BIO
Agricola de Cologne
launched on 1 January 2000 as an artist brand, is standing for the
--> interdisciplinary media artist, director of experimental shortfilms and videos, curator of media art
--> founder & director of artvideoKOELN – the curatorial initiative „art & moving images“ serving since 2010 as the operating platform for a wide range of activities around "art & moving images", running CologneOFF - Cologne International Videoart Festival and Le Musee di-visioniste - the new museum of networked art
Agricola de Cologne is standing also for a broad bandwidth of dynamic curatorial contexts he is initiating in physical and virtual space, the co-curator and co-organiser of external festivals and exhibitions, the jury member of divers festivals, and not to forget the designer of a cross-platform culture.
Since its/his launch in 2000, Agricola de Cologne was presented @ more than 600 festivals and media art events in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Knoxville, Pittsburgh, Mexico City, Caracas, Maracaibo, Buenos Aires, Rosario, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Santiago de Chile, Quito, Bogota, London, Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Madrid, Gijon, Sevilla, Valencia, Barcelona, Lisbon, Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki, Tampere, Kopenhagen, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Tokyo, Nagoya, Seoul, Manila, Hongkong, Bangkok, Phnom Penh, New Delhi, Guwahati, Mumbai, Jakarta, Perth, Melbourne, Casablanca, Rabat, Marrakesh, Istanbul, Ankara, Yerewan, Damaskus, Jerusalem, Tel-Aviv, Bethlehem, Gaza, Basel, Zurich, Vienna, Linz, Salzburg, Graz, Kiev, Kharkiv, Riga, Tallinn, Vilnius, Moscow, St.Petersburg, Kansk, Perm, Yekaterinburg, Sofia, Varna, Bukarest, Arad, Timisoara, Budapest, Belgrade, Zagreb, Split, Lubljana, Rome, Naples, Milan, Pescara, Venice, Torino, Bologna, Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Karlsruhe, Nuremberg, & elsewhere, but also on biennials like ISEA Nagoya (2002), Venice Biennale 2003, 2005, 2007, Biennale of New Media Art Merida/MX 2003, Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth/Australia (2004), Biennale de Montreal (2004), Biennale of Video & New Media Santiago de Chile (2005), ISEA Singapore 2008.
His media art projects and videos were honoured with prizes and awards.
Links
Agricola de Cologne --> http://www.agricola-de.cologne
artvideoKOELN --> http://artvideo.koeln
Cologne International Videoart Festival --> http://coff.newmediafest.org
Le Musee di-visioniste - the new museum of networked art - http://www.nmartproject.net
SoundLAB - http://soundlab.newmediafest.org
LMD Interview Project - http://interviews.newmediafest.org
PLEASE DO NOT SPAM ART
[F][U][C][K] [M][E]!
Please do not spam!!
Please do not spam!!
Please do not spam!!
Please do not spam!!
Please do not spam!!
http://spam.trashconnection.com/
Please do not spam!!
Please do not spam!!
Please do not spam!!
Please do not spam!!
Please do not spam!!
http://spam.trashconnection.com/
Call for submissions
Call for submissions
subject: Iraq
Deadline: ongoing
.
[R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
[Remembering-Repressing-Forgetting]
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004
global networking
is preparing a feature related to
Iraq - the war and the periode afterwards,
and is looking for proposals of net based art works,
papers, articles, comments, links etc
which fit in this spectrum.
.
Accepted works and items must have a clearly defined copyright note
and will be included into the new Iraq module to be created.
Besides URLs of works or sources, also certain media files
are optionally accepted, see specification below.
.
Please use this form for submitting
.
1. firstname/name of artist, email, URL
2. a brief bio/CV (not more than 300 words)
3. title and URL or type of media file,
4. a short work description (not more than 300 words),
5. one screen shot (max 800x600 pixels, .jpg)
.
please send your submission to
rrf2004@newmediafest.org
subject: Iraq
.
Only these types of media files are accepted:
1. text-->plain email, .txt or .doc
2. image--->.jpg
3. movie--->.swf, .dcr, .mov, .mpeg
.
Deadline -->ongoing
as soon as the first submissions are accepted, they will be included and
posted.
**********************
[R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004
rrf2004@newmediafest.org
global networking by Agricola de Cologne
is part of --->
Version>04 Festival Chicago/USA - 16 April - 01 May 2004
Basics Festival Salzburg/Austria - 08-16 May 2004
Electronic Art Meeting Pescara/Italy - 19-23 May 2004
Festival of New Film/New Media Split/Croatia 26 June - 02 July 2004
subject: Iraq
Deadline: ongoing
.
[R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
[Remembering-Repressing-Forgetting]
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004
global networking
is preparing a feature related to
Iraq - the war and the periode afterwards,
and is looking for proposals of net based art works,
papers, articles, comments, links etc
which fit in this spectrum.
.
Accepted works and items must have a clearly defined copyright note
and will be included into the new Iraq module to be created.
Besides URLs of works or sources, also certain media files
are optionally accepted, see specification below.
.
Please use this form for submitting
.
1. firstname/name of artist, email, URL
2. a brief bio/CV (not more than 300 words)
3. title and URL or type of media file,
4. a short work description (not more than 300 words),
5. one screen shot (max 800x600 pixels, .jpg)
.
please send your submission to
rrf2004@newmediafest.org
subject: Iraq
.
Only these types of media files are accepted:
1. text-->plain email, .txt or .doc
2. image--->.jpg
3. movie--->.swf, .dcr, .mov, .mpeg
.
Deadline -->ongoing
as soon as the first submissions are accepted, they will be included and
posted.
**********************
[R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004
rrf2004@newmediafest.org
global networking by Agricola de Cologne
is part of --->
Version>04 Festival Chicago/USA - 16 April - 01 May 2004
Basics Festival Salzburg/Austria - 08-16 May 2004
Electronic Art Meeting Pescara/Italy - 19-23 May 2004
Festival of New Film/New Media Split/Croatia 26 June - 02 July 2004
Young media art from Romania
[R][R][F] 2004 --->XP ~ E-Journal - Vol.3
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
editorial at the end of this text--->
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Features
.
1 [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP - News!!
2. Young media art from Romania
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The physical presentation of [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
--->net based global networking project<---
is currently still running until 30 April at
National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharesti/Romania
www.mnac.ro/net.htm
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
1. News
a) [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP in Chicago? //
Yes, the global networking project has now another connection to Chicago
and is participating in in the .net section of
Version>04 Festival Chicago/USA
16 April - 01 May 2004
http://www.versionfest.org/
b) On occasion of this participation, [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
includes net based works of following artists.
c6.org, David Guez, Karla Brunet, Francisco Lopez and Irvis Gonzalez.
