Rachel Greene
Since the beginning
Works in New York, Nebraska United States of America

BIO
Rhizome is friends and family for Rachel, who has been involved with the org. in one capacity or another since 1997 when it was rhizome.com!!
Rachel wrote a book on internet art for thames & hudson's well-known WORLD OF ART series: it was published in June 2004. She was a consultant and catalogue author for the 2004 Whitney Biennial. She has also written for publications including frieze, artforum, timeout and bomb.
Discussions (824) Opportunities (20) Events (0) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

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DISCUSSION

Article on Rules of Crime from NYTIMES


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/arts/design/27iden.html

I hope people will check out the NYTimes site or pick up the paper (if local) because there are several gorgeous pics adorning this article:

October 27, 2004

How to Cross Borders, Social or Otherwise
By ELIZABETH BARD

In the basement of the New Museum of Contemporary Art's temporary home in Chelsea, a seemingly ironic invitation appears on a black-and-white label next to a flat-screen computer:

"The Status Project aims to aid those who seek change, for example moving from homelessness to a career in bank management, or from the legal identity of a 32-year-old American woman to a male Pakistani teenager.''

This is not a joke. Or rather, it is a joke, but one with potentially serious consequences.

Heath Bunting and Kayle Brandon, two British artists, are compiling a database exploring elements of legal status in Britain, with the ultimate goal of allowing people to create a new identity from information collected on the Internet. The first stage of their project is the focus of "Rules of Crime,'' a small show that runs through Nov. 13 at the New Museum.

The art-history books have plenty to say about false or alternative identity; from Rembrandt's biblical set pieces to Cindy Sherman's film stills, artists have long experimented with disguise and metamorphosis.

Unfortunately for Mr. Bunting and Ms. Brandon, the law books have a lot to say, too. In its final form, their project may be viewed as the Homeland Security Department's worst nightmare: a road map enabling all sorts of undesirables to penetrate a nation's borders, banking systems, supermarket loyalty clubs.

Mr. Bunting and Ms. Brandon are among a growing number of artists who are harnessing technologies associated with governments and corporations to challenge the status quo. Increasingly, such artists find that they need a good lawyer as they walk a fine line between artistic expression and criminal activity.

Amy Goldrich, a lawyer consulted by the New Museum, while declining to name specific laws that the artists might be violating, said that tolerance for false ID cards had all but evaporated since 9/11. "When it's a teenager, it seems pretty benign: you want a beer,'' she said. "But now it can get you in very serious trouble."

"We probably couldn't show this project when it's completed," said Rachel Greene, curator of the exhibition and the executive director of Rhizome.org, a new-media arts portal. "It would be too legally complex."

In May, there was the widely publicized arrest of Steven Kurtz, an associate professor of art at the State University of New York at Buffalo, who has since been indicted on mail and wire fraud charges. Mr. Kurtz, whose work is a critique of corporate control of biotechnology, had set up a mobile DNA-extraction laboratory in his home to test for genetic modification in foods.

F.B.I. agents searching his home found illegally obtained biological materials like E. coli bacteria. The presence of scientific materials was enough for the authorities to charge Mr. Kurtz and impound his computers, manuscripts and books.

For now, the Web site for Mr. Bunting and Ms. Brandon's identity caper, known as the Status Project (status.irational.org) doesn't look particularly dangerous. It offers what resembles an altered map of the London Underground with a cluster of overlapping dots, each corresponding to a form of legal status (for example, "British citizen'') or social status ("poor''). A series of tree-graphs even playfully assigns status predating the moment of birth: "envisioned by my mother.''

The database uses the rules of formal logic to define relationships between statuses; for example, "If you are a blood donor, then you are not an injector of drugs, taking antibiotics, a prostitute, gay or less than one year from having a piercing.''

But the project is not just a conceptual costume drama, an art-world game of social dress-up. It is also a plea for a more nuanced consideration of identity and borders in the post-9/11 political climate. In a sense, the two artists are frantically waving their hands in the air, saying it is not all that simple to tell the difference between "us'' and "them.''

"I started working on A-list celebrity yesterday,'' Mr. Bunting said by phone from Bristol, England. He is hoping to find the social or legal markers that define that status - inclusion on People magazine's best-dressed list, perhaps, or red-carpet security clearance at the Oscars.

