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With Brett Stalbaum

Brett Stalbaum is a research theorist specializing in information theory, database, and software development currently working for C5 corporation; Lecturer at the University of California, San Diego, Department of Visual Arts. A serial collaborator, he was a co-founder of the Electronic Disturbance Theater in 1998, for which he co-developed software called FloodNet, which has been used on behalf of the Zapatista movement against the websites of the Presidents of Mexico and the United States, as well as the Pentagon.

Stalbaum has been part of many other individual and collaborative projects, written on net art and its context/aesthetics, and is a past editor of Switch, the new media journal of the CADRE digital media lab. Current projects revolve around landscape experimentation and theory, both in collaboration with C5 and with the painter Paula Poole. Recent theory work includes Database Logics and Landscape Art. Current projects include GIS software development focused on the creation of a database, related libraries, and utilities for use with GPS, digital elevation modeling, and other applications.

Gun Geo Marker, Brett Stalbaum, Mobile App.

Katia- What were you working on before you co-founded the Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT)?

Brett- I was exploring a number of different ideas as a graduate student in the CADRE MFA program at SJSU in the mid 1990s, but around that time (97) EDT became one of three sorts of trajectories that are still part of the practices and projects I choose to remain involved with today. Ricardo Dominguez and I met online. We were on an email list, which was the social network of its day, and long story short, we just started working on EDT performances with a tool I wrote with Carmin Karasic, Floodnet. Other projects that were important to me at the time included C5, where I developed an engagement with locative media that outlives C5, and live on in some form in the more recent walkingtools.net lab that is managed between UCSD and UNIFESP. But especially important to me was the opportunity at CADRE to teach - as instructor of record - CADRE courses. This was a unique aspect of the CADRE MFA; instead of being guaranteed TAships or anything like that, we were able to compete for full responsibility teaching gigs. And really, teaching in the Computing in the Arts field is my core passion.

K- How did Zapatismo influenced your work?

B- We were safe here in the United States watching these courageous people take on the Mexican military (and its US advisers) with wooden prop guns and a paper airplane airforce. As Mexico murdered, the Zapatisas responded with creative strength, immense humanity, and courageous front line protection of their own communities. And poetry! And their own media. So you can imagine what we learned from them, their example ended up deeply influencing the development of the electronic civil disobedience. When you see people risking everything, it was suddenly not hard to facilitate virtual sit in protests (share in by tens of thousands of people) against the then President of Mexico and Pentagon.

Zapatista Floodnet, Electronic Disturbance Theater.

K- On 1997 you participated in Landscape Painting as Counter-Surveillance of Area 51. One year later you programmed the Zapatista Floodnet. For you which is the importance of incorporating tactical media into art?

B- I think you might have some sense from my earlier answer just how good an experience - and I think my cohort would agree - we all had studying with Joel Slayton and CADRE generally. The Area 51 project was a performance that intersected both network spaces and physical spaces. We did a plein air landscape painting performance for the private security contractors who guard the border of the no longer so secret base, but why? Because the signs said no photography or sketching, but nothing about landscape painting. And it was a really affective experience for us all personally to be engaging a very remote border that was more like landart and performance art that landart and performance art. I have been a back country and desert exploring type for much of my life, but suddenly so many of the things I had been studying (land art, outdoors life, performance art, technology in the landscape, the internet) all were able to interoperate in this productive and sometimes scary way. I was investigated by the FBI for a project having to do with emailing just about everyone at Nellis Air Force Base with spam about our project. (The story of how I attained the emails really reflects the internet we still know today.) Another project by colleagues in the program was legally threatened off of the web. (Until it somehow reappeared many years after;-) And we got to work with the legendary Area 51 land use activist Glenn Campbell, who unknown to us at the time was working with and artist by the name of Matt Coolidge at the Area 51 Research Center. Later when Matt qua CLUI was supporting Paula Poole, Christina McPhee and myself with this GPS Expo 2006 thing that happened, we discovered that missed connection. I have written a lot here, but yes that was a very important project to me personally.

Transborder Immigrant Tool, Electronic Disturbance Theater.

Now as to your question about tactical media, it and art have really been historically bound since well before the former term was uttered. Dada, Happenings, Media Jamming, Flash Mobs, Memes. All enclose tactical interventions designed to ephemerally rewire what Norman Klien calls scripted spaces and of course, scripted media. Art is at its core about rewiring, redefining, and reinterrogating itself as it explores new frames. It is not teleological as much as it is testing ranges of possibilities experimentally and constantly. Its role in the research university has become behaving as strange attractor, re-situating not only what art is or might be, but also productively intersecting with (and sometimes productively misunderstanding) other fields, while entailing them in some of our strengths (project/studio based research, a culture of critique and ideation, and spirit of experimentalism and adventure…) So art - at least at the the research university - is always tactical. Artists are also relatively inexpensive as researchers go, and researchers with big grants sometimes peel off a little for artists to explore new possibilities for their discoveries. So when you are relatively poor, many kinds of light, quick, parasitic and totally necessary maneuvers come to replace the kinds of long term strategic chess playing that many other fields and departments have the resources to engage with, but overall it creates a lot of complimentary relationships and interdisciplinary research opportunities.

K- Why is it important for you to work with geolocation?

B- For me geolocation is the best way get at the intersection of the real that data has long derived from, and more recently the data effect. The effect which data itself actively enters into a conversation with the real to produce the actual. Data engages in a feedback loop from its original, through us, back to its home ground (literally its home ground in the work I am most interested in), culminating in the production of our cultural and even geophysical experience. There are so many powerful things that can come from data interoperating with landscapes (physical and social), and I think we have only recently begun to understand this or scratch the surface of possibility, including political possibility.

K- Why do you think it’s important not only for arts but for our entire society to be conscious about the role of data and the data effect in our daily life and social structure?

Transborder Immigrant Tool installation, Electronic Disturbance Theater.

B- A lot of the reasons I think this is so are fairly apparent, the larger democratic implications government and corporate data surveillance. What is curious to me however is that the public largely views privacy as a right, but at least in the U.S. context most of the already fairly limited rights to privacy specified in our constitution were largely eviscerated by the U.S. Supreme Court under our previous Chief Justice, William Rehnquist. Today, there are very many in my country who just don’t understand that their perceived “right” to privacy really largely does not exist. There are a few notable laws like HIPAA where our legislative branch has passed privacy laws, certainly. But what limited privacy protections that do exist are very piecemeal. And I understand of course that the situation is very different within almost any latent nation state or, for example, the EU which has been a leader in privacy rights.

There is also an important reverse side of that coin to examine as well. What about the public’s right (including individuals, governments, corporations) to observe the commons? Police have always been allowed to follow people through the commons as part of investigations, for example. Yet to many, newer databasing of the public commons using technology from cameras to license plate readers feels like an invasion, as if the quantitative and dromological aspects of the technology have created a dangerous new qualitative reality. And that is likely the case. But does the practical given that surveillance is now too easy and too ubiquitous override the “right to observe”? If you believe the fundamental notion of the commons - which in the U.S. are our First Amendment protections for the press and freedom of assembly - then you can’t jettison the role of observation in the public domain. It is a fundamental property of the commons. I’ll admit I find the EU’s concept of a “right to be forgotten” a very regressive and dangerous concept.

Gun Geo Marker, The Gun Geo Marker UI shows nearby gun danger sites reported by users.

So if indeed data mining and search have indeed substantially transformed our older legal assumptions about what our rights to be databased or not should be, then first we need to embrace that it is our 18th century notions of private and public are themselves seriously broken, and totally unable to address the contemporary situation. We need newer concepts that are more nuanced and granular, because the naive notions of a “right to privacy” that many carry with them also implies a loss of rights to look, see, observe and record. A terrible example of this in the United States have been “Ag-Gag” laws, where some states have passed laws making it illegal to record images of (sometimes disturbing) agricultural practices from the public commons. For example animal rights activists using drones to observe and report animal cruelty, even if the drone or a photographer remains on or above public property. Or especially tedious are police assertions of an equally imaginary right not to have their activities in the public commons recorded by the public who employs them.

Artists have of course been active in creating provocations on all sides of these contradictions.

K- Why is it important for you to keep your works with data running on a tellurian level?

B- Well, we live here. Our spatial experience, where we are, where we go, the neighborhoods, or wildernesses, and by extension the totality of our cultural and economic experiences is perhaps the most deeply personal and constantly present phenomenological aspect intersecting our identities. Everything we experience happens somewhere we are, including the collapse of space enabled by networks because we can have these simultaneous windows into there(s) at the same time as the here. And through simulation, virtual heres. How space becomes an expressive form is an ancient and most certainly evolutionary and neurobiocultural aspect of at least humanity, if not every living thing that moves. Locomotion is the primary biological concern for our entire kingdom (in a biotaxonomical sense of kingdom), so moving through this world has roots far deeper than the experience and works of the first locative media artists who were prehistoric, small scale non-industrial societies who have been creating rights-of-passage, pilgrimage and other mediated walks probably since our ancestor species first stood up, but clearly in the prehistoric archaeological record of Homo Sapiens. So to me, it seems very natural to explore what the new possibilities are. That is our job as artists. How is the most ancient form of art (sorry painters) altered or otherly enabled by the confluence of database, GPS, ubiquitous mobile networks and the incredible computing power that can be held in one’s hand today? And augmented reality, I’m just stopping a really long enumeration here. For me, my the question is how can we walk, indulge in syntagm with our feet, and reorder our realities with our contemporary technologies of inscription? (I’m not rejecting “virtual worlds”, I just don’t work with them.) It was hundreds of years before Guy Debord cut up the Cartesian/Mercator map and introduced us to the walking remix, and discovered the power of getting lost. What can we do to re-explore our world with big data in ways that big data was not intended to be used? I love this thing we live on and want to know it new ways. For a lot of traditional environmental artists this is a little or a lot transgressive, but I’d rather align myself with eco-sexuals who are not afraid to get a lot transgressive with the earth. It may sound odd because my more formalist work is not, not, not about sexuality at all in fact, but I do draw a lot of inspiration from Beth Evans and Annie Sprinkle. In my own way I’m interested in opening up good new ways to love this thing we walk on too, and making it better to walk on. Differently, but with the same love.

Analogous Landscape by C5.

Installation view San Francisco Camerawork, 2005.

And you know, I work with collaborators - EDT 2.0 in particular - to try to make this a better world to walk on through spatial intervention and critique of the horrors of dislocation. This is not formalist work at all and really is about intervening as a group in some of the murderous neo liberal aspects of human spatial experience. But that work too, I would argue, is quite parallel in its spirit of transitivity and code switching. But this is perhaps better explicated by any of my many collaborators or all of us as a different mixed voice than any one of us, especially me given the narrower kinds of coding work that tend to be my larger contributions to those projects.

K- Do you believe in concepts like cyberspace or singularity? I imagine you do not, but could you tell me why you don’t, or if not why you do?

B- I’d rather just use “virtual” than cyberspace actually, something which I view as bearing a much closer relationship to the actual than the mistaken notion that the virtual lies in opposition to the real. I’m a Deleuzian in that regards. The singularity is a fun idea to bat around and I do think something will happen. But when it does, if it has not already because we tend not to notice the moments of transformation, it is going to be noted somewhat more prosaically than many take it to be beforehand. We will talk about it like we discuss the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculture, or agricultural societies to industrial ones, or industrial to information or information to experience economies. And like most futurist projections, neither our worst fears nor our best hopes will really work out exactly the way we thought they would even if aspects of either do pertain, and our economies will have to evolve amidst a lot of new uncertainties. I think it is time both to think about AI as something that possess equal rights, while at the same time not necessarily fearing for it. We should be expecting it, like parents might joyfully expect a baby. We will need to develop a better sense of working through problems and developing a shared objectives of progress, progress which I think we will certainly agree necessitates preservation of biological ecologies and solving a lot of really difficult problems. I would start planning for a social wage now, because we will see intense new waves of layoffs and displacements of how people live, but of course it is fair to say that this is already part of a long term trend since at least industrialization. All in all, it will be an overall win for humanity and the machinic phylum together, nevertheless with shitstorms similar to all past economic, political and cultural transformation.

http://www.walkingtools.net

http://gungeomarker.org

http://www.paintersflat.net

http://www.c5corp.com

How do we engage technology sustainably and in a way that supports creativity and freedom? With EcoArtTech

EcoArtTech (Leila Cristine Nadir and Cary Peppermint), is new media duo that studies the environmental imagination–from nature and built spaces to the mobile landscape and electronic environments–in the afterglow of modernization. EcoArtTech performances, exhibitions, and lectures have taken place at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Postmasters Gallery, New York University, 319 Scholes, Smackmellon Gallery, Exit Art, U.C.L.A., M.I.T. Media Lab, ISEA 2012, Banff New Media Institute, European Media Art Festival, Parsons The New School for Design, and the Neuberger Museum of Art

EcoArtTech, Indeterminate Hikes+, 2012–14, wilderness actualizing app for mobile devices; Courtesy of EcoArtTech 2012–14.

Katia Haus- Which one of your interests came first, ecology or technology? and why did you decided to mix them?

EcoArtTech- Ecology and technology are always mixed. They are often thought to be antithetical to each other, but we see humans as ecological and technical beings at the same time: human-animals literally cannot survive without technics. We are often frustrated by how environmental thinkers often reject technology (at least traditionally--that may be changing) and that technologists often forget that ecology and nature exist. Our works merge primitive with emergent technologies and navigate the intertwined terrain between nature, built environments, mobility, and electronic spaces.

On a more personal level: We both grew up in rural areas before moving into cities, and we both always identified as "environmentalist." We were always "interested" in nature and we have both spent a lot of time backpacking in wilderness areas and sleeping under the stars. However, ecology, in the deep sense, in the primordial, intellectual, spiritual sense did not always inhabit all our thoughts and ideas as it does now. And again, investigations and experiments with technology was always a part of Cary's life: he was taking apart and hacking his parents' VCR and designing his own modems in the 1970s.

EcoArtTech, Wilderness Collider, 2013, web app with live data from IH+, from basecamp.exe; Courtesy of EcoArtTech 2012–14.

K- How did Cary and You began working together?