Their works can be found in following "Memory Channels"
IdentityChannel, VideoChannel, and ProgramChannel on
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004
2. ~E-Journal - Vol.3
is featuring "Young media art from Romania"
The participation in the Chicago based festival was an excellent occasion
to do this
a) by including another curatorial contribution from Romania
--->
[R][R][F] 2004 --->XP is proud to launch
"Local connection"
Raluca Velizar and Florin Tudor
(both curators at National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharesti/Romania)
curate video works by Calin Dan, Szabolcs KissPal, Nita Mocanu, Patatics
Alexandru
Florin Tudor & Mona Vatamanu, Oana Felipov & Aurel Cornea
"Local Connection" from Romania is the first of a series of
curatorial contributions from many countries on the globe
which are prepared especially for "VideoChannel" on [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
and deal with the subject "memory and identity".
The streaming video works and detailed biographical info
about the curators and artists can be
accessed directly via www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/vchannel.htm
or alternatively
via www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/
or www.le-musee-divisioniste.org/mediacentre/
.
DSL broadband Internet connection required
b) by spotlighting
"Young Romanian Guns" -
the contribution of netart curated by Calin Man and Stefan Tiron (Romania)
especially for [R][R][F] v.2.0 on [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP.
access directly via
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/rrfv2.htm
or alternatively
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/
.
As a "meta_net.art project"
"Young Romanian Guns" has an interesting construction
as there are two curators which have different tasks
Calin Man - curator as interface,
who created to curatorial and artistic environment of this contribution
and
Stefan Tiron - curator as curator,
who was looking after the selection of the participating artists and works.
.
The statements of both may give a better understanding:
.
1. Calin Man
Romanian Young Guns
a meta_net.art project
For me the position of a curator is an accidental one. My real identity is
to tell stories using images.
For this reason I chose a young curator fascinated by the romanian
underground art scene
and he selected five artists (see the statement). As a "curator",
I proposed an interface for all the projects as a shared background for the
future memories.
.
2. Stefan Tiron
FIVE TIMES x_x x_x x_x x_x x_x
THE WHO? AND THE WHY?
This project brings together five original, celebrated and completely
unknown Romanian-based net!slaves?.
Some say they 'died' when they joined the ever-growing ranks of recruits
plunging into the hell of Advertising Industry, webdesign, clubland, CGI and
post-production. Some say they are now explorers of the outer reaches of
pain&pleasure associated with the most brain-draining and art-munching
industries in Romania.
They make a living but they never care to participate at festivals; their
festivals are between themselves and their former art-school companions who
blame them for joining the ranks of paid bounty hunters. Most of the time,
as long as the client pays and gets hooked up in their maverick schemes,
they don't care about the consequences. Sergiu Negulici, Milos Jovanovic,
Chincisan Valentin, Catalin Rulea, Daniel Gontz are separate and highly
productive links uniting the art world with the corporate evils. Their
survival rate is high and they usually learn to deal with their own past and
their present goals.
They prefer to discuss about the last rip-off more then they care about the
latest curatorial concept. They remember their video game/comic book/cartoon
childhood and this helps them to deal with their current animated,
computer-based situation. Shaping mass cultural products makes them feel at
home where most people suffocate - during the TV ad breaks. They repress
their dislike for their mostly conservative clientele and they always
consider that their best projects are the ones who lie in the fat garbage
bins waiting a festival resuscitation. They are computer freaks and they
have huge, unbearable memory chips with mp3s, animations, and rip-off movies
that they won't probably get to consume during their lifetime. They never
forget to check it out while they design their latest webpage and so they
never stop downloading.
Participating artists:
a) Sergiu Negulici
b). Milos Jovanovic
c) Catalin Rulea
d). Daniel Gontz
e). Valentin Chincisan
.
a) Sergiu Negulici ---> work title: 'Revenge'
1989-1993 Tonitza College of Art Bucharest, Romania
1993-1998 Academy of Art - Bucharest, Romania .
'Revenge' tells the story of making out rough with the guys from
headvertising.
Because I love the way their entrails seem to sprout into magma flows of
guts and reddish jelly.
Human flesh lies scattered in front of perpetual misfortune: forget your
friendly moves.
.
b). Milos Jovanovic ---> work title: "Hardcomics"
My sister finished the art school. I didn't.
I did my first hard earned money when I was 12, selling video game rip-offs.
I started Photoshop with the 2.5 version., I've seen David Carson in 1995.
I fell in love with Emigre in 1996., Then came the Internet.
The Hardisco concept was born., Tool is not important. Concept baby,
concept.
Fat fonts are cool, but don't forget the Swiss grid. Fuck the Russian
classics. Hai haiku!
"Hardcomics" is our comic division. It already published comic books by
Roman Tolici (2002)
and OMULAN/Matei Branea (2003). It plans to publish a third hardcomics
number with contributions by several previously un-released Romanian comic
book creators.
.
c) Catalin Rulea --->work title: The meat-mincing machine
He is about the only person designing the layout for alternative Bucharest
freezines and
parasitic periodicals free of profit. Has good connections with the graffiti
crews in Ploiesti.
His extracurricular activities involve making funky, bollywood
country-western prints
on T-shirts and lots of other martial icons with bold circular rims.
The meat-mincing machine is a grinding device able to churn all kinds of
data -
it is meatifying everything, it's manual and you better not get your fingers
stuck!
Some people suspect it's some sort of perpetuum mobile XXXmedia rotor. God
save The Machine & Co.LTD!
.
d). Daniel Gontz ---> work title: Videoclip for DJ Vasile
Gontz is always on the run from the cultural
domain-border-policing-men-in-black.
He is a young artist that lives and works between Vienna and Bucharest.
He studied at the photo-video department of the Bucharest Art University and
presently studies at the Fine Arts University in Vienna.
He is also organising parties, having close links to the clubworld and the
alternative scene in Bucharest and Vienna.
He initiated the Hotel Gontz project (watch the Name!) and
is certainly one of the best Romanian VJs ever to grace the screens,
having various live collaborations with Romanian and foreign DJs.
.
e). Valentin Chincisan --->work title: Underconstruct
Works in a huge room full of computers where happy, shiny slaves keep on
punching the cards and has a keen eye for behavioural changes affecting the
extra-white collar technocrats. He is always ready and could quickly figure
our your programming faults.