The Status Project may not threaten security, but it makes some risky promises. At the Web site, a manifesto of sorts under the heading "Proposal'' says it will provide, as the project develops, a how-to guide to getting a passport. (You can get started, the artists suggest, by acquiring various junk statuses like supermarket loyalty cards and video club memberships.)

Mr. Bunting and Ms. Brandon have already begun acquiring false statuses, sometimes building on the work of fellow artists. He holds an international student ID card that he obtained from the Web site of the Mexican artist Minerva Cuevas. Ms. Cuevas issues the cards through her Mejor Vida Corporation (Better Life Corporation), a nonprofit company she set up to challenge traditional models of late market capitalism.

Student ID holders are entitled to discounts on museums admission and air fares. Mr. Bunting used the student card to get a Young Person's Railcard, which guarantees discount travel on British Rail.

The Status Project grew out of BorderXing, a 2002 commission for the Tate Gallery in London, in which Mr. Bunting, 37, and Ms. Brandon, 28, documented illegal treks they made across European borders.

"I've always wanted to be nomadic - to beg, borrow, find things,'' Mr. Bunting said. He travels light, often with no change of clothes and only a few basics: a penknife, a diary, a passport.

The BorderXing Web site, available for individual use by request (at irational.org/cgi-bin/border/clients/ deny.pl) offers pictures, suggested routes and tips for evading the authorities. A vacation slide show of the couple's journey is on view at the New Museum, as well as online, without registration, at duo.irational.org/borderxing_slide_show.

Despite the political provocation involved, the project retains the aura of a pilgrimage - to be close to the land, to throw off the weight of nationality and statehood, simply to put one foot in front of the other and go.

If BorderXing is concerned with the physical, visceral aspects of travel, the Status Project explores the more abstract notion of how people move from one social territory to another.

"When you say you can change your identity or disappear, people's ears prick up,'' Mr. Bunting said. "They want it to be a utility; I would like it to be more of a game, a conjurer's fancy.''

The project will ultimately be a guide to obtaining status, but not just legal status, Ms. Brandon said. In collecting their data, she said, "we are also looking for the loopholes in the - I don't want to say the matrix - in the social grid.''

But the 1999 cult film "Matrix'' is not a bad comparison. It presented a world in which reality was a game, and only a few lucky individuals were unplugged and able to see the system for what it was.

It's a long way from a student ID to a fake passport, but Mr. Bunting readily acknowledges the project's more sinister potential. "This is a system of knowledge that can be used as a weapon,'' he said. "Will it be used as that? It's the same as giving people a street map. It could help prepare burglaries or riots, but it could just help you walk around.''

Such statements will seem cavalier to some, threatening to others. But the Status Project raises a larger question: as the tools of everyday life, like the Internet or ID cards, become the tools of art, where do you draw the line between the two?

The artists did not have far to look for examples of the blurring of the line between art and its real-life consequences. Mr. Bunting was unable to attend the Sept. 18 opening of "Rules of Crime'' because of visa trouble.

In 1991, on his way to speak at a conference in Los Angeles, he was turned back at the Canadian border near Ottawa by United States customs officials, whose suspicions were raised by a man traveling without a bag. He tried to cross again in Vancouver two days later and was told that he was "port shopping,'' a felony offense. He was permanently barred from entering the United States.

In March, the New Museum applied for an O-1 Visa Extraordinary Ability (arts, motion picture or television) for Mr. Bunting. At publication time, it was still being processed.

"I do consider myself a combatant,'' he said. "The artist doesn't just gaze. It's not just the perception of reality that is up for grabs, it's reality itself.''

And what of Mr. Bunting and Ms. Brandon's status as artists? For Mr. Bunting, it is a double-edged sword. Confining his work to a museum setting affords both protection and a certain impotence.

"You take people with dangerous or provocative ideas and put them into a white-walled container,'' he said.