EAT- We met in 1996 but didn't begin working together professionally until around 2004/05. At that point, Leila was a PhD student at Columbia University, studying literature and theory. Cary had been working as a new media artist for over a decade and was part of the early net art scene in NYC. In 2003, we moved into the woods and lived off-the-grid in a primitive cabin, and the experience caused what we call our "environmental turn." At that point, we both reimagined our respective practices in a more ecological way, merging media, technology, literature, and environment. Few people were during work like that ten years ago. Our collaborative name, EcoArtTech, in fact, arose out of a short-lived faux-academic online performance we called The Department of Ecology, Art, and Technology. At the time, we were thinking about a much needed ecological update to Experiments in Art and Technology, the organization founded four decades ago, which continues to advocate and facilitate collaboration between artists and engineers in the spirit of innovation. As we merged the areas of ecology, art, and technology, we found ourselves making work in the gaps between artistic and academic areas that rarely, if ever engaged in dialogue, between environmental art and thought, new media art and theory, and technology studies. In our nearly eight years of working together, what has remained consistent in Cary and I’s practice is the focus on the overlap between these areas, especially on how to use new media in unexpected ways, to reimagine environmental relationships through the staging of networked, aesthetic experiences.

K- How have the internet and computers pushed your field of work?

EAT- How do we engage technology sustainably and in a way that supports creativity and freedom? And if human beings are technical beings, relying on nature and culture simultaneously, is it even possible to distinguish between what’s natural and what’s not? Isn’t our sustenance dependent upon not only our biological needs (clean air, water and food) but also our cultural practices, beliefs, and imagination? This is why we find it essential to think about electronic spaces and digital technologies whenever we think about the “environment."

EcoArtTech, Indeterminate Hikes+, 2012–14, wilderness actualizing app for mobile devices; Courtesy of EcoArtTech 2012–14.

K- How have you seen that technology facilitates our re-integration to natural environments?

EAT- We are not sure that technology essentially does anything. Instead, we ask about how humans are using technology. Are we using technologies in ways that facilitate environmental relationships and sustainability, or in ways that disembed us from places, the earth, and the ecological systems we are part of and need to survive?

What motivates us most about working with new technologies is how they can be misused for unexpected purposes--and as unexpected environmental performances. Our recent project, Indeterminate Hikes+, had these questions at its core: Indeterminate Hikes+ is an Android/iPhone app for smartphones that reimagines how we interact with everyday landscapes and computing technologies. Smartphones, generally, are devices of rapid communication and consumerism, designed to get you what you want and where you want as quickly as possible. Indeterminate Hikes + reappropriates this technology for a very different end, turning smartphones into tools of environmental imagination, meditative wonder, and slowing-down.The app works by importing the rhetoric of wilderness into virtually any place accessible by Google Maps and encourages its users to treat these locales as spaces worthy of the attention we accord to sublime landscapes, such as canyons and gorges. With IH+, the ecological wonder usually associated with “natural” spaces is re-deployed to renew awareness of the often-disregarded spaces in our culture that also need our attention.

Basecamp.exe workshop with eighth-grade students from Ed Smith K-8 Elementary School, Syracuse, NY, at The Warehouse Gallery.

K- Would you say that nature is a very important part of our culture hence a critical part of 21st century art?

EAT- We cannot live without "nature."

K- Which are your goals with Echo Art Tech?

EAT- Our work has been expanding beyond the thematics suggested by the name "EcoArtTech." We are continuing to work together. However, we are increasingly going by our names these days. We have been working on food issues lately--a series of workshops and installations constellated around the title "OS Fermentation"--and we think it is divine providence that EcoArtTech has the verb "EAT" embedded within it.

K- As a duo, why did you chose art as your main communication channel?

EAT- Art chose us. We didn't choose art.

K- Do you consider your works in general to have a multispecies approach? And why is it important for you to establish cross bonds between species, like the case of bacterias and humans in OS Fermentation?

EAT- Our creative process is post-humanist. We recognize the nonhuman species and environmental influences, and even the technologies, that make humanity possible. The idea that animals, environments, and technologies influence and shape humans challenges the longheld Enlightenment idea that the humans are free, independent agents with objective control over the world. In a book called “What Is Posthumanism?” Cary Wolf explains the role of posthumanism in contemporary culture: “Posthmanism names a historical moment in which the decentering of the human by its imbrication in technical, medical, informatic, and economic networks is increasingly impossible to ignore.” Wolfe explains, however, that focusing on humans’ dependence on and creation by exchanges, systems, and interrelations does not amount to a dismantling of the human subject; rather, “the question of posthumanism… actually enables us to describe the human and its characteristic modes of communication, interaction, meaning, social significations, and affective investments with greater specificity” (What is Posthumanism? xv, xxv; orig. ital.).

The OS FERMENTATION installation is a collaborative hack with fruits, vegetables, and microbes. Live ferments, computer sensors, and custom software/electronics make fermentation’s subtle revolutions of pH, oxygen, and color visible to the human eye in a series of collectible prints. Click here for purchasing info.

K- Which are your beliefs about mankind's entry to the anthropocene? Do you think art can earthbound its public?

EAT- We are not sure about beliefs. Instead, we try to be open to the subtlest feelings, and then we try to observe these feelings. Our latest video work, "Late Anthropocene," is just that: an observation and meditation on our feelings about the Anthropocene. We made the video because we wanted to somehow create a document of this historical moment. The question we asked ourselves was: How do you document a geological feeling?

The following thoughts about the Anthropocene are taken from our video website:

Late Anthropocene is a documentary of the psychic fractures created by unprecedented planetary unsettling. It is a work of potential mourning and a meditation on the contradictory impulses of the human species.

We live in the Anthropocene, a geologic epoch defined by humanity’s profound reworking of the Earth’s ecological systems. Public dialogue about this time period circulates around the threats of carbon emissions, soil erosion, food insecurity, species extinction. We are filled will scientific facts, policy debates, and poor prognoses. But how do we nurture our imagination and take care of our spirits?

As two artists who love to move between city and country, we are haunted by the changes occurring biologically–the almost-imperceptible changes as well as the dramatic: the new parasitic insects emboldened by warmer winters, the advancing water lines evidenced by violent hurricanes, the disappearance of frost-lines that once heaved homes’ foundations. Rural and urban environments have been spaces of refuge and creative inspiration for us, each one a retreat from the other. But now, as we move between spaces, our experiences are interrupted by the feeling that we are accompanied by ghosts–or maybe we are the ghosts–and by momentous changes that may have already taken place even if we cannot visually perceive them.

K- Why does involving your "public" in your work, or transforming them into active viewers matters to you?

EAT- It helps encourage the creative abilities of all people. Disrupts the idea of artist as solitary genius. Gives both permission and power to participants.

EcoArtTech, OS Fermentation 2014+; Courtesy of EcoArtTech 2014+.

K- Which are your thoughts about teaching through art as well as using it to generate knowledge?

EAT- It is all one and the same for us. Learning comes from lived experience. Best case scenario art provides life experiences through the re-framing of perspectives and then minds grow to accommodate new ways of being in the world.

K-Have you achieved or caused changes in people and society with your work?

EAT- Yes. But not dramatic cinematic, revolutionary change. Small change like a left turn instead of a right turn. Or an increased awareness of space, time, and body for a few fleeting moments. People may say things like: "I have never seen a tree like that." or "Wow I have lived here my whole life and never walked down that street."

EcoArtTech, Indeterminate Hikes+, 2012–14, wilderness actualizing app for mobile devices; Courtesy of EcoArtTech 2012–14.

K-Which would be your own definition of art?

EAT- There is no such thing as ART and art is everywhere, in the simplest gestures. All it takes is a conscious disregard for the cliched stories that are generated by engines of commerce and power and a slow, steady, increased awareness of the changes happening all around us right now.

Leila Nadir is an Afghan-American critic, scholar, artist, and creative writer, and teaches environmental humanities courses in the Sustainability and Digital Media Studies programs at the University of Rochester. She earned her PhD in English from Columbia University in 2009, where she studied environmental thought, critical theory, and contemporary literature, and was Andrew Mellon Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow of Environmental Humanities at Wellesley College in 2010-2011. Her essays, reviews, and scholarship about natural, built, and digital environments appear regularly in academic journals, such as Leonardo, Antennae,Cather Studies, and Utopian Studies, and in popular print and online magazines, including American Scientist, North American Review, Hyperallergic, Furtherfield, and Rhizome.org. In 2011, the Society for Utopian Studies awarded her its Eugenio Battisti Award, and early in 2007 its Arthur O. Lewis Award, for her scholarship connecting the fields of environmental studies and utopian thought. For Leila’s full bio as writer/editor, click here.

Cary Peppermint’s solo art performances were some of the first to examine the effect of online spaces on the ways we imagination the environment and have been exhibited by the Whitney Museum (New York), Moving Image Gallery (New York), Pace Digital Gallery (New York), M.I.T. Media Lab (Boston), International Symposium for Electronic Art (Chicago), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Center for Contemporary Art (Scotland), European Media Art Festival (Osnabrück), Itaú Culturales (Sao Paulo), the Kitchen (New York). Described by Artforum as “twenty-first-century takes on Warhol’s Factory,” Peppermint’s early work has been chronicled in Alex Galloway’s Protocol (MIT Press, 2004), Jon Ippolito and Joline Blais’s At the Edge of Art (Thames&Hudson, 2006), and Mark Tribe and Reena Janna’s New Media Art (Taschen, 2006), among other critical texts. He is currently Assistant Professor of Digital Art at University of Rochester. Visit restlessculture for an archive of his net art performances from 1997 to 2003.

#ecoarttech #ecology #art #contemporary #cary #peppermint #leila #nadir

The Water Stations in Escondido, California.

Laura Celina Hunter, was born in La Barca, in Jalisco México. Laura grew up in the border town of Mexicali. She speaks Spanish and English and has lived in California for more than 34 years. She is a Naturalized US citizen. In 2000 she became one of the first Water Station volunteers and also started working to stop the All American Canal drownings. Water Station is a project that installs emergency water barrels in the desert of California to prevent deaths by dehydration on the desert.

Katia- How did you moved from Jalisco to California, and how has your life changed since you arrived to Escondido?

Laura- I was born in La Barca Jalisco and when I was 10 y.o. we moved to Mexicali, Baja California. It was until the age of 26, that I left Mexicali and moved to Tijuana because of my work. Since my teens, my family and I had what is now called "Laser Visa"; we could go shopping or travel to the United States anytime.

In 1976 I moved from Tijuana to Long Beach because I married an American man who is the father of my two youngest daughters. Since then I’ve lived in several cities of the American Union, and since late 2008 I reside in Escondido (A city with a 48% Latino population rate).

K- How did you first volunteered for Water Station?

L- In 2000 I saw an article in the San Diego local newspaper in which a man named John Hunter was beginning to install water in several places in the Imperial Valley area. He wanted to help reduce deaths from dehydration in the desert. By the year 2000, 29 people had died in that sector.

My boyfriend (at that time), and I decided to volunteer. Eventually I ended my relationship with him, and John Hunter and I became very good friends. Then he started pretending me. We dated for 2 years and got married in 2004.

Migrants Graveyard near the Mexico-US border.

K- How and what is your job within Water Station?

L- My work with Water Station has been one of the most important experiences of my life. I am as we say in Mexico "The todologa". I do everything. I answer calls, emails, organize each season’s dates... I am the person who plans all the organization, coordination, planning and especially public relations for Water Station. Many times I take calls from people who have lost a family member in the desert of CA, AZ or TX. All the work is voluntary.

Fixing up a flag in Ocotillo, California.

K- How did you founded Citizens for All American Canal Safety and what is your work there?

L- Since 2001 I joined John, who is now my husband, to ensure that security measures were installed in the All-American Canal. On 2010 we finally made it and this video [http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-all-american-canal/ ] showed what for many years was ignored: more than 500 people had drowned in the All-American Canal by that date.

Drownings have decreased after the security measures were installed in 2011.

The All american canal.

K- For you, which is the importance of working on projects such as Citizens for Water Station and All American Canal Safety?

L- I am always passionate when it comes to do work that can fix a problem near me. I believe I’ve been greatly facilitated to do that. I think we came into this world to help each other, not to hurt us. And I am deeply saddened and moved by the situation that so many of my people face to provide for their families.

K- Your background as an elementary school teacher and as a tourist guide on the Copper Canyon highlights your interest in education. Do you think Citizens for Water Station and All American Canal Safety are also a way to educate people?

L- Yes, I think you're right. My background in education has served me well to "educate" people who can not understand how can a person can leave everything behind and risk his/her life to get by and provide for his/her family.

I'm passionate about our work, primarily with groups of students who are tomorrow's leaders. I share with them my experience, especially raising awareness of what is happening near the border and what can we do about it.

K- How do water stations work? How is their cycle and what kind of maintenance they require?

L- We have permits from BLM (Bureau of Land Management) to set up the stations in late March. We pick them up in late October. We are not allowed to leave anything in the desert, so we install and remove everything each summer. Every 2 weeks we check if water is needed and repair the stations in case they’ve been vandalized.

Vandalism on Route 98. There are still people that do not like what Water Station volunteers do. The water station shows some bullet holes and one of the volunteers holds the plastic jug and one of the bullets that was inside the empty water jug.

K- How do you determine the locations in which you set up the stations?

L- The stations are installed where in the past, the Border Patrol had indicated a fatality. We mark all sites with GPS and deliver the maps to the BLM showing where the sites are.

I think that the patterns of immigration in our area have considerably declined, but people are still going by through it. We know this because of the water use, and also the number of people who have died in the area is probably less than 10.

K- What changes have Water Station and Citizens for All American Canal Safety have generated on both, those who benefit from them, and those around the teams?

L- As a result of the works of Water Station in 2001 Reverend Robin Hoover heard an interview that NPR Radio did to my husband and invited him to visit Tucson AZ in order to share with him what he was doing in CA. After that, Robin Hoover founded Humane Borders, which does the same as Water Station: sets up water stations in different parts of the desert in AZ.

I must tell you that the most dangerous area in AZ is the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation. Many people cross to the US through that area because I believe it has no border wall. But Tohonos do not allow water to be installed by outsiders. However there are two Tohonos that set up water stations, David Garcia and Mike Wilson.

Map showing the Tohono O'odham Indian Reservation (AlJazeera).

On 2013 we were invited by a group in Houston to show and teach what we do at Water Station. Today this group, led by Eddie Canales, is placing water stations in some places in TX. We have been supporting them too.

While visiting TX we also met with a Sheriff, a Judge and a rancher. It is noteworthy that most of the Mexico border is privately owned in TX. Some ranchers have allowed water stations and others reject them. In TX and AZ more than 150 people die annually.

What we learned regarding the American Canal and the drownings is that public humiliation makes people do the right thing. We spent 10 years of pushing and shoving hoping for these security measures to be taken and nothing happened. But we did not surrender to indifference. With the help of "60 Minutes" we exposed them to the light and succeeded, and we’re really pleased with the results.