"Underconstruct" is not a sub_construct like so many others - it has a rich
and growing linkage list with heavy Intersections of Art, Technology,
Science & Culture as well as a work in progress Berlin Data Base with
various unrecorded events from the under construction-site capital of
Europe. It is all about repressing your insecurities concerning the art
take-over by technologically-minded people.
.
Texts--->copyright
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
editorial at the end of this text--->
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Features
.
1 [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP - News!!
2. Young media art from Romania
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
The physical presentation of [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
--->net based global networking project<---
is currently still running until 30 April at
National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharesti/Romania
www.mnac.ro/net.htm
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
1. News
a) [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP in Chicago? //
Yes, the global networking project has now another connection to Chicago
and is participating in in the .net section of
Version>04 Festival Chicago/USA
16 April - 01 May 2004
http://www.versionfest.org/
b) On occasion of this participation, [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
includes net based works of following artists.
c6.org, David Guez, Karla Brunet, Francisco Lopez and Irvis Gonzalez.
Their works can be found in following "Memory Channels"
IdentityChannel, VideoChannel, and ProgramChannel on
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004
2. ~E-Journal - Vol.3
is featuring "Young media art from Romania"
The participation in the Chicago based festival was an excellent occasion
to do this
a) by including another curatorial contribution from Romania
--->
[R][R][F] 2004 --->XP is proud to launch
"Local connection"
Raluca Velizar and Florin Tudor
(both curators at National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharesti/Romania)
curate video works by Calin Dan, Szabolcs KissPal, Nita Mocanu, Patatics
Alexandru
Florin Tudor & Mona Vatamanu, Oana Felipov & Aurel Cornea
"Local Connection" from Romania is the first of a series of
curatorial contributions from many countries on the globe
which are prepared especially for "VideoChannel" on [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
and deal with the subject "memory and identity".
The streaming video works and detailed biographical info
about the curators and artists can be
accessed directly via www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/vchannel.htm
or alternatively
via www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/
or www.le-musee-divisioniste.org/mediacentre/
.
DSL broadband Internet connection required
b) by spotlighting
"Young Romanian Guns" -
the contribution of netart curated by Calin Man and Stefan Tiron (Romania)
especially for [R][R][F] v.2.0 on [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP.
access directly via
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/rrfv2.htm
or alternatively
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/
.
As a "meta_net.art project"
"Young Romanian Guns" has an interesting construction
as there are two curators which have different tasks
Calin Man - curator as interface,
who created to curatorial and artistic environment of this contribution
and
Stefan Tiron - curator as curator,
who was looking after the selection of the participating artists and works.
.
The statements of both may give a better understanding:
.
1. Calin Man
Romanian Young Guns
a meta_net.art project
For me the position of a curator is an accidental one. My real identity is
to tell stories using images.
For this reason I chose a young curator fascinated by the romanian
underground art scene
and he selected five artists (see the statement). As a "curator",
I proposed an interface for all the projects as a shared background for the
future memories.
.
2. Stefan Tiron
FIVE TIMES x_x x_x x_x x_x x_x
THE WHO? AND THE WHY?
This project brings together five original, celebrated and completely
unknown Romanian-based net!slaves?.
Some say they 'died' when they joined the ever-growing ranks of recruits
plunging into the hell of Advertising Industry, webdesign, clubland, CGI and
post-production. Some say they are now explorers of the outer reaches of
pain&pleasure associated with the most brain-draining and art-munching
industries in Romania.
They make a living but they never care to participate at festivals; their
festivals are between themselves and their former art-school companions who
blame them for joining the ranks of paid bounty hunters. Most of the time,
as long as the client pays and gets hooked up in their maverick schemes,
they don't care about the consequences. Sergiu Negulici, Milos Jovanovic,
Chincisan Valentin, Catalin Rulea, Daniel Gontz are separate and highly
productive links uniting the art world with the corporate evils. Their
survival rate is high and they usually learn to deal with their own past and
their present goals.
They prefer to discuss about the last rip-off more then they care about the
latest curatorial concept. They remember their video game/comic book/cartoon
childhood and this helps them to deal with their current animated,
computer-based situation. Shaping mass cultural products makes them feel at
home where most people suffocate - during the TV ad breaks. They repress
their dislike for their mostly conservative clientele and they always
consider that their best projects are the ones who lie in the fat garbage
bins waiting a festival resuscitation. They are computer freaks and they
have huge, unbearable memory chips with mp3s, animations, and rip-off movies
that they won't probably get to consume during their lifetime. They never
forget to check it out while they design their latest webpage and so they
never stop downloading.
Participating artists:
a) Sergiu Negulici
b). Milos Jovanovic
c) Catalin Rulea
d). Daniel Gontz
e). Valentin Chincisan
.
a) Sergiu Negulici ---> work title: 'Revenge'
1989-1993 Tonitza College of Art Bucharest, Romania
1993-1998 Academy of Art - Bucharest, Romania .
'Revenge' tells the story of making out rough with the guys from
headvertising.
Because I love the way their entrails seem to sprout into magma flows of
guts and reddish jelly.
Human flesh lies scattered in front of perpetual misfortune: forget your
friendly moves.
.
b). Milos Jovanovic ---> work title: "Hardcomics"
My sister finished the art school. I didn't.
I did my first hard earned money when I was 12, selling video game rip-offs.
I started Photoshop with the 2.5 version., I've seen David Carson in 1995.
I fell in love with Emigre in 1996., Then came the Internet.
The Hardisco concept was born., Tool is not important. Concept baby,
concept.
Fat fonts are cool, but don't forget the Swiss grid. Fuck the Russian
classics. Hai haiku!
"Hardcomics" is our comic division. It already published comic books by
Roman Tolici (2002)
and OMULAN/Matei Branea (2003). It plans to publish a third hardcomics
number with contributions by several previously un-released Romanian comic
book creators.
.
c) Catalin Rulea --->work title: The meat-mincing machine
He is about the only person designing the layout for alternative Bucharest
freezines and
parasitic periodicals free of profit. Has good connections with the graffiti
crews in Ploiesti.
His extracurricular activities involve making funky, bollywood
country-western prints
on T-shirts and lots of other martial icons with bold circular rims.
The meat-mincing machine is a grinding device able to churn all kinds of
data -
it is meatifying everything, it's manual and you better not get your fingers
stuck!
Some people suspect it's some sort of perpetuum mobile XXXmedia rotor. God
save The Machine & Co.LTD!
.
d). Daniel Gontz ---> work title: Videoclip for DJ Vasile
Gontz is always on the run from the cultural
domain-border-policing-men-in-black.
He is a young artist that lives and works between Vienna and Bucharest.
He studied at the photo-video department of the Bucharest Art University and
presently studies at the Fine Arts University in Vienna.