DISCUSSION

Fwd: atc @ ucb: rirkrit tiravanija, monday 7:30pm


Begin forwarded message:

> From: Ken Goldberg <goldberg@ieor.berkeley.edu>
> Date: October 27, 2004 11:41:52 AM EDT
> To: "announce atc @ ucb" <goldberg@ieor.berkeley.edu>
> Subject: atc @ ucb: rirkrit tiravanija, monday 7:30pm
>
> next week, as we put the count into country, rirkrit tiravanija will
> address the subject of land. -ken
> ---------------------------------------------------------
>
> The Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium
> of UC Berkeley's Center for New Media Presents:
>
> the land
> Rirkrit Tiravanija, New York, Bangkok, and Berlin
>
> Mon, 1 Nov, 7:30-9pm: UC Berkeley, 160 Kroeber Hall
> All ATC Lectures are free and open to the public.
>
> The land project was initiated by Rirkrit and Kamin Letchaiprasert as
> a self-sustaining environment emerging from the artistic community.
> The land is located in the northern part of Thailand, near the village
> of Sanpathong, 20 km southwest from the provincial city of Chiang Mai.
> It is intended to be cultivated as an open space or community free
> from ownership, with elements favoring discussions and experimentation
> in the fields of culture. The land is open to the day-to-day
> activities of local living (i.e. the growing of rice) and to the
> neighboring community. On the social field of the land, artistic
> practices are discussed and tested. This project, a hybrid of
> innovation and traditionalism, contrasts contemporary materials and
> technologies with ancient forms of agriculture.
>
> While the land is a rice field and a garden, freely accessible to all,
> it also supports architectural constructions that may be utilized in
> variety of ways, from shelters for sleeping to kitchens for cooking to
> platforms from which to deliver lectures or performances. A number of
> artists and architects are involved in this aspect of the land's
> potential, though participation is not confined solely to those in the
> arts. The people who have contributed to the land's structure so far
> have come from both local and international artistic backgrounds, with
> artists such as: Kamin Letchaiprasert, Mitr Jai Inn, Tobias Rehberger,
> Philippe Parreno, Francois Roche, Angkrit Ajchariyasophon, Prachaya
> Phinthong, the artist group SUPERFLEX and Tiravanija. These small
> constructions vary from outhouses collecting biogas which is later
> converted for cooking, to kitchens and a central hall with generator
> powered by elephants' movements, to living (meditation) huts are
> designed and built as artistic and architectural experiments, although
> they also function as spaces which artists, students, and farmers
> alike can utilize. Because the land is empty of expectation, it is
> truly open to possibility, and in this openness, science,
> architecture, art, religion, technology, and the environment all play
> a part in determining the design and function of the space. In a
> sense, it is through this complete lack of determination that so many
> experiments, and discoveries are engendered: emptiness as an
> incubator, of sorts.
>
> Anyone may build a new structure on the land with the only condition
> being that the addition remain accessible to all, as is the goal of
> the land generally. We provide the land and commit to care-taking and
> repairs of the buildings that are to remain on the land on a permanent
> basis, but encourage each artist to raise the funding for the actual
> construction. Rirkrit's own structure, as well as that of Tobias
> Rehberger, was exhibited as part of the "What If...Art on the Verge of
> Architecture and Design" curated by Maria Lind at the Moderna Museet
> Stockholm.
>
> ====================================================================
>
> Rirkrit Tiravanija was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1961. After
> high school in Bangkok, Thailand, he studied at the Ontario School of
> Art
> in Toronto, the Banff Center School of Fine Arts, the School of the Art
> Institute of Chicago, and the Whitney Independent Studies Program in
> New
> York. He has exhibited widely, including solo shows at Kunsthalle
> Basel,
> The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art;
> Portikus, Frankfurt; and Secession, Vienna. For the 50th International
> Venice Biennale (2003), he co-curated Utopia Station, which has since
> traveled to several venues, most recently opening at the Haus der
> Kunst,
> Munich. Since 1998, Tiravanija has also been working on The Land, a
> large-scale collaborative and transdisciplinary project near Chiang
> Mai,
> Thailand. Tiravanija is a finalist for the 2004 Hugo Boss Prize and
> lives
> and works in New York, Bangkok, and Berlin.
>
> ====================================================================
>
> The ATC is sponsored by UC Berkeley's: Center for New Media, Office of
> the
> Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, College of Engineering
> Interdisciplinary Studies Program, Center for Information Technology in
> the Interest of Society, Consortium for the Arts, BAM/PFA, Townsend
> Center
> for the Humanities, and the Intel Corporation.
>
> ATC Director: Ken Goldberg
> ATC Associate Director: Greg Niemeyer
> ATC Assistant: Therese Tierney
> Curated with ATC Advisory Board
>
> Full F04-S05 series schedule and video archive:
> http://www.ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg/lecs/
>
> Contact: goldberg@ieor.berkeley.edu, or phone: (510) 643-9565
>