K- Technically you've worked all your life on the border. The problem we have between Mexico and the U.S. is the same between Guatemala/Belize and Mexico, and many more nations. Walls are becoming something natural in borders. There is one between Mexico-USA; one between North Korea-South Korea; one between Saudi Arabia and Iraq/Yemen, and soon between Guatemala-Belize and Costa Rica-Nicaragua. After all you’ve lived, do you see any possible solution to the world’s border problems?

L- It is very sad to see the indifference that countries (or their rulers) have towards people from other nations, mainly towards immigrants. I’ve had the chance to talk to people from other countries and they have told me that problems are the same in all the world.

Unfortunately I see no immediate or short future solution. It's amazing how can we hurt each other so badly. I think sometimes that we humans specialize on complicate life on Earth. (I don’t want to sound too negative)

That’s why I always remember what Benito Juárez said "Among the individuals and among Nations the right to respect of others is peace" or the phrase of ML King "Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere".

#laura hunter #laura #hunter #water #station #water station #water stations #dehydrated #dehydration #border #desert #border deaths #all american canal

The myth of Acteon

ὁρᾷς τὸν Ἀκτέωνος ἄθλιον μόρον,

ὃν ὠμόσιτοι σκύλακες ἃς ἐθρέψατο

διεσπάσαντο, κρείσσον’ ἐν κυναγίαις

Ἀρτέμιδος εἶναι κομπάσαντ’, ἐν ὀργάσιν.

(Look at Actaeon’s wretched fate

who by the man-eating hounds he had raised,

was torn apart, better at hunting

than Artemis he had boasted to be, in the meadows.)

The unalterable fact on Acteon’s myth is a hunter’s transformation into a deer and his death in the jaws of his hunting dogs. According to Callimachus, Artemis was bathing in the woods when the hunter Actaeon stumbled across her, thus seeing her naked. He stopped and stared, amazed at her ravishing beauty. Once seen, Artemis got revenge on Actaeon and forbade him to speak — if he tried he would be changed into a deer — for profaning her virginity’s mystery. Upon hearing the call of his hunting party, he cried out and immediately was changed into a stag. He fled deep into the woods, and doing so he came upon a pond and, seeing his reflection, groaned. His own hounds couldn’t recognize him with his new shape and turned upon him and tore him to pieces.

Actaeon is thought by many to symbolize ritual human sacrifice in attempt to please a God or Goddess. The dogs symbolize the sacrificers and Actaeon symbolizes the sacrifice. I first linked Acteon’s myth to art thanks to a book by Octavio Paz that changed my life on 2008. Several years later I bought the book again just to search it to find Paz’s metaphor between the figure of the artist and Acteon. This time I thought it was one of the most conservative books I had ever read and toss it away.

In relation to the hunter-hunted transmutation, I believe every emerging artist from the 21st century should focus on achieving it. According to Paz, every artist needs to shift from an observer to an observed figure. However, I believe Paz omitted a decisive fact. In order to complete the circle, the deer needs to be not only devoured, but unrecognized by the hunting dogs. That’s what I believe all the artists emerging on the 21st century should do: to be unrecognized and devoured by it’s watchers (at least the ones we’re aiming towards “changing” something).

The biggest myth in art is that creativity is something exclusive for artists. Since the french Academia, the art world had educated mankind to judge its works as something good if they can’t make it, and as something bad if they can. Artists deny they copy because they fear to be misjudge or unoriginal, when in fact, every artist on earth has copied another. And most important, we’ve all seen objects or works that are what we wanted to do (Actually that was the moment when we decided to become artists). So automatically people outside the art world considers themselves inferiors. They believe they can’t paint, experiment with space, sculpt, draw, take photos, etc, because what they do does not look like Helmut Newton’s or Rembrandt’s creations on the very first time they tried to make them (it’s pretty obvious for artists that this is impossible to happen, but actually our public believes that it does happen).

Basically our function on this planet has been reduced to make its population think they’re dumb. If someone had an idea before you, then it’s unoriginal, hence useless. People believe they do not have the right to create because they’re not good enough. They’ve grown hearing that their ideas do not matter in culture, because everything they like and understand is junk culture and needs to be forgotten. Things like football, pop music, Vanity Fair, Playboy, GQ, Cosmopolitan, or Vogue need to be flushed if you're an educated person. This is actually quite funny, cause Alfred H. Barr always taught about art and culture using those magazines, and this was by the time the MoMA opened! And remember, it was MODERN art! So why do we keep anchors an still rely on the french academia after more than two hundred years?

Actaeon also may symbolize human curiosity or irreverence, and that’s why I’ve chose it’s figure for this text. There’s another enormous myth around art: A work of art can change the world. I do not understand how some people buy this shit. Artists won’t change a thing as long as they exist as a separate class. Artists and their helpers are the nobility of culture; we’re no different from Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, living the golden age inside galleries, museums, and even at “independent” spaces. The only way in which art can change the world is if it’s executed collectively by mankind. The question is, will artists finally let go art? or will we keep it in our hands for another two hundred years? I believe the art world won’t let go. That’s why I hope the world to guillotine us, and I’m definitely doing everything in my power for that to happen.

A.C. <[email protected]>

You can participate on a discussion about The Myth of Acteon thread by joining integrity mailing list or by sending an e-mail to [email protected] (Will need to be approved by one of the moderators).

#acteon #myth #creativity #art #theory #contemporary #alonso #cedillo #mata

I don't believe in closed discourses because I'm sure it's a way of manipulating people.

Some of the phrases i hated the most in college, and also why I ended dropping out of it were:

-What does your work mean?

-What does it represent?

Or even worst:

-Where’s the justification?

So it doesn’t matter if what u do brings u pleasure. The only thing that matters are the limits that cage your creation (As if one thing meant or represented the same to all of us… fuck u Kant). And why on earth we need to justify that we do? Is it because art is useless and artists, curators, and critics just can’t deal with that?

Justify, justify, justify. Fuck u I don’t justify a shit. I just do things because I like to do them. And because if I didn’t probably not much people would do what I like. The artists who can’t do this should grow a pair. If you need 5 pages to convince people that your work deserves their attention, then prob not even you believe your work is good.

Unfortunately sometimes on the cultural ground, blindness, prepotency, misunderstanding and ignorance can be confused with great intelligence. So since the 20th century, art’s mainstream has tried to become trans-philosophic (or just trying to illustrate philosophy on a “fur dummies” way). It’s all: “Foucault said” or “Delueze believed”, or “Lacan proved”. Congratulations asshole, just tell me what did you do, believe, found out, or proved? Do you think I wanna know about Lacan, Deleuze and Foucault and that’s the reason I actually approached your art?

If u wanna understand Lacan, u read Lacan. Wanna give a try to the Rhyzome? U read Deleuze and Guattari. U wanna know y everyone like Foucault? U read Foucault (even if after u don’t fully understand y’s everyone so excited about him). U don’t go to a museum or gallery to know about their thoughts cause that would be quite an ineffective method. No offense (remember I’m also an artist) but learning philosophy from artists is just like asking an elementary school classroom their opinion about the daily and foreign politics of our government.

The art world is trying desperately to reduce art. It cages it with concepts like meaning, representation, and justifying. This is foolish. I‘ve seen lots of artists receive wonderful feedback and automatically reject it because “that’s not what they meant” or isn’t “what they tried to represent”. In those cases the ignorant dbag is always the artist.

The deal is that artists are no longer concerned about triggering thoughts in people’s minds. Instead they aim to infect their viewers thoughts with their ideas. The goal: to manipulate and make them all believe a single idea stated by the artist.

The funny thing is that after years of manipulating people through art discourses, and making people think they’re stupid because what they read “isn’t what the artist meant”, the art world still gets angry because people prefers music, football, and TV shows instead of our boring museums and galleries.

The thing is, will we ever be able of building museums and galleries that give people a rush on the same way music, football and TV do? Or is that just impossible? I know they are also used for manipulating people, but ain’t we supposed to b different? Can art be a field that completely rejects to manipulate it’s visitors? At least I’ll keep on working the way I do, using my work as an excuse to share thoughts an ideas on a P2P way. And never with closed discourses, cause I’m absolutely sure it’s quite a mean way of manipulating people.

Francisco González Zubizarreta <[email protected]>

#franz #zubizarreta #art #theory #discourses #conceptual #post-conceptual

On extracting data and its art and craft.

Data art started long before the internet, but for some of us, facebook (fb) for a long time served as our Cantarell Complex. On 2012 I accidentally began leaking it when I created drik magazine and later its archives. Today, quite more consciously, I can say beneath my internet data projects a reservoir of information has been formed, and this has happened on different data-based projects by other artists too.

Servers are attached to our soil just as onshore platforms are, soaking on data from all of their users. The internet is the equivalent of a pipeline but with the shape and function of an ouroboros. It’s a two-way pipeline, draining information from us and vomiting it back through our computers. Data flows through the internet into and from same wave territories (Santiago de Chile, Lima, DF, Nuevo Leon, Costa Mesa, and Washington DC) where we distill it through our computers in order to gather our resources, just as it happens in the rest of the world. The internet isn’t on the sky; we do not store data in clouds, we store it in servers. The floating internet concept is a lie in order to prevent us from realizing that the internet is grounded by a powerful tellurian nature.

On Cyclonopedia (Reza Negarestani), Dr. Hamid Parsani identifies oil as a tellurian lube. It’s the element that allows mankind to happen (contemporarily), and that is abundant on the gulfs of Persia and Mexico (among other places). Oil represents power and wealth, hence it represents control and sabotage too (ex: the Nationalization of Mexican Oil, the Arab Oil Embargoes, Saddam Hussein’s burning of the Kuwaiti Oil Wells, the Energetic Reform in Mexico, etc).

Data is quite similar to oil. Oil is the product of the passing of thousands of years, and information stays exactly the same. Oil wasn’t magically formed, and data inside the internet (and outside it) is never borne out of nothing. It is always the result of human life, and that is precisely why Lanier coined the concept of Digital Maoism (DM).

Sites like fb are considered great exponents of DM, since all the data they hold (and which constitutes the tellurian lube of the digital) has been uploaded by its users. At a glance it seems only fb profits from the data we gather for it, and in most cases this is true. However, fb and other companies’ profits depend on the behavior of its users. We need to fill DM with holes. We need to transform it into swiss cheese; then wait for data to fill the void and drain fb and other DM sites with no mercy.

Since the presentation of Swarm at ARS Electronica ’98 on the hands of the Electronic Disturbance Theater, in support of Digital Zapatismo and the victims of the Acteal massacre, art underlined how the concept of sitting gained effectiveness if it blocked the flux of data instead of the flux of people. In 1967, just a day after the Six Day War had begun, countries like Iraq, Kuwait, and Bahrain decided to use oil as a weapon and embargoed the US and the UK for supporting Israel. This led to the formation of the OAPEC, an organism that in 1973, executed a second embargo. This time the oil price was raised by 70% and the Arab countries stated their oil production would be reduced by 5% each month until Israeli forces left occupied territories in Syria and Egypt, which had been gained by Israel during the Six Day War. The embargo had little to no effect on the economy of the Arab nations, while all major markets of the rest of the world faced the 1973-74 Stock Market Crash.

We can use data as a weapon too. DM is not a house for data, data lives outside it. We control the production and digitalization of data, the tellurian lube that allows the existence of fb and other DM companies. We can pump data through it in order to drain what we’re looking for, and then pump it out in order to profit from it. This is why I believe 21st century art needs to be data-based.

The art world came into existence since the French Academia as a Napalmic entity, one made of an inextinguishable fire that can flow/flood into every corner of culture and won’t disappear until it consumes itself. It is this very nature which requires it to burn out. But it is its hunger for recognition and legitimization what has inspired it to generate strategies to keep the fire burning perennially. It’s because of this that art and culture have been burning all that surrounds them for centuries, becoming one of the communities of the world’s greatest enemies, and burning them ceaselessly too. This way, not even painting or sculpture were our friends. However this doesn’t mean they can’t ever be.

Data has been flowing through art since the beginning of art, just as oil has been there since the beginning of civilization. Art has also been used to gather data for centuries. We do not need to transform art into a data bank. Art has been a data bank since the beginning. We need to start controlling the data and its flux. Data has a liquid nature too; it tends to flow wherever it can, and we can make it flow through the art world (which today occupies important territories in education, power, business, economy, banking, and tourism, among other areas). The art world is nothing more than fog of war. It is the same fog described by John McTiernan’s The 13th Warrior, covering the Wendol and their serpent of fire while they murdered humans to consume them. By using data as a weapon and incorporating it into art, we can transform art into a gigantic tank in the fight for freedom that uses the same fog of war to strike with a powerful backlash. Art should no longer be a trigger for action, its time to counter back and use art as a war machine.

alonso cedillo <[email protected]>

#alonso #cedillo #arts #craft #art #data #data art #infowar #tellurian #internet

Are we living in the Matrix and is it working as a dreamworld?

One of the reasons I though warrantied our life is happening outside the matrix is that instead of a dreamworld we exist on a living nightmare.

The deal is that if we remember The Matrix trilogy, Earth seemed to have the same issues we have today. Poverty existed, wealth centralization existed, hierarchies existed, unemployment and pollution existed, so our society hadn’t improved a shit. Humans were fucked in the virtual and in the real. The only positive aspect could be that machines would’ve built a containing camp for mankind. Plus, finally a cross-species bond would have been established between the remaining earthlings: humans, and machines.

Both of my folks are ambientalists, so I heard them complaining during my childhood about global warming, and disasters like Chernobyl and Bhopal. Later, in my teens, I felt scared when they told me about the garbage patches, that until today, together with the arctic meltdown give me the creeps. The truth is that everything has gotten worst than what we believed it would be. And I’m pretty sure disasters and environmental loss will keep on existing in higher amount. Humans are most of the time, the headache and the reason of the suffering of every single kind of our companion species, and also of other thousands of humans.

The question that makes my head spin is, would the virtual world be fucked because the machines had granted us free will inside it? And why do we fuck things up? What I have come to accept is that in the near future things will probably get even worst. And it will be in every aspect, ecologically, culturally, economically, etc. I guess we can’t escape from entropy. It seems that fate doesn’t lack a sense of irony.

It has been said since the day we got online that the internet is just like the real world except that while using it, it’s easier to find people who have the same interests (and those aren’t necessarily positive interests). Humans are the ancestors of computers, and through the last 200 years, the power of humans has been accelerated in some ways and undiminished on others because of our machines. [1]

In 2016, the International Commission on Stratigraphy will examine the existence of a new geological period, the Anthropocene. According to Bruno Latour [2], as we have explored space, “we have realized that there is no longer any Frontier; no escape route except going back to Earth” (Actually the idea of Gaia came to existence thanks to the visualization of Earth from outer space.) “So the direction is not forward, plus ultra, but inward, plus intra, back home”. We’re forced to stay on Earth, an Earth which’s online and physical worlds are beginning to blur, letting us see that that humans have changed the planet forever and for everyone living on it. The proposed name for this period is the Anthropocene.