He is also organising parties, having close links to the clubworld and the
alternative scene in Bucharest and Vienna.
He initiated the Hotel Gontz project (watch the Name!) and
is certainly one of the best Romanian VJs ever to grace the screens,
having various live collaborations with Romanian and foreign DJs.
.
e). Valentin Chincisan --->work title: Underconstruct
Works in a huge room full of computers where happy, shiny slaves keep on
punching the cards and has a keen eye for behavioural changes affecting the
extra-white collar technocrats. He is always ready and could quickly figure
our your programming faults.
"Underconstruct" is not a sub_construct like so many others - it has a rich
and growing linkage list with heavy Intersections of Art, Technology,
Science & Culture as well as a work in progress Berlin Data Base with
various unrecorded events from the under construction-site capital of
Europe. It is all about repressing your insecurities concerning the art
take-over by technologically-minded people.
.
Texts--->copyright
New on Rhizome Artbase!!
Currently, still running (until 30 April) at
National Museum of Contemporary Art
Bucharesti/Romania www.mnac.ro/net.htm
and now included in Rhizome Artbase
--->
[R][R][F] 2004--->XP
[Remembering-Repressing-Forgetting]
global networking project
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?24241
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Agricola de Cologne on Rhizome Artbase
-->
Agricola de Cologne profile-->
http://rhizome.org/object-report.rhiz?user_id239
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
New since 10 April 2004--->
.
[R][R][F] 2004--->XP
global networking project
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?24241
.
En [Code] ed --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?24243
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
previous additions--->
138 seconds of peace? --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?16154
Family Portrait --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?10784
Violence (Online Festival) --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?7503
urban.early sunday morning_raw --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?4084
]and_scape[ --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?3351
Transience- an atonal composition --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?2920
Hans - a true story --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?2689
Never wake up --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?2686
********************************
technical requirements--->
*DSL broadband,
*Javascript enabled latest browser vesions of
MS IE, Netscape and Opera
*Flash 7 plug-in/player
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
[R][R][F] 2004--->XP
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/
--->
[NewMediaArtProjectNetwork]:||cologne
experimental platform for netbased art -
operating from Cologne/Germany
info@nmartproject.net
National Museum of Contemporary Art
Bucharesti/Romania www.mnac.ro/net.htm
and now included in Rhizome Artbase
--->
[R][R][F] 2004--->XP
[Remembering-Repressing-Forgetting]
global networking project
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?24241
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Agricola de Cologne on Rhizome Artbase
-->
Agricola de Cologne profile-->
http://rhizome.org/object-report.rhiz?user_id239
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
New since 10 April 2004--->
.
[R][R][F] 2004--->XP
global networking project
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?24241
.
En [Code] ed --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?24243
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
//
previous additions--->
138 seconds of peace? --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?16154
Family Portrait --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?10784
Violence (Online Festival) --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?7503
urban.early sunday morning_raw --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?4084
]and_scape[ --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?3351
Transience- an atonal composition --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?2920
Hans - a true story --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?2689
Never wake up --->
http://rhizome.org/object.rhiz?2686
********************************
technical requirements--->
*DSL broadband,
*Javascript enabled latest browser vesions of
MS IE, Netscape and Opera
*Flash 7 plug-in/player
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
[R][R][F] 2004--->XP
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/
--->
[NewMediaArtProjectNetwork]:||cologne
experimental platform for netbased art -
operating from Cologne/Germany
info@nmartproject.net
Gita Hashemi curates "RealPlay"
[R][R][F] 2004 --->XP ~ E-Journal - Vol.2
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
~ E-Journal,
an extension of the global networking project,
R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/
will be edited periodically
in order to feature projects, curators, artists and other networking
instances on a textual information basis
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
~E-Journal Vol.2 - Features
.
1. Gita Hashemi curates "RealPlay
2. [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP - News!!
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
1. Gita Hashemi curates "RealPlay"
.
"RealPlay"
is the title of Gita Hashemi's
curatorial contribution to [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/
or direct access also via
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/rrfv2.htm
.
Participating artists:
1. Jaromil
2. Hard Pressed Collective
3. Mireille Astore
4. Project Threadbare Coalition
5. Haleh Niazmand
.
RealPlay
Essay by Gita Hashemi.
RealPlay has little to do with play, really. It is about playing for real.
Topically positioned in specific times and/or places, the works in RealPlay
contest, counter and/or subvert dominant geopolitical and/or cultural
notions with reference to the colonial constructs of the "Middle East" and
the "West." This selection works as a broad political commentary as well as
responses to certain trends in "new media" discourse that explicitly or
implicitly (sometimes inadvertently) postulate and promote fundamental
distinctions and discontinuities between the "virtual" and the "real." Such
distinctions inevitably idealize the illusionary (utopic or distopic) space
where code is entirely capable of masterminding experience, or where code
becomes experience. The projects in RealPlay reject such Western-oriented
techno-centric and techno-determinist tendencies by privileging urgent
socio-political issues over media formalism and by insisting on the priority
of social interaction over, as well as through, cyberspace interactivity.
Using diverse practices of documenting and archiving, these projects
capitalize on the function of the internet as a repository of retrievable
data and, more importantly, as a communication channel that can be
advantageously put to use towards inciting counter-hegemonic thought and
action.
Subverting stereotypical representations of Palestinians as fanatic
terrorists or people solely occupied and pre-occupied by war, in <a href=
"http://farah.dyne.org/">Farah: In Search for Joy </a>, an account from a
trip to Palestine following the brutal Israeli re-occupation campaign of the
West Bank in 2002, software pioneer and artist Jaromil (Italy) gives an
account of the everlasting human search and capacity for joy in towns and
refugee camps under siege (again). Farah: In Search for Joy is a brief and
unpretentious traveler's search for and documentation of those aspects of
the Palestinian popular culture that continue to create, offer and celebrate
joy in spite of the prolonged conditions of colonial occupation and war. As
an archive (in progress), the website is incubated in and reflective of the
artist's interactions with his environment as it is a virtual space for our
encounter with a dimension of Palestinian reality categorically forgotten or
ignored in dominant representations in the West.