DISCUSSION

Fwd: The Info Terror Show


Begin forwarded message:

> From: McKenzie Wark <mw35@nyu.edu>
> Date: October 26, 2004 7:25:29 PM EDT
> To: mw35@nyu.edu
> Subject: The Info Terror Show
>
>
> Sorry for the mass-mailout. Please pass this on to anyone
> who may be interested. All welcome. -- Ken
>
> Lang College and the Design + Technology Program Present:
>
> Playdate Seminar #3
>
> 2PM Wednesday 3rd November
> Theresa Lang Student Center at 55 West 13th St, 2nd floor
>
> food and beverages provided
>
>
> The InfoTerror Show
> Prof. James Der Derian
>
> Against a multi-media backdrop supplied by the
> military-industrial-media-entertainment network, the convergence of
> technological and theological fundamentalisms is projected.
>
>
> James Der Derian is Professor of Political Science at UMASS/Amherst and
> Professor of International Studies (Research) at Brown University,
> where
> he directs the Global Security Program and the InfoTechWarPeace Project
> (www.infopeace.org). He has been a visiting scholar at the University
> of
> Southern California, MIT, Harvard, Oxford, and the Institute for
> Advanced Study at Princeton. He is author of On Diplomacy: A Genealogy
> of Western Estrangement (1987) and Antidiplo
> macy: Spies, Terror, Speed,
> and War (1992); editor of International Theory: Critical
> Investigations
> (1995) and The Virilio Reader (1998); and co-editor with Michael
> Shapiro
> of International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World
> Politics (1989). His articles on war, technology, and the media have
> appeared in the New York Times, Nation, Washington Quarterly, and
> Wired.
> His most recent book is Virtuous War: Mapping the
> Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network (2001).
>
>
> McKenzie Wark ~~~~~~~A Hacker Manifesto
> http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/WARHAC.html
>

DISCUSSION

Fwd: TEST BALLOT: Examining the Faulty Machinery of Democracy


Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Vicente Matallana" <ube@laagencia.org>
> Date: October 26, 2004 9:32:22 PM EDT
> To: <rachel@rhizome.org>
> Subject: TEST BALLOT: Examining the Faulty Machinery of Democracy
> Reply-To: <ube@laagencia.org>
>
>
> TEST BALLOT: Examining the Faulty Machinery of Democracy
> A Public Project by Michael Rakowitz
>
> Mindful of the profound world impact that the office of the President
> of the
> United States holds; and in accordance with the Bush Administration's
> stated
> desire to establish global democratic principles, the Global Community
> is
> invited to vote in the 2004 election of the President of the United
> States
> of America on the Second day of November, Two Thousand and Four.
>
> Ten of the controversial Votomatic voting machines used in the 2000
> U.S.
> Presidential elections in Palm Beach County, Florida, have been
> exported to
> various locations in Europe.
>
> One of the Votomatic machines can be found in Ljubljana at the Kapelica
> Gallery, Kersnikova 4.
>
> Polling will begin at 14:00 on 2 November and will close at 03:00 CET
> (Paris
> time) on 3 November, in correspondence with official voting hours in
> the
> U.S.A..
>
> The event will be broadcasted live at the following Internet address:
> www.aksioma.org/votomatic
>
> Official results will be available from 3 November at 04:00 (CET) at
> the
> Internet address
> www.aksioma.org/votomatic/results.html
>
> This project has been conceived in conjunction with Michael Rakowitz's
> solo
> exhibition at the Kunstraum Innsbruck/stadtturmgalerie Innsbruck and
> coordinated by Aksioma - Institute for Contemporary Arts, Ljubljana in
> conjunction with Kapelica Gallery and Intima Virtual Base.
>
> About the Author:
> http://www.possibleutopia.com/mike/
>
> Images:
> http://www.aksioma.org/votomatic/photos.html
>
> Institutions and partners:
> www.aksioma.org
> www.kapelica.org
> www.intima.org
> www.socialpress.it
> www.kunstraum-innsbruck.at
>
>
> Davide Grassi
> Executive producer
>
> Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Arts, Ljubljana
> Gerbiaeva 23
> 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenjia
> tel: + 386 - 1 - 283 96 86
> fax: + 386 - 1 - 429 26 79
> gsm > sms: +386 - 41 - 250 669
> e-mail: aksioma@aksioma.org
> www.aksioma.org
>
>


CURATED EXHIBITIONS (1)