So the usual question regarding my words is: how does this relates to art? Yesterday I recieved a comment form an unconventional painter telling me artists are artists and not super heroes. My answer was and still is, that being conscious and spread out consciousness is quite far from being a super hero, it is actually more our moral obligation. Today science and art aren’t that far away. Perhaps once they were, but since science has been seen as a mediating visual activity, visual arts have offered themselves to it as a fabulous resource.

Both science and art have been living a struggle for centuries. The first one to separate itself from its epistemological past and, the second one from aesthetics. And as they’ve succeed an interesting phenomena has occurred, which Latour has defined as “Vascularization”. The term vascularization is commonly used to refer to the normal or abnormal formation of blood vessels, naturally or induced. Our vessels are the part of the circulatory system that transports our blood throughout the body, so as vascularization occurs, new routes are constructed.

Humans are border establishing creatures. Everything has been divided by mankind, even thought. We think ontologically, conceptually, aesthetically, politically or economically. We also produce (art and other things) on that way. This isn’t only boring, it has brought misery to us. That’s why as long as we keep the flux of information running steady through art, vascularization holds a bright future for it.

Art is always a mediator. As Luis Camnizter says: through their work, artists learn to communicate, and the public learns to make connections. That is why art is full of mediators. In fact the more mediations the stronger it becomes. For example, the more I read about the intermediary steps that build up an specific artwork, the more I like it or dislike it. The most important reason which I consider art should stop ignoring our planet’s problems (and put an end to the “art is only art” statement), is that in it, people do not have to build a stable hierarchy of the mediators to find acceptable a certain fact stated by it. As Latour says, “in art it remains slightly easier than in science to be constructivist and realist at the same time”, and it is also easier to send messages that can target an specific part of our population that usually do not care about science nor our environmental issues (or that believe those are another man’s concerns).

Of course we can think art is only art, a useless paraphernalia meant only for decoration and making money, and not care about the current problems of our planet (which is where art exists, and also where all of the materials that have allowed man to make art came and come from). But as Virginia Wolf said: “think we must”! Living and working in the artworld is what has transformed art into our weapon. So how can we use art to help mankind transform Earth into a recovering and a recovered planet? Doing this doesn’t makes us super heroes, but luckily that is not the objective. However it will grant the survival of all earthlings, hence the survival of art. The best we can do is to be responsible and accept that the change and our future depends on all of us and not only in science. Just as Scott F. Gilbert has said, we are all lichens (as lichens always live among filaments of a fungus in a mutually beneficial relationship).

Katia Haus <[email protected]>

[1] http://www.millenniumassessment.org/en/Condition.html

[2] http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/131-ANTHROPOCENE-PARIS-11-13.pdf

[3] http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/66-GALISON-JONES-pdf.pdf

#katia #haus #moore #matrix #anthropocene #bruno latour

With Bryn Oh

Bryn Oh is a virtual artist created by a Toronto oil painter, that lives and works inside Second Life.

Katia Haus- How did you began exploring the regions of second life after your second life birth in 2007??

Bryn Oh- I had originally heard of Second Life after reading a story about a man who purchased a virtual condominium for $200,000 USD. It seemed crazy to me so I decided to go look at this building myself. I was completely unfamiliar with virtual spaces at the time and the experience was so compelling that I forgot to even look for this building. Shortly after I began exploring this virtual world, which is roughly the size of Texas, I discovered that I could create things. This creative outlet was what hooked me.

Screenshot of The Singularity of Kumiko.

K- On which way do you understand the space in which you exist??

B- I create virtual environments which often follow a narrative. They also often contain original poetry, 3D sculpture and an open ended virtual multi user environments whose focus is on immersion. I will give an elaborate example of what type of art space this is as I believe it is important to do so in order to explain how I see the space where I exist and create unique virtual artwork.

Screenshot of The Singularity of Kumiko.

I am an oil painter. One of the general goals for any artist in any medium is to have the audience engage with your artwork for as long and deeply as possible. The longer you can keep someone connected to your work the better. Once their attention leaves your work the immersive connection dissipates and it can be hard for them to immerse to the same degree.

So now let's look at a traditional painting done by Mattia Preti. It is a good example on how to create an "eyepath" for the viewer. The term "eyepath" generally refers to how your eye subconsciously moves around within the composition of an artwork, in this case a painting. Essentially when you view an artwork your eye usually enters from the bottom right side of a painting and follows in a counter clockwise circle moving from focal point to focal point. A focal point being an area that dominates your attention.

Some artists are aware of this phenomenon and will work on the 2D plane to lead the viewers eye around their artwork in an endless cycle. They are attempting to keep the viewers eye revolving within the artwork for as long as possible, as the eye can leave a painting quite easily if the composition is poor.

Your eye will be drawn to and follow contrasting colours such as white against black. The high contrast will draw your eye there subconsciously. In this example you can see high contrast in the foreground figures leg against the white table cloth.

The angle of this area of contrast points upward towards the right hand side to where a woman is pointing at the central figure. Your eye follows her gaze and finger to the focal point of the entire painting which is the murder of Amnon by Absalom, son of King David, for the rape of his sister Tamar.

Now if you were walking down the street and saw a group of people looking into a shop window, there is a very good chance you would also peer inside as you walked by, just out of curiosity. Point at something and other humans will look automatically. Cats won't but humans, dogs and other things will. It is how our brains work.

Similarly your eye will also follow what figures in a painting are looking or pointing at. Your eye will move to unique areas that stand out. So if a painting, for example, is made up of a majority of triangular sharp shapes, the eye will naturally be drawn to a single soft circular shape because of its uniqueness within the artistic environment. Same would be true for a painting composed predominately in blue, which had a small area of yellow in it. Your eye would typically go first to the yellow portion.

In the Preti painting, all the figures are vertical whereas the main character, whom the artists wants you to focus on, is horizontal. If you look at the dark strip of black in the centre of the painting it contrasts strikingly against the blue area on its left side and the assassins hand which holds an important narrative element to the painting... a knife. Both knives are hard to see against the dark background which forces the viewer to focus on them longer or notice them at a later time. When they are discovered the eye studies them longer because they are a found object with a sense of mystery. Your eye follows the angle of the blade directly to the face of the figure, and a process called "triangulation" is used whereby the assassins eyes also look down to the figure. This creates the shape of a triangle which circulates the eye within a smaller cycle. Your eye will eventually break free of this knife area and move on, then be caught elsewhere to again be cycled within the artwork.

Look at this painting for a moment and see how your eye is drawn to the central character.

I have marked down some of the directional lines which lead to the main character. All these things are used to lead your eye there and keep you within the painting.

As you can see the artist has created a very strong composition to not only draw you to the central figure, but to also keep your eye within the painting for an extended period of time. Each time your eye wanders it is caught and sent back down into the painting.

But this is all looking on a 2D surface that is static. You often will stand back in a gallery and view a painting from six or so feet away. The artist can control you subtly with these techniques and you can be immersed to a degree as you imagine what is happening in the scene.

Now suppose in this gallery a pretty lady or handsome gentleman walks by or your cell phone rings. The connection between the painting and yourself is strained or possibly broken. The artist wants to immerse you, but they are not strong enough to fight against your cell phone or other distractions. So there is a level of immersion but it is quite fragile.

Suppose we now look at cinema. If you go to a movie you have a seat, then the lights go dark to reduce any distractions around you. The movie screen is very large to block out your peripheral vision. They want your vision to be dominated exclusively by their narrative. They don't want your view moving past the border of the screen to be distracted by elements outside the movie itself.

There is of course the big glowing red EXIT sign which always reminds you that you are not "in the movie" but rather "watching a movie". Things like the exit sign are little barriers that keep you from being fully immersed. The goal is to eliminate as many barriers as you can.

Screenshot of the final room of The Singularity of Kumiko.

They then turn the sound up high so that you are again dominated by your senses. You won't hear others talking so easily, and are then less likely to be distracted, and thus have the immersion broken. There is narrative and each scene has its own composition. Big image, overpowering sound, darkness outside the border and hopefully a narrative able to captivate.

But with cinema you are a passive observer to the story. You do not interact but remain separate from the medium.

Once the movie ends you can restart it, but the narrative is fixed as well as the camera movement. It will never change regardless how many times you watch it.

So we can see how mediums strive to keep your attention.

Now here is a true story.

Screenshot of Shadow history in The Singularity of Kumiko.

I am Canadian but I used to live in Europe for a year. In Florence actually. One time I took a trip to Paris and went to the Louvre. While there I desperately wanted to see the Mona Lisa. I found it, but was dismayed to discover a huge crowd around it like fruit flies on a blueberry. I tried to get close but am not the pushy type.. which you kind of need to be, so I lingered around the outside of the crowd and being pretty short I was unable to see the painting very well.

In hindsight being unable to see it probably made me want to see it even more.

But as the fates would have it.. the fire alarm went off at that moment. Everyone left the painting and within a short time I was alone with the Mona Lisa. I was not about to leave because of a fire alarm.. I mean like really.. the Louvre is obviously not going to burn down. So I had the Mona Lisa to myself and looked at it for perhaps ten minutes.

That is a pretty long time to stand and look at something though it doesn't particularly sound long.

Screenshot of the Death of Mr. Zippers in The Singularity of Kumiko.

Yesterday someone contacted me and told me how they were enraptured by my build the Singularity of Kumiko and they explored for five hours. Five hours is more than most, but it's quite common for people to stay for over two hours. Some come for weeks finding more and more little details they have missed.

So what does that say about the potential of this medium? Why can some people spend so much time with a virtual artwork?

The painter works diligently to keep you engaged with their artwork, but think back to the longest you have ever been immersed by any artwork in any medium? Cinema is perhaps the most effective for immersion yet the viewer is not really a part of the experience. They are not an active participant but rather passively being told a story with a scripted camera narrative.

A virtual work can keep the viewer engrossed for a longer period and perhaps this is because the viewer is actively experiencing the artwork. I have said in the past that I think of my artwork here in virtual worlds almost as paintings you can enter and explore. The beauty of a painting, the immersion of cinema and then meshed in with it a new type of open ended freedom of movement combined with interaction.

Screenshot of Imogen sewing her pigeon disguise in the Singularity of Kumiko.

There are many new and interesting techniques to experiment with inside the virtual art form. The one which I brought up at the beginning, that ties into my new build The Singularity of Kumiko, is creating immersion within the artistic environment by creating scenarios which challenge the viewer.

People talk about being nervous and truly anxious for fear of falling in some of my work. And when they discover hidden things there is a feeling of achievement and for some exultation. The visitor is definitely part of the narrative in a virtual environment. They are not watching someone climb but rather doing it themselves. A misstep could result in a fall and at worst the actual death of their avatar. People spend a long time in my work for a variety of reasons. It is the challenge, the emotion and narrative. The interaction and sense of discovery of secret details. The layering and because parts are often social. You can go with a friend and help each other navigate or discuss the narrative. These are some of the unique traits of a virtual immersive artwork and this was an overly long explanation on how I understand the space that I create in.

K-How did you begin building Immersiva?

B- I guess six years ago or so ago when I came into the virtual world I decided to keep a virtual diary. I began to create environments that told stories about things in my own life that I may not feel comfortable explaining to family or friends. It was cathartic to be anonymous and to just express myself. People from around the world began to discover the things I was making and, I think, due to the very personal nature of my creations, they would be able to associate with me on some level. I wanted to create paintings you could enter and explore rather than see as a snapshot in time. Things with duration and freedom to interact.

Screenshot of Milkdrop in The Singularity of Kumiko.

K- There's a big taboo in art which claims that 3d internet art and conventional art like painting, are mediums that live in a perpetual state of war. What do you think about it?

B- In my experience, though I don't want to generalize, it is mostly some traditional Curators who seem to resist new media art such as what I work in. In a way I can understand though, some have spent their entire lives figuring out what is considered "good" art ranging from glass, encaustic, sculpture, painting, photography and so on. Internet art is a fairly new and difficult medium for them to evaluate. Let's take virtual environments for example. Imagine an older Curator being asked to install a program, log in and learn to navigate a space the size of Texas with a difficult and sometimes frustrating learning curve. Then that curator has the daunting task of navigating the virtual world while trying to figure out what is unique and important within that environment, without really knowing where to go, who to speak to or even, in some cases, how to walk. The curator, sadly, needs to be embedded within the virtual world for months to understand what is being created there and why it is important. Perhaps more important, they need to speak to inworld experts who are familiar with the artists currently working and are able to explain to these curators what is going on. A 55 year old curator may be competent with a computer in some respects, but the reality is that many are not sufficient enough for what is needed and it poses a barrier for some new media artists to overcome until more technically savvy curators begin arriving with the power to make decisions, beyond focusing on trying to monetize a difficult art form. I was recently exhibited at the Santa Fe new media festival, The Biennale de Cerveira in Portugal, in new media installations with people like Peter Greenaway and Saskia Boddeke in Switzerland and the Menage Museum in Russia with an upcoming show for Art and Algorithms in the USA. The Ontario Arts Council in Canada have awarded me two new media grants, universities from around the world come to see the work with 50,000 coming to my last show. I have even been written about in Vogue magazine .. yet there is surprising indifference from some curators and I expect they just don't want to start something so daunting. It all takes time naturally though, and for many artists it is their driving passion to create, not the passion to be recognized, otherwise many wouldn't use anonymous names or handles. It was many years after the Daguerreotype before Photography was accepted as art, the same with Cinema. It's just about finding people with open minds who are excited about the potential of being on the frontier of a new Immersivist art movement, to look to the horizon rather than over ones shoulder at the smoke of the perpetual war you speak of.

Screenshot of Hooks in The Singularity of Kumiko.

K- How much has your work as a painter permeated your work inside Second Life, and how much of your work in Second Life has permeated your paintings?

B- It's interesting actually. Before I discovered the medium of virtual environments, I would come up with ideas for projects which I would then try to achieve through the painting, or sculpture medium. I would struggle in portraying these ideas and then eventually shelve them alongside others which just seemed to fall apart. I realized, after discovering the unique traits of the virtual environment, that all these discarded ideas were simply works that needed this new medium to grow within. They were ideas that were not suited to the mediums I was attempting to channel them through, though I didn't recognize this at the time.