An initiative of Hard Pressed Collective (Canada), a group of media artists
with a penchant for politically-engaged art-making, <a href="
http://www.charlesstreetvideo.com/project.php?id=1">The Olive Project</a>
is, on the surface, a programmed compilation of short videos by diverse
international artists. Thematically grounded in the historically rich and
culturally diverse symbolism of the olive, the videos exhibit a range of
artist responses to the ruthless practice of uprooting olive trees in
Palestine by Israeli forces- a favourite occupation strategy aiming to force
Palestinians off their land by effectively undermining the economic survival
of the growers and their local production. Collectively, the videos
construct a time-based memorial to "peace and justice" made of 2-minute
blocks. Before, through and beyond the remediated compilation and its
dissemination in cyberspace, however, this project functions as a tool for
consciousness-raising, mobilizing and networking around an issue of real
world significance.
<a href="http://www.crixa.com/mireille/Migrant/Tampa.htm">Migrant</a> is the
web component of Mireille Astore's (Australia) larger sculpture and
performance project that takes as its starting point the infamous Tampa ship
incident in August 2001. The incident brought local and international public
attention to the plight of the "boat people"- refugees primarily from the
"Middle East"-who, upon arrival in Australian waters, were first refused
landing and then recast as prisoners by a xenophobic "Western" state. Astore
's obsessive photographic documentation (from the inside looking out) of her
18-day self-inflicted virtual imprisonment-in a scaled recreation of Tampa
on a public beach in Sydney-functions as a looking glass in which to observe
the uneasy and disturbing reactions to the arrival of new migrants by a
society that has repressed its own memory and burried its own racist and
colonial settler history under the grounds on which Woomera and Nauru
detention centres currently stand for real.
<a href="http://www.threadbare.tyo.ca/">Project Threadbare</a> is animated
by a coalition of activists in response to the detention in August 2003 of
21 South Asian (primarily Pakistani) students in Toronto, Canada under the
guise of anti-terrorist and national security operations. Since its
inception, Project Threadbare has been an immensely successful local
expository and legal campaign against racial targeting, detention and
deportation of immigrants and refugees by Canadian police, intelligence and
immigration forces, who are hotly in the race for the third place prize of
dishonour, after USA and Australia, for breaking their own nation's civil
liberties codes as well as international human rights conventions. This
website, an ongoing forum, newsboard and archive for Toronto activists, is
one wiki that doesn't pretend to be the virtual world's better-than-original
replica of "democracy." Although some of the active members of the coalition
are artists and their website is pretty slick, Project Threadbare was not
conceived as and does not make a claim to being new media art; rather, it is
a real world experiment in social and creative participation and
collaboration, with tangible impact in the lives of the original 21
detainees and now in the lives of many others in similar predicaments.
<a href="http://surveyofcommonsense.net/">Survey of Common Sense</a> is a
recreation of an earlier participatory painting installation project by the
same title by Haleh Niazmand (USA). A parody of the polling industry that
for the past 5 or 6 decades has been the engine of "democracy" in the United
States, Niazmand's image-text intervention, in the form of survey questions
with forced yes/no "choices," is not only an authorial comment on the
practices of polling as determinant of "democratic outcome," but a strong
challenge to notions of "pragmatism" and "common sense" preached from
political pulpits in the present-day United States. Beyond this, Survey of
Common Sense is an invitation, courtesy of an artist from the "Middle East"
and a citizen of the "West," to the participants/viewers to recongnize,
acknowledge and reflect upon the ways in which each and every one of us are
intricately and deeply implicated, really and virtually, in the bloody
absurdity of this political moment. As such and in the very impossibility of
responding with any degree of ease and resolution to Niazmand's questions,
this work is an incessant challenge issued so we will not slip into
forgetting.
The projects in this selection have taken shape independently of this
curatorial effort. My thanks to all the participants for allowing me to
include their work in RealPlay.
.
About the curator:
Gita Hashemi
engages in cultural practice as artist, writer, curator, organizer, worker
and educator. Her most recent curatorial projects include RealPlay (2004,
netart exhibit) Negotiations: From a Piece of Land to a Land of Peace (2003,
art-driven multidisciplinary event, http://negotiations2003.net), WILL
(2003, multidisciplinary transnational exhibition,
http://negotiations2003.net/will), Afghanistan, 2002: No Refuge and Locating
Afghanistan (2002-3, image-text exhibition and publication with photography
by Babak Salari), and Trans/Planting: Contemporary Art by Women from/in Iran
(2001, with Taraneh Hemami, http://strictlypersonal.net/transplanting).
Her recent titles include Post-Coitus (2003, http://post-coitus.net), Olive
Fair (2003, http://olivefair.net), Many Stones for Palestine (2002,
http://strictlypersonal.net/stones), The Word Room (2001, with Post-Exile
Collective, http://wordroom.net), A War Primer (2001, sound installation),
and Of Shifting Shadows (2000, CD-R). Hashemi's work has been exhibited,
reviewed and collected nationally and internationally. She is the founder of
Iranian Artists in Dialogue, a co-founder of Post-Exile Collective and a
founder of Creative Response. She resides in Toronto, Canada.
Hashemi's labour as an intellectual has crystallized in simultaneous
processes of de/re/construction; not in any specific class of objects or
within any particular representational genres, but in the envisioning of the
spaces and formulation of the critical practices that can be constitutive in
transformative social and political movements. Informed by her direct
engagement in liberatory political struggles before, during and after the
1979 Iranian Revolution as well as her experience of exile in North America,
Hashemi's work takes shape in a continuous process of countering masculinist
discourses of fundamentalism, fascism, colonialism, corporatism and
militarism. Notions of community, co-labouring, public space and active
participation are integral to her creative engagement. So is the
understanding that artistic practice, as a fundamentally social process, is
inherently political and must, therefore, be subject to conscious
(re-visionary) feminist re-articulation: The political is personal, the
personal is poetic, the poetic is political, the political must become
ethical.
The selected artists:
******************************************************
1.
Artist: Jaromil
---->The Farah project
About artist/work
Rami a.k.a. Jaromil (http://korova.dyne.org) is a free software programmer
and streaming media pioneer, media artist and activist, performer and
emigrant. Jaromil co-founded (1994) the non-profit organization Metro
Olografix for the diffusion of information technology, and in 2000 founded
the free software lab dyne.org; sub-root for the autistici.org /
inventati.org community. Jaromil is active in the Italy Indymedia
Collective, and is currently the software analyst and developer for PUBLIC
VOICE Lab (Vienna).
The Farah project documents Jaromils three-week trip, in August, 2002,
through the occupied territories of Palestine. During this time he crossed
East Jerusalem, Gaza, Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah. This was while
Bethlehem and Gaza were still under siege and Ramallah was experiencing
another full-time curfew after the assassination of Ahmad Saadat. Farah is
an effort to document the life and culture of the Palestinian population in
zones of war, without actually mentioning the war itself. It is a net-art
project in the way that it tries to use the net as a privileged medium to
unveil a beauty usually made far by war.
