cyberspace to see how it would look if people's names would float above their heads in the physical world too.

WoW has been performed at different locations around the world. Luckily, it is well-documented!


Getting coffee WoW style Workshop in Ghent Project Site

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REALIZING THE IMPOSSIBLE: ART AGAINST AUTHORITY


reaimp.jpg

Aesthetics and Politics

REALIZING THE IMPOSSIBLE: ART AGAINST AUTHORITY by Josh MacPhee, Erik Reuland, editors :: There has always been a close relationship between aesthetics and politics in anti-authoritarian social movements. And those movements have in turn influenced many of the last century's most important art movements, including cubism, Dada, post-impressionism, abstract expressionism, surrealism, Fluxus, Situationism, and punk. Today, the movement against corporate globalization, with its creative acts of resistance, has brought anti-authoritarian politics into the forefront. This sprawling, inclusive collection explores this vibrant history, with topics ranging from turn-of-the-century French cartoonists to modern Indonesian printmaking, from people rolling giant balls of trash down Chicago streets to massive squatted urban villages and renegade playgrounds in Denmark, from stencil artists of Argentina to radical video collectives of the US and Mexico. Lots of illustrations, all b&w.;

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Discussions (102) Opportunities (8) Events (39) Jobs (2)
DISCUSSION

suggested Rhizome keywords


Locality
Mobility
Dystopia
Technophilia
Copyright
Government
Fear

DISCUSSION

Re: 9 out of 10 muslim anarchists agree...


>this type of thinking lead to what
> I call a false transcendence - the idea that we will transcend the
> body, we will arrive at a heaven of pure information in which
> immortality essentially of consciousness will be achieved.

and before the computer "false transcendence" was provided by a book.

curt cloninger wrote:

> People think that society is the creation of technology, not that
> technology is the creation of society, and in this sense the computer
> and the net and cyberspace and all this type of thinking lead to what
> I call a false transcendence - the idea that we will transcend the
> body, we will arrive at a heaven of pure information in which
> immortality essentially of consciousness will be achieved. I know
> that your familiar with these sort of people, extropians,
> cybernetfreaks and technomaniacs who truly believe, in a true
> religious sense, that the computer is the final frontier of human
> consciousness. I'm just not convinced, I don't see any way the body
> is being transcended, it is still sitting in front of the keyboard,
> the eyes are still looking at the screen. William Gibson has a
> wonderful image of the hacker plugged in to the computer and dying
> while his consciousness is still living on in cyberspace.
>
> This is the fantasy that we can download consciousness and somehow
> achieve immortality inside the machine - at best I would say that
> this is a very hypothetical supposition, at worst it could turn out
> to be a total falsehood. If it is a total falsehood, then what we are
> looking at here is a bad parody of religion, a parodic consciousness
> or a conciseness which is simply a parody of itself, this I think is
> where the danger lies.
>
> - peter lamborn wilson/hakim bey (1995)

EVENT

Deadline Outreach Journal: The Power of Relationships


Dates:
Fri Jul 30, 2004 00:00 - Fri Jul 30, 2004

Deadline Outreach Journal: The Power of Relationships

Can capital punishment be justified in a criminal justice system so fraught with error that in Illinois, 13 of the 25 inmates slated for execution were discovered to be innocent?

That was exactly the question that former Illinois Governor George Ryan faced in the final days of his term in 2004 as he decided whether to let 167 people live or die. And it is the question that America will face on July 30 (today!) when Deadline, a riveting new documentary, has its national television premiere in a special two-hour edition of Dateline NBC at 8pm (Eastern Standard Time). It is unprecedented for a film like this to get such a large, diverse audience and it is important for viewers to tune in to show the network just how hungry the American public is for media that forces us to question and to think. There will be viewing parties across the country from Rikers Island to a Catholic church in South Carolina to the Delaware chapter of Forensic Nurses.

Find out more from MediaRights: http://mediarights.org/news/articles/deadline_outreach_journal_the_power_of_relationships.php
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DISCUSSION

Some thoughts on computer security and the living dead


Right-to-Life

The term "Virus" is meant to associate a dead thing (and not really dead having never been living) with a living biological body. A so-called computer virus is linked to biology in language (and in reality) only insofar as biology is made dependent on digital technology. The virus is not neutral, and is seen as an attack on supposed life systems which are widely viewed as, but are not either, neutral (techno culture). The CorporateState defines the virus (with help from lots of technophiles), while claiming that its own technology is a natural living organism with an inherent right-to-life. It is interesting to note the ongoing case in Florida involving a Husband's attempts to disconnect his wife's feeding tube. Jeb Bush, the State and other interests have stepped into the matter by declaring the case an issue of right-to-life vs. the so-called right-to-die interests. What is omnipresent, but largely invisible to mainstream debate (at least within the conservative bounds of mainstream media) is the tendency to naturalize medical technology itself. The technology itself becomes an invisible life force to which bodies must obey (or defy). The feeding machine is viewed as a neutral (and natural) necessity, and in the minds of right-to-lifers stands in for God itself. To cut the body from the machine, that in fact lives for the body, is seen as cutting the body itself. To kill the machine becomes confused with (and then practiced as) killing the body. Computers are not alive, they are not human, they cannot contract "viruses," they cannot be "attacked," "terrorized," or "infected," unless they are alive, unless they are human, unless their "infections," and "attacks" are indistinguishable from human infections, attacks, etc. Techno culture makes it possible for the murder of thousands of humans to be discussed in the language of "surgical strikes," and "smart bomb technology." Techno culture also makes it possible for the pentagon to use the language of "Terrorism" when speaking of a virtual sit-in!
, or sim
ple hacker prank.

Vampirism

"Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks." - Karl Marx

Computer networks are reproduced and modified continuously to work with and to facilitate the trading of information (Capital) to predefined and often highly secure locations. In this narrow system anything that slows the speed of supply and demand is perceived as an attack on the body of capital, therefore, dominance is needed, the body must be regulated to ensure the continuity of power relationships within the system. The blood supply must not be interrupted for vampires are relentless, don't die very easily, and often have very little sense of humor.

Sweden’s not a target

Technophobia is often described as an irrational fear of technology, and yet a hammer is technology. Technophilia is described (much less often) as an irrational adoration for technology, and yet a needle and thimble are technology. The fact that fears aroused by forks and spoons, or driving a car for that matter, are not spoken of as technophobia (any more than irrational love for these things are spoken of as technophilia) reveals a primary myth about technology: Namely, that technology acts independent from human social systems, that technology is “out there” working for us (or against us) toward some utopia (or dystopia). A hammer or needle and thread are pretty benign in their effects on global power structures, but if they were not we’d have reverse-hammer-engineers and needle hackers. A network "attack" is possible only when the power relationships guarding a network are so solidified, predictable and controlled that anything counter to it is defined as dangerous and alien. Dangerous? perhaps, alien no. Violent Domination and violent resistance always work hand-in-hand, which goes along way toward explaining why the U.S. is a primary target for terrorism and Sweden’s not, why the New York Times web site is a target for hackers and crackers “Joe’s homepage” is not.