So when I first began building virtual artworks/ environments with the realization that I could now, finally, create those ideas I had left unfinished, it was of those unfinished concepts that I was importing to the virtual space from my painting side of life. Over time though, I slowly began to export ideas created specifically for the virtual environment onto traditional media such as canvas or sculpture. The ideas and creativity were born in both places, but now, as time progressed, many of my ideas were actually being inspired within Second Life directly for the virtual environment, and then I was exporting them back to other mediums like painting on canvas in a simpler way. It is hard to explain but the process of working in an open ended immersive space changes the way one thinks about everything from composition, sound, interaction and psychology yet still, despite these new layers to consider, some aspects still want to trickle back to my old love of painting.

K- How did you began collaborating with Peter Greenaway? Your projects with him are a response to what you pointed on question #2 on how on cinema we're passive observers?

B- Peter is very inspiring in that he is close to 70 now and fully embraces new mediums and how they can be incorporated into his various projects. He, at one point, became aware of my work in virtual spaces and with machinima. It was at this time that he asked me to take part in a project of his in Poland called the Big Bang, and since then we have worked on various other projects together. Much of the credit though goes to Saskia Boddeke who introduces Peter to these new methods of creating which she herself uses exceptionally well. In the latest collaboration with Peter and Saskia we had four stations set up in the Menage Museum in Moscow where guests to the museum could sit down and explore a virtual environment that was created by myself, Alpha Auer, Nessuno Myoo, Eupalinos Ugajin, Soror Nishi and Jo Ellsmere. The guests would explore a virtual space that worked in conjunction with the installation space that had film and performance.

Screenshot of Imogen's hospital bed in the Singularity of Kumiko.

The idea of the passive observer was something that came to me over time as I would think about what made the immersive environment that I worked in unique. Analysing all the aspects in the virtual space, from peripheral vision to interaction, that made the experience so immersive. One of the things I kept recognizing was that in most mediums such as painting or Cinema the observer was often told a story or had a role as an outsider not part of the artwork itself, whereas the virtual environment and its particular strengths allowed for the viewer to actually be an integral part to the artwork as an active participant with a strong emotional connection. Peters interest is more in freeing cinema from being essentially illustrated text, when in fact it should have its own language rather than be a tool of other art forms which have influenced its direction since its appearance. When you watch a Peter Greenaway movie or experience an collaboration of his you recognize that you are not observing a movie formula which most directors slavishly follow for narration, but rather something more akin to observing a childbirth during Christmas dinner. You are still an observer, but now specifically one to his rather odd yet exploring mind, as you are forced to experience a juxtaposition of oft times divergent perspectives.

K- What is the importance of being reborn as Bryn Oh, and detaching your avatar from your personal image?

B- There are a few aspects related to that. Things that seem important to me anyway. As a painter I recall a professor telling the class one day that only 0.1% of the students who graduated from our art school would still be practicing art in ten years time. It is quite difficult to pay the bills being young and coming right out of the sheltered environment of an art school. When I first got out of art school I just wanted someone to buy a painting from me. If someone, whom I didn't know, bought a painting from me then that affirmation of success alone would be very rewarding and I would feel satisfied... someone did buy one and I was satisfied for perhaps a day. I determined that I needed to have a solo show in a gallery so I used my dwindling reserves of money to rent a gallery space and have a show. I created a series of paintings that I was quite proud of and bought wine and strangely sushi for the opening. Problem was that it never occurred to me to tell anyone. I just naively thought people would come. The gallery had a small mailing list and pretty much nobody came. Well not nobody. A homeless person came in and we both silently ate the sushi. A bit of a catastrophe I would say. Then I needed another goal, and the next one was to get represented by a gallery. So I worked and worked at building up my portfolio and CV.. I could now add that I had a solo show and .. you know .. I didn't have to mention that nobody came. Well not nobody. But if only I could achieve that goal of being represented then it would tell me and my friends and family, who all told me that I was crazy for trying to be an artist, it would tell them that I had succeeded and I would now feel a sense of contentment. I was picked up by a gallery and yet I didn't feel the peace I had expected. But then maybe if I had a great big art exhibit written about in the newspaper then I would feel satisfied... then if I... then if.. then if and so on for years. I began to crave for when people would tell me my work was great or other ego related aspects to being an artist. I felt the pressure of being in a gallery where two poorly selling shows could have one dropped from the gallery. It's a business after all. I began to recognize the type of work of mine that sold well and the ones which didn't. I started to take less chances because I relied on the prestige of being in a gallery and also relished the adulation of those who followed my work.

The idea for Bryn Oh was for me to avoid the pitfalls of self affirmation. Previously I had mentioned working with Peter Greenaway, being in Vogue magazine, the university talks, the museum shows around the world and so on... all of that is done anonymously and almost nobody in my real life knows anything about these achievements. Very, very few people in my life know about me creating Bryn Oh. Any recognition I receive for Bryn Oh doesn't translate to my real life as nobody knows it happens. Another benefit of this anonyminity is that it allows me to speak of things in my creations that are very personal to me. I can say things in my work that would hurt my parents or others whom I love if they were to see them. I don't have to worry about that. I can focus directly on my art now without any outside pressures or confusions which can influence ones direction. I choose what to work on solely by my desire and passion for the topic and it is irrelevant whether it is succeeds or fails because it never comes back to me in my real life anyway. It is both liberating and sad.

Screenshot of the Singularity of Kumiko's start point.

K- Which are your personal definitions for painting and virtual art?

B- A painting to me is a snapshot in time whereas my virtual art is a painting you can enter and explore. It has duration and interaction and most importantly a deep sense of immersion. My eventual goal is to create an experience which feels real. So for example, imagine putting on the occulus rift virtual headset and being transported to a grassy hill with a lilac tree on top. Imagine being able to look in 360 degrees around you to fields of grass all gently moving with a wind you can hear but also feel because within the real life space there are fans set up to mimic the wind, but in such as way that it is too subtle for one to notice that there are physical fans present. You can walk up the hill to the lilac tree and as you get closer you smell the scent of lilac which has been released within the gallery space by a spray, but again subtlety. Perhaps by the tree is a diary for you to read or a character to meet. When you eventually take off the headset hopefully you feel as though you have woken from a dream that seems real. That is a definition of the virtual art I try to create.

K- What's coming next on Bryn Oh's space in Second Life?

B- I have been writing and sketching out ideas for a new work tentatively entitled "Lobby Cam" which is the story of a farmer in the middle of nowhere who discovers his TV has somehow picked up the feed to a security camera in the lobby of a condominium an unknown distance away, perhaps even in a different country. He sees a woman come in to the lobby each morning and evening and read the mail from her box. The story is about his growing attachment to this person he's have never met, his fear of the channel suddenly disappearing in the same manner that it appeared, how he interprets her just from those few minutes each day, his own loneliness and then his desire to somehow contact this girl wherever she may be. It is very preliminary right now but that's the general idea.

Bryn Oh -Boys in the sandbox.

#bryn oh #bryn #oh #second #life #second life #katia #haus

to fuse hot post-conceptual chaotic disturbance with cool conceptual data forms. With Joseph Nechvatal

On Jul 12, 2014, at 10:09 PM, Katia Haus Moore wrote: [email protected]

Thank you so much!!! The Minóy book looks amazing and I’ve just downloaded it, and I’m currently reading immersion into noise.

K: Most of your work has to do with data and sound, how much did your early days as La Monte Young’s archivist have influenced on this?

JN: My early interest in data and sound and image came from my involvement in the No Wave scene in New York City while archiving the Fluxus collection of La Monte Young back in the late-70s and early-80s. The No Wave Colab (Collaborative Projects) scene was wildly interdisciplinary: visual artists playing in bands, acting in plays and films, writing poetry and theory, shooting Super-8 film, video, sculpture and audio while hanging out together at Clubs like Tier 3 and The Mudd Club. During the No Wave period, I was also reading Nietzsche while studying philosophy at Columbia University. It was in that fecund atmosphere that I decided that I would strive to interweave the two major trends in the history of art: the Apollonian and Dionysian.

By fusing the loose chaotic freedom of No Wave with the structured minimal conceptualism of a La Monte Young, I aimed to fuse hot post-conceptual chaotic disturbance with cool conceptual data forms. My smooth gray palimpsest drawings from that post-punk period – and the slick photo-blowups of the drawings – were an attempt at situating art somewhere between the surface of cold conceptualism and the chasm of shattering incoherence of post-conceptualism, where we must each pick through the meshwork and recover figurative meaning out of entangled ground.

K: What kind of projects did you developed with Colab and which one was the most important for you?

JN: In the early 1980s, myself and many other artists, were interested in the distributive capacity of art based in reproduction. Most were inspired by a 1968 essay The Dematerialization of Art by John Chandler and Lucy R. Lippard, as it argued that Conceptualism had a politically transformative aspect to be delved into. The other inescapable text at the time was The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (or Reproducibility) by Walter Benjamin. Important for my formation was when I produced the Colab sponsored show (with performances) simply called John Heartfield at ABC No Rio, held from November 1st to November 18th in 1983. Xeroxes and photomechanical blowups of John Heartfield’s (1891-1968) art, torn from a book, were the maquettes that I produced from. Reproductions of his anti-Nazi/anti-Fascist photomontages were wheat-pasted on the walls of ABC No Rio, walls that had been were painted a sinister black from top to bottom. I filled the space with audio collages by Bradley Eros and hit the streets with Mitch Corber, putting posters all over downtown: advertisements for the show along with powerful John Heartfield images.

Later, I organized The Art of John Heartfield event that was held at Kamikaze Club at 531 W 19th Street on March 21st1984 that featured art or performance by Edwige, David Wojnarowicz, Bradley Eros, Kiki Smith, Doug Ashford, Aline Mare, Joe Lewis, Mitch Corber and Christof Kohlhofer, among others.

It seems impossible to understand in our age of ubiquitous cell-phone photography, but no photos were taken of any aspect of the John Heartfield events (that I know of).

K: Why did you decided to start the Tellus cassette series and which is the importance for you of making data banks, in this case a casettography?

JN: As the vital New York downtown scene continues to melt into rich yuppie fat, preserving the work of cutting edge artists of all sorts from that place and time (80s) seems more than worthy. Happily UBUWEB has archived Tellus in digal form here: http://www.ubu.com/sound/tellus.html.

Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine was created in 1983 by me, curator Claudia Gould, and Carol Parkinson, a composer and staff member of Harvestworks/Studio PASS. We met for drinks to discuss my idea of a magazine on cassette that would feature interesting and challenging sound works. With the advent of the Walkman and the Boom Box, we perceived a need for an alternative to radio programming and the commercially available recordings on the market at that time. We then began to collect, produce, document and define the art of audio through publishing works from local, national and international artists. Sometimes we worked with contributing editors, experts in their fields, who proposed themes and collected the best works from that genre. Unknown artists were teamed with well-known artists, historical works were juxtaposed with contemporary and high art with popular art, all in an effort to enhance the crossover communication between the different mediums of art – visual, music, performance and spoken word.

On Jul 17, 2014 Katia Haus Moore wrote:

K: How were your works and thoughts pushed during and after your work in Colab and which are de advantages and disadvantages of working collaboratively?

JN: I was influenced by Colab member Jenny Holzer and Colab associate Barbara Kruger. I was at the time photo-mechanically blowing up my small drawings, making Xerox books (Xerox was brand new at the time) and street posters. Even painting-centric artists like David Wojnarowicz, Walter Robinson, Justen Ladda, David Salle, Christof Kohlhofer and Anton van Dalen were examining reproduction and reproduction methods, like the silk-screen and stencil. Colab’s interests in Fluxus-like low-priced multiples (The A. More Stores and the Artists Direct Mail Catalogue – a co-production with Printed Matter), newsprint publishing (X Magazine, Spanner, Bomb), No Wave film production and screening, video and cable T.V. (Potato Wolf and the MWF Video Club), live art performance, audio cassette publishing and mail art distribution networks (Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine) have marked me for life. This all brought me closer to Dick Higgins’s intermedia approach to art.

K: Would you say that the work you produced after Colab, specially your paintings, are collaborations with machines and computer viruses?

JN: Not really, as I do not give up control over them

K: How have you seen that computers have changed the way we work with data and information?

JN: I see computers and art as a means of practicing politics on one level. In the mid-1980s I could already observe the coming rise of electronic media (computational media, more precisely) as the controlling, organizing force of social power. I felt that to adequately address this topic I should approach it from inside of electronic medium, and not from an artisanal pre-electronic practice.

K: Which is for you the importance of data?

JN: Working as an archivist for LaMonte Young, meeting John Cage, and learning of the famous “9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering” of 1966 that Robert Rauschenberg helped organize with the engineer Billy Kluver was salient to my formation in this regard. Rauschenberg understood that through the mediation of chance and machines, data can be contorted, thus changing our awareness of what technology is or can be.

On Aug 5, 2014, Katia Haus Moore wrote:

K: Do you believe in Singularity and on Kurzweil’s idea of Spiritual Machines?

JN: No.

K: The Attractions of Cybism was never realized and is a key point on your work and art theories. What was it about? And is it important for you to keep it unrealized?

JN: Cybism is an art theory term I developed as a sub-division of viractuality at the turn of the century. I proposed the concept for an exhibition that never was realized, but the idea of Cybism was developed into a paper that I delivered at ECAM (Encuentro de Ciencia y Arte) in 2008 at the invitation of Juan Díaz Infante in Mexico City.

Cybism is a sensibility emerging in art respecting the integration of certain aspects of science, technology and consciousness – a consciousness struggling to attend to the prevailing current spirit of our age. This Cybistic zeitgeist I identify as being precisely a quality-of-life desire in which everything, everywhere, all at once is connected in a rhizomatic web of communication. Therefore, Cybism is no longer content with the regurgitation of standardized repertoires.

K: I understand viractualism as a term that has to do with our immersion into a work of art. However I believe Cybism, though it’s a division of Viractuality, is more about connection. How did the internet influenced you on both terms? Do you think they could exist without it?

JN: For me, viractualism and cybism is best understood as emerging from the vast incognizant digital totality of the internet within which we currently live; an immense digital assemblage-aggregate which in cybist manner is experienced as exceeding our usual sense of lucidity.

Read immersion into noise:

http://openhumanitiespress.org/immersion-into-noise.html

Read Minoy:

http://punctumbooks.com/titles/minoy/

#nechvatal #computers #virus #la monte young #no wave #fluxus #new york #joseph

Designing images where different intentions converge With Cisco Jiménez

Katia Haus- Some Mexican painters are taking steps back on painting, trying to reestablish it as a mere act of virtuosism and reducing it to decoration. This position has gained ground thanks to the support of people like the mexican collector Andrés Blaisten. Although along with several of the most important painters of Mexico, your work is part of Blaisten’s collection, your paintings have taken a totally different direction. You have portrayed brilliantly marginalization in Mexico, developing your work as an activist and also by organizing street performances. This is something you have built for over 25 years and has brought you to exhibit in places like the Venice Biennale and has made you part of collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection; and Pace Roberts Foundation. Why did you decided to use the painting as a vehicle for your work? And why did you decided to take the course you have taken?