******************************************************
2
Artists group: Hardpressed Collective
--->The Olive Tree Project
About the group/work
The Hard Pressed Collective is a group of video artists working in support
of a just peace in Israel/Palestine. This project was inspired by the
solidarity efforts around the olive harvest in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories. Members include: Riad Bahhur, Richard Fung, Rebecca Garrett,
John Greyson, Jayce Salloum, and b.h. Yael. The Olive Project coordinator at
Charles Street Video is Greg Woodbury.
The olive tree has been a long standing source of nourishment and livelihood
for many peoples around the Mediterranean Sea. Images of olive branches and
leaves have been used to symbolize peace for millennia. Olive oil is also a
potent food, a rich salve,a currency, an energy source, and a site of
struggle.
Since the second Intifada in Palestine and Israel, the olive harvest in the
Occupied Palestinian Territories has been disrupted by violence, with
Israeli military forces and settlers preventing Palestinian farmers from
bringing in the crop. Since 1967, more than 200,000 olive trees have been
uprooted by Israeli forces from Palestinian land. This has prompted a
campaign by hundreds of international and Israeli volunteers to provide
protection for Palestinian olive farmers and help them harvest their crop
and prevent their theft and destruction by Israeli settlers. The Olive
Project is an artistic contribution to this solidarity effort.
******************************************************
3.
Artist: Mireile Astore
---> Tampa Project
About artist/work
Mireille Astore was born in Beirut and came to Australia in 1975 following
the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon. Although at the time Astore was
classified as a migrant by the Australian Government, her status bears a
strong resemblance to that of past and current refugees in the world. She
has two children and lives in Sydney. A multi disciplinary artist, Astore
also has a solid background in the visual and literary Arts, the Sciences,
art administration as well as policy development.
"Tampa" was a site-specific performance, sculpture, photography and
web-based art about the plight of recent refugees in Australia. It took
place between 30 October 2003 and 16 November 2003 as part of the "Sculpture
by the Sea" exhibition in Sydney. The sculpture and performance acted as a
dichotomy between the sense of freedom and grandeur the individual
experiences at the seashore and the imprisonment refugees faced as a result
of their trust in the most basic form of human rights. The Tampa incident
was of particular interest because of the definite schism it created in
Australia's perception of itself. The terms asylum seekers and refugees
entered the everyday vocabulary and with them, the unease about nationhood
and a crisis about who the Other really is.
In Tampa, the fusion of two spatial and temporal processes created a
tension, which has at its core a conflict of identity. The relationship
initiated and executed as I photographed onlookers then boldly circulated
their images through the Internet stands in sharp contrast to the assumed
refugee status I employed. Consequently, photographing from within was an
attempt at illustrating that the watched and the caged are in indeed
watching.
******************************************************
3
Artists group: Threadbare Coalition
---> Project Threadbare
About group/work
Project Threadbare is a city-wide coalition in Toronto, Ontario, made up of
members of the Pakistani and south Asian communities, cultural
organisations, immigrant and refugee groups, anti-poverty organisations,
political groups, faith groups, trade unionists, students, and concerned
activists and individuals who came together in response to the arrest and
detention of twenty Pakistani men and one south Indian man in August 2003.
None of the men have committed a crime and none have been charged.
Project Threadbare alludes to the RCMP investigation called "Project Thread.
" Although the investigation produced no hard evidence of any wrongdoing by
any of the men who were arrested, it was the basis on which they were all
held.
Our aim is to win exoneration for all the men by building a mass campaign in
communities across the country. We also seek to raise awareness about the
government's attacks on civil liberties in general and on immigrants,
refugees, and non-status persons in particular.
******************************************************
4
Artist: Haleh Niazmand
---> Survey of Common Sense
About artist/work
Haleh Niazmand's art has been exhibited widely in many galleries and museums
including the San Diego Museum of Art, the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, The
Des Moines Art Center, the University of Arizona Museum of Art, The Worth
Rider Gallery at the University of California, Berkeley, the Macy Gallery at
Columbia University and A Space Gallery, Toronto. The internet-adapted
version of her participatory projects The Survey of Common Sense and the
Post Exile collective's Word Room are included in the Rhizome's Artbase
archive. In addition, Niazmand's art has been discussed in numerous
scholarly essays, journals, and professional magazines including the Middle
East Women Studies Review, Radical History Review, Mix Magazine and Artweek.
Polls and surveys are amongst the most commonly utilized methods of social
control. In addition to their use in scientific research, surveys aid the
media and interest groups in the creation of public opinion, which often
directly affects the democratic processes of policy-making. Consequently,
over time, the influence of surveys will manifest in many aspects of public
opinion including the evolution of common sense.
The Survey of Common Sense is an art project that uses the methodology of
polls to address an array of contemporary social issues. The structure of
this work involves the audience's participation as an integral part of the
art, making it not merely observational or interpretive, but it is during
this participation that its purpose is revealed. The work's general strategy
calls for a re-evaluation of our judgmental rights, focusing on the uneasy
and the paradoxical worldview.
******************************************************
The texts copyright
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
~ E-Journal,
an extension of the global networking project,
R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/
will be edited periodically
in order to feature projects, curators, artists and other networking
instances on a textual information basis
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
~E-Journal Vol.2 - Features
.
1. Gita Hashemi curates "RealPlay
2. [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP - News!!
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
1. Gita Hashemi curates "RealPlay"
.
"RealPlay"
is the title of Gita Hashemi's
curatorial contribution to [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/
or direct access also via
www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/rrfv2.htm
.
Participating artists:
1. Jaromil
2. Hard Pressed Collective
3. Mireille Astore
4. Project Threadbare Coalition
5. Haleh Niazmand
.
RealPlay
Essay by Gita Hashemi.
RealPlay has little to do with play, really. It is about playing for real.
Topically positioned in specific times and/or places, the works in RealPlay
contest, counter and/or subvert dominant geopolitical and/or cultural
notions with reference to the colonial constructs of the "Middle East" and
the "West." This selection works as a broad political commentary as well as
responses to certain trends in "new media" discourse that explicitly or
implicitly (sometimes inadvertently) postulate and promote fundamental
distinctions and discontinuities between the "virtual" and the "real." Such
distinctions inevitably idealize the illusionary (utopic or distopic) space
where code is entirely capable of masterminding experience, or where code
becomes experience. The projects in RealPlay reject such Western-oriented
techno-centric and techno-determinist tendencies by privileging urgent
socio-political issues over media formalism and by insisting on the priority
of social interaction over, as well as through, cyberspace interactivity.
Using diverse practices of documenting and archiving, these projects
capitalize on the function of the internet as a repository of retrievable
data and, more importantly, as a communication channel that can be
advantageously put to use towards inciting counter-hegemonic thought and
action.
Subverting stereotypical representations of Palestinians as fanatic
terrorists or people solely occupied and pre-occupied by war, in <a href=
"http://farah.dyne.org/">Farah: In Search for Joy </a>, an account from a
trip to Palestine following the brutal Israeli re-occupation campaign of the
West Bank in 2002, software pioneer and artist Jaromil (Italy) gives an
account of the everlasting human search and capacity for joy in towns and
refugee camps under siege (again). Farah: In Search for Joy is a brief and
unpretentious traveler's search for and documentation of those aspects of
the Palestinian popular culture that continue to create, offer and celebrate
joy in spite of the prolonged conditions of colonial occupation and war. As
an archive (in progress), the website is incubated in and reflective of the
artist's interactions with his environment as it is a virtual space for our
encounter with a dimension of Palestinian reality categorically forgotten or
ignored in dominant representations in the West.
An initiative of Hard Pressed Collective (Canada), a group of media artists
with a penchant for politically-engaged art-making, <a href="
http://www.charlesstreetvideo.com/project.php?id=1">The Olive Project</a>
is, on the surface, a programmed compilation of short videos by diverse
international artists. Thematically grounded in the historically rich and
culturally diverse symbolism of the olive, the videos exhibit a range of
artist responses to the ruthless practice of uprooting olive trees in
Palestine by Israeli forces- a favourite occupation strategy aiming to force
Palestinians off their land by effectively undermining the economic survival
of the growers and their local production. Collectively, the videos
construct a time-based memorial to "peace and justice" made of 2-minute
blocks. Before, through and beyond the remediated compilation and its
dissemination in cyberspace, however, this project functions as a tool for
consciousness-raising, mobilizing and networking around an issue of real
world significance.
<a href="http://www.crixa.com/mireille/Migrant/Tampa.htm">Migrant</a> is the
web component of Mireille Astore's (Australia) larger sculpture and
performance project that takes as its starting point the infamous Tampa ship
incident in August 2001. The incident brought local and international public
attention to the plight of the "boat people"- refugees primarily from the
"Middle East"-who, upon arrival in Australian waters, were first refused
landing and then recast as prisoners by a xenophobic "Western" state. Astore
's obsessive photographic documentation (from the inside looking out) of her
18-day self-inflicted virtual imprisonment-in a scaled recreation of Tampa
on a public beach in Sydney-functions as a looking glass in which to observe
the uneasy and disturbing reactions to the arrival of new migrants by a
society that has repressed its own memory and burried its own racist and
colonial settler history under the grounds on which Woomera and Nauru
detention centres currently stand for real.
<a href="http://www.threadbare.tyo.ca/">Project Threadbare</a> is animated
by a coalition of activists in response to the detention in August 2003 of
21 South Asian (primarily Pakistani) students in Toronto, Canada under the
guise of anti-terrorist and national security operations. Since its
inception, Project Threadbare has been an immensely successful local
expository and legal campaign against racial targeting, detention and
deportation of immigrants and refugees by Canadian police, intelligence and
immigration forces, who are hotly in the race for the third place prize of
dishonour, after USA and Australia, for breaking their own nation's civil
liberties codes as well as international human rights conventions. This
website, an ongoing forum, newsboard and archive for Toronto activists, is
one wiki that doesn't pretend to be the virtual world's better-than-original
replica of "democracy." Although some of the active members of the coalition
are artists and their website is pretty slick, Project Threadbare was not
conceived as and does not make a claim to being new media art; rather, it is
a real world experiment in social and creative participation and
collaboration, with tangible impact in the lives of the original 21
detainees and now in the lives of many others in similar predicaments.
<a href="http://surveyofcommonsense.net/">Survey of Common Sense</a> is a
recreation of an earlier participatory painting installation project by the
same title by Haleh Niazmand (USA). A parody of the polling industry that
for the past 5 or 6 decades has been the engine of "democracy" in the United
States, Niazmand's image-text intervention, in the form of survey questions
with forced yes/no "choices," is not only an authorial comment on the
practices of polling as determinant of "democratic outcome," but a strong
challenge to notions of "pragmatism" and "common sense" preached from
political pulpits in the present-day United States. Beyond this, Survey of
Common Sense is an invitation, courtesy of an artist from the "Middle East"
and a citizen of the "West," to the participants/viewers to recongnize,
acknowledge and reflect upon the ways in which each and every one of us are
intricately and deeply implicated, really and virtually, in the bloody
absurdity of this political moment. As such and in the very impossibility of
responding with any degree of ease and resolution to Niazmand's questions,
this work is an incessant challenge issued so we will not slip into
forgetting.
The projects in this selection have taken shape independently of this
curatorial effort. My thanks to all the participants for allowing me to
include their work in RealPlay.
.
About the curator:
Gita Hashemi
engages in cultural practice as artist, writer, curator, organizer, worker
and educator. Her most recent curatorial projects include RealPlay (2004,
netart exhibit) Negotiations: From a Piece of Land to a Land of Peace (2003,
art-driven multidisciplinary event, http://negotiations2003.net), WILL
(2003, multidisciplinary transnational exhibition,
http://negotiations2003.net/will), Afghanistan, 2002: No Refuge and Locating
Afghanistan (2002-3, image-text exhibition and publication with photography
by Babak Salari), and Trans/Planting: Contemporary Art by Women from/in Iran
(2001, with Taraneh Hemami, http://strictlypersonal.net/transplanting).
Her recent titles include Post-Coitus (2003, http://post-coitus.net), Olive
Fair (2003, http://olivefair.net), Many Stones for Palestine (2002,
http://strictlypersonal.net/stones), The Word Room (2001, with Post-Exile
Collective, http://wordroom.net), A War Primer (2001, sound installation),
and Of Shifting Shadows (2000, CD-R). Hashemi's work has been exhibited,
reviewed and collected nationally and internationally. She is the founder of
Iranian Artists in Dialogue, a co-founder of Post-Exile Collective and a
founder of Creative Response. She resides in Toronto, Canada.