Cisco Jiménez- I find very ad hoc a recent review by Teresa del Conde which states that the actual painting in Mexico consists in wallpaper designs. I found it portrayed perfectly the courses which the pictorial creation is currently taking: apolitical, hopelessly married to the market, extremely sensitive to trends and globality and with an amoral spirit, anti-identity (It doesrejects its identity and its immediate context), speculative (even the most unknown artist uses gallery prices). In my case I've always defined myself as a creator who is between two areas: high culture and popular culture; the city and the province (the periphery). I'm perfectly integrated into the geographical contexts of DF and Cuernavaca, this situation brands definitely my creation. It suffers all kinds of contradictions and paradoxes generated by the constant clash between these two contexts, and that is actually the basis of my speech.

Regarding painting, I come from a naive beginning. My main inspiration in the 80s was the Oaxaca school, which transgressed my task within the political cartoons I published in local newspapers and national media. Then I began the task of creating hybrid approaches of the popular, the irreverent and the critical. I was born as a painter. As a child I did landscapes, and later during my teens, I was a caricaturist. When I began to exhibit actively as an artist, painting became my most important medium. A little bit after that, Mexico City’s context began influencing me and also generating me pressures (specially from the gallery market and the cultural institutions), which triggered what I would like to call: an evolution in my work.

I've always believed that painting is the field of expression that best represents humanity. It’s a kind of climax for humanism. It’s always moving to discover the trembling hand of a being who transcended his condition and became a kind of demigod who can bequeath images and symbols, and well, prolong this project we conceive as humanity. Simultaneously I’ve been part of the transition between two centuries in painting. That has meant an almost mortal but regenerative war. It has been very exciting for me to be in the middle of this battlefield. I think it has been very cruel to force painting to shut up and retract itself almost till the point of becoming invisible. But this has caused painting to power itself questioning its essence, its meaning, and its relation to new players. I found that sheltering painting in objectuality could be a good survival weapon for it, and it seems it has been. Today new painting can come out of its hideout breaking walls. And after it took its time, it can stand up for herself with a refreshed dignity.

K- In addition to corroborating your theory about the relationship of text and image as the climax of communication, has the Internet influenced or facilitated more aspects of your work?

C- Internet and its communication proposal of image-text-windows came to affirm the image as an excellent communicative entity, which had always been relegated and codependent on text. In the internet era an image collaborates 50 percent or more in the transmission of information and knowledge. In the network of visual artists it represents the triumph of image and it’s survival, and therefore the prevalence of a medium like painting in the era of technologies. I think that the prehispanic codexes had the same communicative efficacy in the transmission of knowledge, as images hold a key role and occupy a midfield place in communication. I’m currently working on deconstructing images to their inner meanings, so the fragmentation of images and information proposed on the internet are still a great influence on my work. I believe on a multiplicity of views in order to form a panoramic view of a theme or symbol.

K- Do you visualize in the future something that can go beyond the interaction between text and images?

C- Yes, of course. It will continue to evolve and we will reach a point in which we will be able to embed chips in ourselves that will allow us to explain ideas, above all, with images that we will project with our bodies and that will be rendered with our brains... remember that man has always needed besides language, a wooden stick to draw a picture in the sand so he can explain himself better.

K- Do you think that text makes it easier for your watchers to establish a connection with your paintings / sculptures?

C- For me text becomes a more sophisticated way of communicating through my work. Two metaphors exist: the word, and the images; so the ways of interpretations multiply. Aesthetically texts are integrated in a unique way, as there are few proposals that use these two media together. That helps me create a singular artistic proposal. A number of circumstances need to take place in order to create successful works based on the interaction between image and text.

K-Your work has become collaborative for moments, not only in Molecular Coatlicue but also for example, during the Venice Biennale with Jimmie Durham. Which is the importance you see on collaborative projects?

C-It is like an unfolding. In the case of my show Molecular Coatlicue in Mexico City, I wanted to explore how would my works be carried out by women. I had to reasons for this: it’s finish and the female hand, and also to pass my ideas and images through their filters. The result was very bizarre and different levels of interpretation were handled and went from the very decorative and depuration technique, to the deconstruction of the apparent meanings of my work trying to delve into the psychological and sexist roots of my personality.

Collaborating with artists becomes a hybrid action of techniques, intentions, and fusion of ideas. The resultant is not as important as the fact of collaboration. In the past I realized some works with Francis Alÿs and Jimmie Durham, and also with craftsmen as well.

K- How have the places you've lived influenced you, which are your feelings for DF and Cuernavaca today?

C- These two cities have always lived in a natural and fluid way but its coexistence has had dire consequences for the identity of Cuernavaca as well as its physical environment. Also in contrast, DF has injected high doses of cosmopolitanism and economy to Cuernavaca, as well as social mobility. I have used these paradoxes and contradictions (center-periphery-popular cult, poverty, wealth etc) a lot in my work over time. Contemporary collage has a lot to do with the impact of one context on another, and the possible hybrid products that can be generated. In the same way I explore all these possibilities in my work.

K- What do you want to achieve and generate with your work?

C- An exploration of the tensions to which the existence of human beings is subjected. The deconstruction of images and symbols that live daily in our context also create hybrids that reflect the cultural and social contradictions that we experience. I create art that contains a huge cultural weight.

K- What projects are you developing now?

C- I have the national system of creators fellow which involves traveling, creating and giving workshops of my project about contemporary hybrid painting; a solo exhibition for the gallery Black Hall on Puebla (November 2014) and preparing for my participation for a project for the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City (October 2014).

K- Could you give me your own definition of painting?

C- Designing images where different intentions converge to create a specific outcome.

#cisco #jimenez #katia #haus #moore #painting #art #contemporary #21st century #ensamble #molecular #coatlicue

You try to plan, you play it by ear, and you only get it right sometimes. With Amy Alexander.

Image: Discotrope in an outdoor setting

Posted on FAQ MAGAZINE

Katia Haus – One of the things I’ve noticed recently on contemporary art, is how this kind of trend established by fluxus, of mixing contemporary art with music, is regaining popularity. I believe this has to do a lot with platforms as soundcloud and bandcamp, and also with softwares like Logic and Live. I guess this has to do a lot with what you have said about how software becomes part of our culture, specially as it becomes much more accessible.

Amy Alexander – I don’t think this practice ever really disappeared since Dadaist collage. Think of 1960’s light shows that improvised multi-layered visuals in real-time to music, scratch video of the 1980’s and 90’s, and so on. Software has made this type of practice more accessible, and no doubt it’s transformed it, as software brings its own conventions, authorship, etc. But people have been remixing media since at least the early 20th century – I think the media themselves inspire/frustrate/instigate people to respond to them by repurposing them.

K- I think you’ve been a pioneer on this field, specially in the relationship with music. I know you have a background on it. So the first thing I wanted to ask you is if the background was before or after your involvement with software and internet art? And how did both fields, music and internet, influenced each other on your work? Has software played a key role on it?

A- My earliest background was in music, then I studied film and real-time video, then started working with software later. This is because I am very old; we didn’t have computers back then! Well that’s half true – I did take some programming classes in high school and college around the mid-80’s. But I didn’t like it much and didn’t start using programming in my creative work til graduate school in the mid-90’s. The upshot of this is that I mostly think about things in terms of time, movement, and performance. Software is mainly of interest to me as a time-based process – loops create rhythm, theme and variation; software is an instrument played by a performer, and so on. I think considering software as having temporal flow applies not just to “artistic” software, but also to the way people use a lot of software. Think about how often people prefer to jot their thoughts down on paper rather than typing them out – even though they might type faster than they write. Software sometimes breaks the flow of your thoughts – why is this? Does it get it interrupt them with menus and dialogs? Do thoughts flow better when you can scribble out errors rather than backspace? Is the layout of lines on the page a problem? The keyboard? I think there’s still a general assumption of most software as “static” but we should probably rethink that.

K- How did you decided to start blending, or perhaps highlighting, the performative act in working with computers and then take it out of the usual computer room into other spaces like in Discotrope and CyberSpaceLand?

A – Software comes to us originally from the military, but it’s more recent and familiar tradition is from the business world. In the 70s and 80s, computers were things in offices, and people sat at desks and worked on them: it usually seemed sort of dreary. As I mentioned, I started out as a musician and filmmaker – I’m not really good at sitting on my butt. I played pretty gestural instruments as a kid – violin, drums, guitar, bass – and I was used to the iconic character of the “sweaty rock star” (or even the “passionate violinist!”) When computers started to show up in contexts like music and visual performance, I noticed they still had a lot of the “baggage” of their history as business machines. Meaning, it was actually hard to perform live on one (music visuals, etc.) and not look like you were sitting there programming a database. What happened to the sweaty rock star? So I started thinking that a) this was boring for audiences and b) if people at leisure get conditioned to behave like they’re working, they might become so obedient it could spell the end of countercultural activity – we can’t have that! ;-) So, with CyberSpaceLand I set out to create a performance setup that exaggerated performativity, by creating gadgets that would be performed by VJ Übergeek, a character who was very geeky yet a “sweaty rock star” wannabe. Getting back to the idea of spaces: with CyberSpaceLand, Discotrope, and the initial SVEN street performances, we were interested in performance outside of usual art spaces like galleries. But this is also the case with anything you do on the Internet, since the Internet is not in general an art space either.

K- Does this has to do with how other projects of yours like Multi-Cultural Recycler and SVEN were exposing people behind or recorded by webcams?

A-I’d say there’s a connection as they’re all, in one way or another, about performance. The Multi-Cultural Recycler and SVEN are on one hand about surveillance, but on the other they’re about exhibitionism. People like to be watched on camera – to perform for it – more often than they’re willing to admit. I’m interested in that awkward space between the two – where being a passive subject turns into being a willing performer. (This is also a theme within Discotrope.)

K- One thing that has always caught my interest is how Multi-Cultural Recycler needs the visitors’ clicks to generate its pictures. Although the work of art is the Recycler itself, it may only be activated and renewed by its users. Perhaps software art (and all kinds of software too) is more close to design than what it is to art, speaking on terms that it’s something built to be used. What was your goal while building not only works of art that could be used, but works of art that needed to be used?

A- It’s probably better if I answer as separate questions. I made the Recycler in 1996, so back then I wasn’t really thinking about it in terms of software. I was thinking about it as process though. Most art on the net then was static, and I was thinking about how the net ran on computers that “run” and do things — so I thought it made sense that this art should do things. So in that sense, I was thinking about software. But as far as the software convention of clicking: At the time, “interactivity” was a big buzzword. It was supposed to be this really great thing — artists were told they should make everything “interactive.” But this dictum was usually presented fairly uncritically, as though interactivity was automatically good. It didn’t seem to matter whether the interactivity in a project had a point to it or not. In the Recycler – well, there was actually a functional reason for the button click: so that the software only generated a live image when it had a viewer (it was too network and processor intensive to run continuously.) But the option of posting it to the “gallery” and putting your name on it was sort of my sarcastic/frustrated way of protesting compulsory and pointless interactivity — since all the user did to create an “artwork” was click a button.

(For more thoughts about interactivity from around that time, see Alexei Shulgin’s interview with Tilman Baumgärtl – “ I don’t believe in interactivity, because I think interactivity is a very simple and obvious way to manipulate people.” http://kunstradio.at/FUTURE/RTF/INSTALLATIONS/SHULGIN/interview.html

Also, jodi.org did a lot of projects around this time addressing the topic of compulsive button clicking.)

Anyway – It wasn’t until a few years later, when I started making desktop software, that I really started thinking about it that way. My first desktop software was CueJack (under the name Cue P. Doll) around 1998 or 1999. (http://cuejack.com) It was software written for a free barcode scanner, but CueJack made the scanner do the opposite of what it was supposed to do (get people to buy products.) It wasn’t really that I objected to advertising – what I objected to was the assumption that people would choose to actively use software (and hardware) to advertise to themselves. I felt a line had been crossed there… My next desktop “utility” I think was “Scream.” (http://scream.deprogramming.us/) That one was more specifically about software – in this case, the idea that software assumes rational, unemotional users who do utilitarian things like write reports, make spreadsheets, maybe even videos. I wanted to imagine more realistic people – they have anger, frustration, dysfunctionality. It was hard for a user to go online and find software that would be useful in popular human endeavors like screaming.

K- Most artists are sure art can’t exist on the form of music or VJing, assuming art it’s all about making weird sounds or replicating the Philips Pavilion after 56 years. Your work is a proof of how wrong they are. I wanted to know why did you chose music and VJing as your mediums, and not sound art or conventional audivisual performance?

A- I don’t have anything against either of them. I don’t think genres can be inherently “better” than other genres – it’s not what you do; it’s how you do it. For sound art, I guess I haven’t tried it because I don’t have a deep background in either sound or working with space (i.e. my visual background is in film rather than studio/gallery art.) As for “conventional” audiovisual performance vs. VJ’ing: If you mean “live cinema” type of performances – I may do these in the future. The reason I got interested in VJ’ing first is that I’m very interested in non-art “public” spaces. When you VJ, you get to perform for example in clubs, where people aren’t expecting “art” – you get to work with different audiences and in a different way than in art venues. It’s a similar idea with software art and net art, which at least in the 90’s and early 2000’s had a “general” audience on the Internet. Nowadays, online audiences are much more fragmented, so it’s harder to reach a broad audience than it used to be (still possible, but you have to make a different kind of effort and probably depend a lot more on luck.)

K- Software needs users, and a vj/musician needs public. Which is the importance you see in the connection (through the internet or while performing) that your works establish between them and their public?

A- I guess this is different in each case. For example, I was saying that CyberSpaceLand is different depending on whether I’m doing it in a nightclub or at an art event. At a nightclub, I’m performing for an audience that’s expecting to dance, drink, etc. People are coming and going, chatting with their friends, and so on. So how does one do a show where the visuals are textual narrative? Obviously a dance club audience is not going to stare at the screen. So I structure those shows as a loose, ambient narrative that sort of washes over you. It doesn’t matter if you miss something; you’ll still get the idea. It’s sort of analogous to song lyrics (although structured nothing like them.) You can go to a club or a concert and still make sense of the lyrics even if you don’t catch every word of them. Also, at clubs, my physical performances tend to be relatively low-key, since I’m probably performing for at least a couple hours, and I’ll be sharing the stage with DJ’s and musicians. So my “rock star” VJ character is more a background musician than a lead in these cases. On the other hand, if it’s an art gallery or festival show, or some other show where I’m the “headliner,” then audiences expect to watch me and the screen most of the time. I do shorter, more structured shows, that are a bit more theatrical. It took me a while when I first started out to realize I had to adjust the show and the character for the audience. Also, sometimes I guess wrong as to the audience expectations and have to adjust on the fly. I don’t always get it right, but I like always trying out new things with the audiences anyway. And there’s some things that I like to try on both types of audiences – like wandering away from the computer and performing in the middle of the crowd.

So I guess the summary is – connecting with the audience is like connecting with anyone you first meet: you try to plan, you play it by ear, and you only get it right sometimes. :-)

Marcel du Swamp

Marcel Du Swamp is the name of a solo project based in Baltimore, fronted by Christopher Shields. I met Marcel and his mesmerising music in the city of Krems, in lower Austria during the second week of the donaufestival. Some days after his show, I emailed him to schedule a Google Hangout interview.

October 27, 2013.

Alonso Cedillo- Is Marcel du Swamp your only project?

Marcel Du Swamp- It is. I don’t know, it’s definitely my only musical project. I’ve tried recently to collaborate with people but it didn’t worked. I used to be in bands only. And once I decided to start building my own instruments, I started kind of making music on my side.

AC- Do you consider your work as music or as sound art? or both of them?

MDS- I don’t know. I feel like there’s no real distinction. It’s hard for me to think which is which. I stopped been able to listen to music, through like 4 or 5 months this year. And it was a friend of mine who showed me the music of Ryoji Ikeda, this Japanese sound artist, and it’s completely non-musical. And it was the same response as when I heard what’s called noise music for the first time. I thought it was a joke. I thought it was, like some far out prank on people. It’s just this really high clicky super high frequencies. The minimal as it gets is one signal for like 9 minutes or something. And for like two or three weeks it’s all I wanted to listen to, it’s all I could listen to. And after, I was like, I can never make music again. I never wanna make something so, like naive somehow. It’s definitely more interesting to make something confusing. An that’s where I’ve headed, absolutely. I thought I knew kind of what experimentation was, but I kind of had no idea before, a couple of months ago. But you can really go in any direction. And that’s where I’m heading, definitely. So I don’t think I can draw a line between sound art and music.

AC- How do you make your loops? Do you sample them?

MDS- Well, the drum loops are all made through Logic on my computer. It’s just like drum samples, super heavily manipulated and distorted. But when I play live, and usually on my recordings and stuff, the drums are made on the computer, but the other instruments are rather homemade or modified somehow, by myself.

It’s getting harder and harder to pick a medium, really. Cause I got really into building modular synths recently. And I was using as an excuse, “I can’t play the show, I’m working my gear, I have to finish my gear before I play the show”. Or like “Yeah I’ve got to put out a tape or a record, but I’m still building something, give me a minute”. Now it’s endless, I could do that forever. And, it’s kind of, I’ve just came to a point where this is gonna be my setup for this amount of time. And that’s kind of what I’ve decided. So the next record I’m gonna put out, its gonna come out a winner. It’s all gonna be modular synths, and like minimal, computer loops. Like really aggressive computer music, which I embrace, fully. I kind of hated music computers for a very long time. I would absolutely never play live with a laptop. But, more and more recently, it’s been like, computers are incredible. Computers are so amazing for making music. And, it’s really like an uncool thing to say, but I kind of love them.

AC- How do you build your instruments?

MDS- I started just like doing circuit bending stuff years ago. Like installing a switch or some knob, in a tore piano or in some strange electronic device to make it sound crazy. It was learning a little bit about electronics, and a little bit about circuits. I got like, pretty far on it. The first time that I sampled: this is a chip, and the resistors, and the capacitors, and there’s audio out; it was like, holy shit this is like making sound!

So I thought, I’m gonna do this now, it’s my thing. And I started reading a ton into modular synthethizers. And I spent all my time reading books, and trying to figure out how to read circuit schematics. Like familiarizing myself as best as I could to the parts, and processes. And I kind of dropped everything. I was going to art school by the time I really got into it. I started buying boxes, and boxes, from Hong Kong, and all the world’s components boxes. If got 5 packages, they were all tiny resistors, or weird sockets for LED’s or something. It was like a fetish. I got so, so hard into it. It was like a form of escape or something. I couldn’t do anything but think about all this parts that came together. So I started drilling my own lids, and then building my own designs eventually. And I found a couple of people that were doing some more things. And Baltimore is an incredible place for that cause there’s a lot of people who know so much about electronics.

I built my first jambox, something that I could play live with in between songs an stuff, you know, like jam on a little bit. And then I got more interested on making more serious and professional things, so that you could understand how to actually make the circuits sound good. I ended dropping out of art school completely. And I’ve been studying electro engineering for a year and a half. And now I’m like getting kind of crazy with it. I studied metalworking, and interdisciplinary sculpture, and a little bit of painting as well. I do not longer work on that, at all really. I still work with metal because I’m building synths, and that’s like, as long as I keep getting my hands dirty, or cutting myself accidentally with the tool, as long as I can still work with my hands, I think that’s creative in someway.

AC- You said Marcel du Swamp is your only musical project. Which other projects do you have?

MDS- Recently I’ve taken on a hobby which is having as many hobbies as I can. Like, if I get an idea to do something it’s just like, go do it, immediately. And I’ve been learning how to sport whipcrack. So I would say sport whipcracking, and flying. I flew a plane for the first time last week. And it’s like live shit. But to pass all my projects, like artistic projects, forget about it. Everything I want to do is just, pull force towards some point or idea. If I feel like doing it, immediately make it happen. Which is difficult cause I work a full time job as well. But it allows me to do all this things.

AC- Do you have any goals with your music?

MDS- Any goals like, what am I trying to tell to people? I don’t know, it was definitely way different when I first started. Like the first couple of tracks, and the first like two or three tapes that came out, it was like, this is music to see live, this is music to go full force. I’m gonna be doing as little as possible during my performance, It’s all gonna be like personality. It’s all gonna be physical, being like me staring at the crowd. And I think it was really amazing to do that at first, but of course that gets old really quickly. It was all like vocals and doing handstands, and breaking things. But now it’s like, I don’t think I'm gonna go back to that. I stopped making music for about a year. And I just started like a month ago back at it. But I don’t know, I’m about to find out, I’m about to finish this gear that I’m building. And I’ll be playing this other music, and I know now that it’s all experimentation. I’m gonna experiment as far as I can go.

AC- Why Marcel du Swamp?

MDS-That was kind of like, I just thought of it. It was like, that’s fun, that’s kind of goofy. I never expected to like, stay with this project for that long. I think that the first couple of songs that were out, I was really happy with. I was playing a lot of shows. People seemed to enjoy it and I was having lot of fun with. And after a couple of months I thought, man this name is awful... this name is so like, it’s so silly. And a friend of mine saw me after a show, and I don’t talk to him a lot of music or anything like that. He told me, listen man, the music is pretty good, I like what you’re doing, but the name has to go, the name is awful. But it’s kind of too late to change it now. I don’t know. People really don’t know what, they think I’m trying to confuse the audience, or that maybe I’ll play chess and be full of absurd things.

AC- Is it important for you that on this project everything's on your hands?

MDS- I feel it’s hard to work with my..., like, I’m really stubborn when it comes to music. And I like to compose pretty heavily. Which it might not seem like it, but every single note is in the right place. And I’ve tried making music with other people, and things that I wanted to make, but it’s like, between two people that might have the same ideas, the music doesn’t end up sounding authentic to me, or it ends up being a compromise instead of a combination. And I’m really trying to find someone to collaborate with. Like that both of us can come together and make something bigger than both of us. And I’ve heard music recently that does that, entirely. This tape that I found, called The Compass Rose, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of this guys or people, but I know nothing about it. But the tape is incredible. And it’s everything I’ve been looking for. I can use it for a while. And it’s simple, it’s just like tape manipulation and like really, really simple electronics, with some guy just narrating. And the voices are like very slightly kind of effected, or delayed or something. And each, by themselves could be alright, but you can definitely know when it’s two like minded people. When they came together, and they ended up making something bigger. That’s why I’m really interested in collaborating with people. Maybe with vocals, cause I don’t really like my own vocals. I think someone else could do them better.

AC- As an underground artist, do you wish to stay underground? Or do you eventually wanna leave the underground world?

MDS- That’s a really good question. I don’t know. I haven’t really given much thoughts of that. But, I know that, I hadn’t make music in like, close to a year, when I got the offer to play at the donaufestival. And I was like, alright this is kind of too good to pass it up. So I was flown out there, and I played a set that I hadn’t played in, probably close to a year. It wasn’t the music that I was really interested in making at the time. And I was listening to it the night before I left. I listened some of my old songs thinking: Man this is awful. I could do so much better than this. But then I kind of convinced myself, like I took myself back. Like let’s go back to why I make music. And I really liked the set that I played. And a lot of people enjoyed it. But it was the kind of thing that, somebody recently offered to release a record of some of my old material. And it’s the kind of moment when you think, man I really don’t want to keep going that direction. On the other side people seem to like it more than things I’ve been doing recently. I played a show where I tried a whole different set up: all new instruments, none of the same songs, I had like this live video with my face in it, that was manipulated a little bit. And every single person I talked to afterwards was like, man, you really had something going before. You really hit the nail with it, but I don’t know about this new stuff.

I’m at the point right now where I’m going to experiment, if people hear my music and love it, absolutely let’s get it out there. But I’ve seen unfortunately like, too many people that released music that I really enjoyed, and they fall off. ¨They started getting recognition for their hits, and some singles. And then they only started to make music that they know it’s like too low. And they might not admit it, but it’s really obvious to hear it, and like to understand that it’s someone else. So as much as I’d love to say that I’m gonna go doing my own thing I know I’m gonna be influenced by trying to make it, at least so more accessible. But like trying to keep that minimal, you know. Trying to stay as authentic as possible.

all photos by donaufestival.

http://swampswampswampswampswampswampswampswampswamp.bandcamp.com/

#marcel du swamp #marcel #swamp

The outcome of an artistic project with Lena Wicke-Aengenheyster

Behind the fictional matriarch MONSTERFRAU is the performance artist Lena Wicke-Aengenheyster, notorious amongst advanced performance audiences for her work together with God’s Entertainment and Gintersdorfer/Klaßen and also as the founder of the production network STAATSAFFAIRE.

Lena Wicke-Aengenheyster - So, you were asking me about STAATSAFFAIRE, right?

STAATSAFFAIRE is a tool for me to produce artistic projects. Financial, communication and public relation wise. Alonso Cedillo- Is it a collective? LWA- It is an official association, which is important to have to ask for fundings. It is also important to be clear about the official structure concerning questions like taxes etc. On the other hand, it is a platform for me. It gives me the possibility to produce, communicate and announce different kind of events and artistic projects. These can be shows by MONSTERFRAU, videos, texts, etc. but also a curated evening with many artists involved. The projects do not always have to be my proper artistic projects. I used STAATSAFFAIRE before to realize production wise artistic projects of other artists.

It is a network. A network of people I am working with in different ways. AC- How did it began?

LWA- It began the moment I was still part of the collective God's Entertainment. I realized my artistic ideas, interests, questions and needs within the projects of God's Entertainment. But I had a need for money and as I had worked for another theater company as production manager before, I had some knowledge other artists were interested in. They called me asking questions about how to do this or that. And so I had the idea to found a production platform. When I quit God's Entertainment, I started realizing my art through STAATSAFFAIRE as well.

AC- How many operas have you produced?

LWA- Hm, how many operas I have produced. It depends on which projects should be considered as an opera. I would say, that MONSTERFRAU has released two operas. The Underground Opera "BODY and CAPITALISM" in 2011 and "MONSTERFRAU against Marduk" in 2013. There were other projects and songs in between. And gigs of course.

MONSTERFRAU 06/2011, shot by Stephan Doleschal

AC-Do they have librettos?

Yes, they have librettos. The one of BODY and CAPITALISM you can find on https://sites.google.com/a/staatsaffaire.com/staatsaffaire/artists/lena-wicke-aengenheyster/monsterfrau/libretto

The librettos are one result. What means, I am not starting the artistic work by writing a libretto, it is the outcome of an artistic process. AC- However the existence of librettos means that anyone that hold them could restage them, right? LWA- Yes of course, anybody can restage them and is invited to do so. The librettos are a way to communicate the ideas, questions, reflexions. The story, the message and in the case of BODY and CAPITALISM also the shout and call. I think first of all Librettos are a tool. An interested audience, a spectator, people who are part of or who became part of an opera or MONSTERFRAU, can access the text and the idea of the opera in another mood. The libretto gives also an idea of a kind of dramaturgy, and questions like, is it a collage, puzzle or storyline we are dealing with. AC- Why do you decided to reaproach the idea of the opera, and also the libretto? LWA- When a band releases a CD with several songs, they publish some little booklet with where all songtexts are written. And even if we can hear the texts, it is interesting to read them. I made theater-performance before with a lot of life-music and sounds. Looking for a word to communicate the genre I was dealing with the terms of music-theatre and music-performance. There is a very huge classical music scene which is very well funded. This stands in contrast to the contemporary and electronic music scene which is nearly not funded at all. There are different audiences and facilities with totally different financial standards.

The classall opera is very high respected and seen as of very valuable. I liked to claim this term of a genre for the contemporary music/theater, music/performances.

And after all, I love operas.

AC- And has the classical scene received well you productions?

LWA- No, the fact that I produced an 'opera' did not change the funding I got. But that was not the aim either. The reflection of what values and the consideration and definition of something being valuable are about, are very important in "BODY and CAPITALISM" and leads to the question of sovereignty. AC- What other projects have you produced with staatsaffaire? LWA- 'MONSTERFRAU migrate.' is an installation consisting of 50 small MONSTERFRAU sculptures out of clay and porcelain. At the opening of the exhibition I am performing amongst them, as part of the track, sharing the MONSTERFRAU' idea.

THIS IS NOT A BURKA! Just clothes. was a 3 month performance in public space in Hamburg, Berlin, Linz and Vienna. I was wearing a so-called Burqa, Niqab and Khimar. Every day but Sunday in public space.

STAATSAFFAIRE is also involved in Learning Partnerships funded by the European Union with partners like salon bruit in Berlin in Germany - an experimental noise-music collective, gaffer records in Lyon in France - a label for jazz and experimental rockmusic and Stubnitz in Hamburg - a ship as a venue for music events.