Hashemi's labour as an intellectual has crystallized in simultaneous
processes of de/re/construction; not in any specific class of objects or
within any particular representational genres, but in the envisioning of the
spaces and formulation of the critical practices that can be constitutive in
transformative social and political movements. Informed by her direct
engagement in liberatory political struggles before, during and after the
1979 Iranian Revolution as well as her experience of exile in North America,
Hashemi's work takes shape in a continuous process of countering masculinist
discourses of fundamentalism, fascism, colonialism, corporatism and
militarism. Notions of community, co-labouring, public space and active
participation are integral to her creative engagement. So is the
understanding that artistic practice, as a fundamentally social process, is
inherently political and must, therefore, be subject to conscious
(re-visionary) feminist re-articulation: The political is personal, the
personal is poetic, the poetic is political, the political must become
ethical.
The selected artists:
******************************************************
1.
Artist: Jaromil
---->The Farah project
About artist/work
Rami a.k.a. Jaromil (http://korova.dyne.org) is a free software programmer
and streaming media pioneer, media artist and activist, performer and
emigrant. Jaromil co-founded (1994) the non-profit organization Metro
Olografix for the diffusion of information technology, and in 2000 founded
the free software lab dyne.org; sub-root for the autistici.org /
inventati.org community. Jaromil is active in the Italy Indymedia
Collective, and is currently the software analyst and developer for PUBLIC
VOICE Lab (Vienna).
The Farah project documents Jaromils three-week trip, in August, 2002,
through the occupied territories of Palestine. During this time he crossed
East Jerusalem, Gaza, Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah. This was while
Bethlehem and Gaza were still under siege and Ramallah was experiencing
another full-time curfew after the assassination of Ahmad Saadat. Farah is
an effort to document the life and culture of the Palestinian population in
zones of war, without actually mentioning the war itself. It is a net-art
project in the way that it tries to use the net as a privileged medium to
unveil a beauty usually made far by war.
******************************************************
2
Artists group: Hardpressed Collective
--->The Olive Tree Project
About the group/work
The Hard Pressed Collective is a group of video artists working in support
of a just peace in Israel/Palestine. This project was inspired by the
solidarity efforts around the olive harvest in the Occupied Palestinian
Territories. Members include: Riad Bahhur, Richard Fung, Rebecca Garrett,
John Greyson, Jayce Salloum, and b.h. Yael. The Olive Project coordinator at
Charles Street Video is Greg Woodbury.
The olive tree has been a long standing source of nourishment and livelihood
for many peoples around the Mediterranean Sea. Images of olive branches and
leaves have been used to symbolize peace for millennia. Olive oil is also a
potent food, a rich salve,a currency, an energy source, and a site of
struggle.
Since the second Intifada in Palestine and Israel, the olive harvest in the
Occupied Palestinian Territories has been disrupted by violence, with
Israeli military forces and settlers preventing Palestinian farmers from
bringing in the crop. Since 1967, more than 200,000 olive trees have been
uprooted by Israeli forces from Palestinian land. This has prompted a
campaign by hundreds of international and Israeli volunteers to provide
protection for Palestinian olive farmers and help them harvest their crop
and prevent their theft and destruction by Israeli settlers. The Olive
Project is an artistic contribution to this solidarity effort.
******************************************************
3.
Artist: Mireile Astore
---> Tampa Project
About artist/work
Mireille Astore was born in Beirut and came to Australia in 1975 following
the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon. Although at the time Astore was
classified as a migrant by the Australian Government, her status bears a
strong resemblance to that of past and current refugees in the world. She
has two children and lives in Sydney. A multi disciplinary artist, Astore
also has a solid background in the visual and literary Arts, the Sciences,
art administration as well as policy development.
"Tampa" was a site-specific performance, sculpture, photography and
web-based art about the plight of recent refugees in Australia. It took
place between 30 October 2003 and 16 November 2003 as part of the "Sculpture
by the Sea" exhibition in Sydney. The sculpture and performance acted as a
dichotomy between the sense of freedom and grandeur the individual
experiences at the seashore and the imprisonment refugees faced as a result
of their trust in the most basic form of human rights. The Tampa incident
was of particular interest because of the definite schism it created in
Australia's perception of itself. The terms asylum seekers and refugees
entered the everyday vocabulary and with them, the unease about nationhood
and a crisis about who the Other really is.
In Tampa, the fusion of two spatial and temporal processes created a
tension, which has at its core a conflict of identity. The relationship
initiated and executed as I photographed onlookers then boldly circulated
their images through the Internet stands in sharp contrast to the assumed
refugee status I employed. Consequently, photographing from within was an
attempt at illustrating that the watched and the caged are in indeed
watching.
******************************************************
3
Artists group: Threadbare Coalition
---> Project Threadbare
About group/work
Project Threadbare is a city-wide coalition in Toronto, Ontario, made up of
members of the Pakistani and south Asian communities, cultural
organisations, immigrant and refugee groups, anti-poverty organisations,
political groups, faith groups, trade unionists, students, and concerned
activists and individuals who came together in response to the arrest and
detention of twenty Pakistani men and one south Indian man in August 2003.
None of the men have committed a crime and none have been charged.
Project Threadbare alludes to the RCMP investigation called "Project Thread.
" Although the investigation produced no hard evidence of any wrongdoing by
any of the men who were arrested, it was the basis on which they were all
held.
Our aim is to win exoneration for all the men by building a mass campaign in
communities across the country. We also seek to raise awareness about the
government's attacks on civil liberties in general and on immigrants,
refugees, and non-status persons in particular.
******************************************************
4
Artist: Haleh Niazmand
---> Survey of Common Sense
About artist/work
Haleh Niazmand's art has been exhibited widely in many galleries and museums
including the San Diego Museum of Art, the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, The
Des Moines Art Center, the University of Arizona Museum of Art, The Worth
Rider Gallery at the University of California, Berkeley, the Macy Gallery at
Columbia University and A Space Gallery, Toronto. The internet-adapted
version of her participatory projects The Survey of Common Sense and the
Post Exile collective's Word Room are included in the Rhizome's Artbase
archive. In addition, Niazmand's art has been discussed in numerous
scholarly essays, journals, and professional magazines including the Middle
East Women Studies Review, Radical History Review, Mix Magazine and Artweek.
Polls and surveys are amongst the most commonly utilized methods of social
control. In addition to their use in scientific research, surveys aid the
media and interest groups in the creation of public opinion, which often
directly affects the democratic processes of policy-making. Consequently,
over time, the influence of surveys will manifest in many aspects of public
opinion including the evolution of common sense.
The Survey of Common Sense is an art project that uses the methodology of
polls to address an array of contemporary social issues. The structure of
this work involves the audience's participation as an integral part of the
art, making it not merely observational or interpretive, but it is during
this participation that its purpose is revealed. The work's general strategy
calls for a re-evaluation of our judgmental rights, focusing on the uneasy
and the paradoxical worldview.
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