We organize and develop workshops for people who are more far from culture and art to open up perspectives through electronic music and media.

STAATSAFFAIRE has also organized evening events where I invited other artists to produce and show around the topics 'Performance as Vision', 'On the Move - Migration' and a fashion show of different models of Burkas.

I like working for projects which seem important to me. Considering society as something which is always changing and evoluating (evolution), I like to influence this project, I like the idea to influence society and its history through my work.

#Lena Wicke-Aengenheyster #MONSTERFRAU #alonso cedillo #STAATSAFFAIRE

It is all about social structure. With Gilberto Aceves Navarro

On June 21, 2013, Gilberto Aceves Navarro is at his atelier, located on the lower south side of Mexico City, not far from the World Trade Center. After the drawing session, Gilberto Aceves sits down to drink a coffee with two of his students: Miguel Ángel Salgado, and Alonso Cedillo Mata.

Gilberto Aceves Navarro is a mexican painter and sculptor. After working with Siqueiros, he began drawing in the street. He drew, from nannies with children to prostitutes, and survived selling those drawings. His work shows influence of David Alfaro Siqueiros, Carlos Orozco Romero, Raúl Anguiano, and Ignacio Aguirre. It's considered to be between that of the Muralist generation and the Generación de la Ruptura. Aceves Navarro’s work has also been described as a precursor to figurative expressionism.

GAN- So then what? What’s the deal with this fucking country.

AC- I don’t really know... What are we listening too?

GAN- It’s Milhaud, Darius Milhaud. I like him a lot. He’s one of the few composers that followed Erik Satie.

AC- A musical post-impressionist?

GAN- No. Well... it could be, cause he was also friend of the impressionists. He was friend of Debussy, and he did compose amazing things. Debussy didn’t had much students nor followers. But this guys, Les Six: Honnegger, Milhaud, and the others, followed him. Do you know the rest?

AC- I should, but I don’t.

GAN- Yes, you should! Your mother, she played only what the conductor said? She didn’t chose her music?

AC- Yes, well she’s part of an orchestra. In piano she likes a lot Rachmaninov. My dad plays a lot Haydn, and also stuff like the Rococo Variations.

GAN- He plays the viola, right?

AC- No. The cello.

GAN- The cello

MAG- And classical, right?

AC- Yeah. In fact he hates Phillip Glass, Steve Reich and all that stuff.

GAN- He doesn’t like them?

AC- No. My mom dislikes them too.

GAN- And you?

AC- I do.

Everybody laughs

AC- I believe their scores are quite difficult to read. Apparently you’re listening to a loop, but the fact is that small details are always changing. So it’s never the same. I think that’s why some musicians hate them.

GAN- That’s curious. I would’ve thought it was easy, like the Bolero de Raquel/Ravel (laughs). I hate it.

AC- Me too. It’s like the music on Corona’s ads.

GAN- (laughs) So then you pick me up on thursday, and after the talk at your school you take me back home.

AC- Yes.

GAN- That school doesn’t have head nor feet.

AC- It’s like a labyrinth. I’ve heard that at the same time Legorreta built it, he was restoring an abbey. So the design of the school is kind of inspired on it. And it is. It always looks empty, and although it’s not that big, there are no common areas.

GAN- That’s always been a political strategy to prevents students from organizing.

AC- And in the end that’s the reason for the constant failure of the left wing. We just can’t organize. The other day I was thinking on how we have this big trend of making collectives and work groups. I think it’s something cool, however I’m afraid there’s nothing innovative on them and that they aren’t working properly.

GAN- Collectives for what?

AC- At least in art, but I believe they exist in other fields, around the idea that we work much better in team than solo. But when I worked on a collective, things didn’t changed that much. We split authorship but individuality was kept, and ain’t a collective about dissolving authorship? Plus I think that we already are part of a collective, which is art.

GAN- Of course! But even at a tortilla shop. There are several persons making tortillas. That’s a collective too. They work together in order to achieve something. Some other places use industrial machinery, but a small shop has different qualities.

Family's fat women in the mediterranean. 2004. Oil on Canvas. 120x150cm. Artist's collection.

GAN- So... what should I do? I should paint. But I don’t know what to paint. I think I’ll go to the kitchen to get my fruit.

AC- But, ain’t your new paintings themeless?

GAN- Yes.

AC- Then why do you say you don’t know what to paint?

GAN- Cause I didn’t knew what to paint on those days either. But I didn’t care. I wanted to paint whatever came out of me. And I think I’ll continue walking on that direction.

Phillip II. 2000. Acrylic on canvas. 120 x140 cm. Private collection.

AC- I have a doubt. Why have you used so much during the past years the image of Phillip II?

GAN- Simply because I don’t like him. Spanish imperial colonial shit.

AC- Yeah. Now Europe is under crisis, and third world and underdeveloped countries are charged with international debts to magically produce extra money that can save the world’s powers.

GAN- Those pricks have lived with our resources for centuries!

AC- Exactly! And if we have an external debt with the US, what happened to the one that Spain has with us? They stole tons of gold and silver during the colony. They owe us that money too.

GAN- And they keep on squeezing us thanks to our conservative government.

MAS- Yes. Almost all of our banks belong to spanish people, and must of the banks in Spain were declared on bankruptcy. What saves them is latin american money. Plus, the money stays on Spain’s elite pockets while their people starve. Spain’s nobility is so disgusting.

AC- What I find unbelievable about spanish nobility, is that Moctezuma’s descent are counts of the kingdom of Spain, currently living in Granada.

Moctezuma II (Last ruler of the Aztec Empire), from Historia de la conquista de México by Antonio de Solís. Circa 1715.

GAN- Would you consider Moctezuma Xocoyotzin as a traitor?

AC- I don’t know. Those are big words. However something that we can’t forget is that his descent was treated during the colony and until today as a noble family. They got the Miravalle County, and the aztec people were enslaved.

GAN- Yes, and why only Moctezuma? Didn’t Cuitlahuac had a family too? Or Netzahualcoyotl? Cuauhtemoc? And what about the people? The thing is they didn’t became friends of the Spanish. Moctezuma, the one who did, received a gift for collaborating with them. He didn’t make war to them. If he had, the Aztecs would’ve wiped out the Spanish. We outnumbered them by far.

AC- In fact we did beat them, but then they polluted our water.

GAN- They were not like us. They had a different culture. They cheated, and lied. Plus they had fire arms and we didn’t. We were civilized and wise, but we didn’t had iron nor bronze. Our culture was very different. The Aztecs were an empire, yes, but their war politics were others; the way and the means were others.

MAS- They had different ethics.

GAN- Absolutely. They didn’t understood our culture. For instance, once the spanish conquest was established, if we analyse their behaviour the cruelty and bestiality they brought is inconceivable. It’s not only about the ones that were already here, but also about the ones that arrived after them. They adjudged our land and even started fighting for it. Chalco was not as it’s now. It was a garden with a lake. Cortés liked it, and claimed the land as his, as well as Coyoacán. The other spanish generals didn’t like that. So when Cortés traveled to the Higueras (today Honduras), they took control over all the lands they could, including the minor plaza.

We had two plazas, one of them still stands, the mayor one, known as the Zócalo or town center. The minor plaza was behind the Cathedral so people could contemplate the building. Very similar to Europe’s architecture.

So Cortés left to the Higueras, and the spanish rebels took the minor plaza and built on it. When Cortés returned, there was no more minor plaza. They had built on it and also they had invaded and gained control of Chalco. So he had to fight the rebels to regain control.

AC- And the issue with the plaza is incredibly important, right? Supposedly what pushed renaissance was people gathering to share knowledge on the piazas or plazas, which were since the beginning public spaces.

GAN- But the aztecs had it. The urbanisation of the Aztec city was astonishing. It was impressive. They broke and destroyed everything to build up a measly one, as measly as them. And still they say they taught us... Fuck them! We were not asking to be educated. We were much more educated than them. But the catholics... Are you catholics?

MAS- Yes. Well I’ve got faith.

AC- I’m buddhist.

Gilberto Aceves’ driver has arrived to the studio. Everybody grabs their things and leave.

Seven days later, Alonso Cedillo is back at the atelier.

GAN- Did you know about the Pacific Trash Vortex?

AC- They say it isn’t only one. I believe between USA and Japan, there’s a garbage patch bigger than Argentina.

GAN- That’s the result of the education we’ve inherited, same as racism. Racism is so strong. They’ve taught us to fear strangers and foreigners. It does not respect social class. It’s stronger in some and its less on others. The responsibility of the artist, what artists should do, it is all about social structure, and not about shaping your work to the social structure. You can’t just make conservative work because it will get you money or prestige.

(Grabs a book.) Vito Aconcci, do you like his work?

AC- Yes. Actually I’m working around one of his unmade performances in which one must run for 1 hour recording his voice saying the colors of the cars he sees, to present it as a color piece.

GAN- That sounds nice.

AC- Yes. I also find interesting his rejection of art and how he embraces design and architecture. In the end it’s still all about the body. I also love some polaroids he shot in Central Park that portrait the different the points of view of his body parts.

GAN- A little bit like Hockney. I prefer Hockney to be honest. I’m reading a book about him by the way. It’s like an artist bio in someway. I’m loving it. It’s like an interview, very nice. I’ll let you borrow it when I finish it. I think my driver has arrived.

#gilberto aceves navarro #aceves #gilberto #ruptura #mexican #painting

Adapting to the needs of the many.

Jean Baptiste Regnault, Origin of Painting, 1785

Some days ago I was walking to a bus stop in Mexico City, passing near my mom’s place. They re re-building a cinema there for the 3rd time on 25 years. Once again I saw the cranes and their movement that I find so amazingly beautiful. I then heard the sounds of hammering, and of the bulldozers assembling on a symphonic way.

Those sounds could be mimicked to build sound art or music. But the most awesome thing was that art was already happening! Without artists nor musicians! It just happened! And then I knew, art just happens. It’s constantly creating itself, without the need of an artist. It’s just laying there in front of all of us, waiting to be found. That’s why we act as catalyzers. Artists are explorers of the unseen. We find, baptize, make visible, and then let art go away to reach new people. So yes, art can be anything, and anywhere. And everyone’s potentially an artist.

It’s all about challenge. Artists have been finding art in nature and reconfiguring it since the beginning. Let’s rewind back to the Peloponnesian War. There, a girl captured her sweetheart’s shape by drawing his shadow on a wall. Some people say that was the birth of painting, but is capturing a shadow really different from taking a photograph?, or even from making a performance?

Then we can say art happens between process, and that we artists try to capture those instants. Perhaps that’s why Cedric Price loved so much cranes; a building that’s always building itself may have bigger chances to generate art on a natural way. We can say the same about art. Yet, until now we’ve focused on the art that we build and not in the art that naturally happens.

Art without artists has always been the source of art. For some reason (our ego I assume), the art world hasn’t shared this source with our public (actually, not sharing it is what turns people into public). We have to go back to it. We need to open a path so that people can get to know and understand this source. Human generated art is digested by people easier than, what we can call, raw art. Raw art is always simpler, and sometimes simplicity can be awfully complex.

Some years ago, we passed the limit of the contemporary era. Art from the 21st century needs to end the apathy, pessimism, and depression that has invaded us. Everybody, except a few, believe they can’t do what they want to do. We must change that. Although we still haven’t found a name for it, I believe we should all go on this direction.

The idea of the artist virtuoso is the cancer that we re still carrying thanks to the french academy. I don’t know why, even the isms opposed to that idea. Which takes me to the next point. I’m sure art has attempted to get this goal I’m speaking about several times. The isms tried it, specially dadá; The Bauhaus building’s were simple in order to re-build Germany on a quick an effective way, till the point of being consider communists; abstract expressionism, Fluxus, the performance wave, net art. All of them have tried to transcend art from the detonators to the people arround.

This time however, in cooperative art, the trip will be kamikaze. If we succeed we will eliminate ourselves. We are catalyzers, and catalyzers disappear. I think that’s the plan. We’re deleting us.

If people amaze themselves with their surroundings, if they use creativity on ways that can help on their social, political, cultural (not Cultural), and spiritual life, then we will no longer be necessary. The unseen will become and will be seen. It will be discovered, reconfigured, and will reconfigure itself, not because of the art we make, but because of people looking and interacting with it.

The artists are a virus. But its precisely the virus who can lead into a change. We always infect what we see and then create a parallel. With auto-destructive art, Metzger lead to Joseph Nechvatal’s self-eating virus. Artists must behave as virus of this kind.

We need to inspire creation and creativity around us, making changes to open new possibilities. They must remain open so people outside the art world can use them, and realize they can open new ones. Then what we do will become necessary but we won’t be. Art will reach the next level by existing and being re-birth between and adapting to the needs of the many. On this way, there’s a small chance of making a better world possible. That’s why we should always be ready to delete ourselves.

Alonso Cedillo.

[email protected]

The Cafe Penacho in Krems.

On the first week of May 2013, Fran Ilich is at the basement of the Park Hotel in Krems, not far from the donaufestival offices. The basement is the temporary house of the Cafe Penacho, the headquarters of the operation Raiders of the Lost Crown, which is part of the 9th edition of the festival.

The following video is the recording of a conversation between Fran Ilich and an Austrian TV channel.

#fran ilich #donaufestival #krems #raiders of the lost crown #cafe penacho

A different sense of the digital. With William Gibson.

Circa 1999, Carlos Aranda Márquez is with his tape recorder, the last one on the line for interviewing William Gibson at a coffee shop in Mexico City. The following was transcribed as accurate as possible from the tape recording.

Carlos Aranda-

Before going to the initial questions, I would like to start on the beginning of your career. Do you mind?

William Gibson-

No, not at all.

CA-

I would like to know what were you doing before getting published. I mean if you were born in 1948, and you published Neuromancer in 1983, it means that you were 35 years old when it came out. So, what were you doing before that? Were you were writing?

WG-

No. I didn’t start writing until I was almost 30. I think I was 27 or 28. And I went to school to go to Canada and avoid the recruitment for the Vietnam War. So I spend a couple of years doing nothing, doing whatever one did in the sixties. I went to Europe for a little while and did nothing there. I came back to Canada and got a degree in English literature. And I had no idea of what I was doing.

I started to write when my wife was pregnant with our first child. At that point I realized that I had no career. And I didn’t wanted to be an English teacher. So I decided I should try writing, thinking that it wouldn’t work out. But I didn’t wanted to think, “Oh, I wish I would’ve been a writer” so I decided to try and it actually worked. I started to make money doing it.

CA-

You started publishing short stories or did you go straight to publish Neuromancer.

WG-

No, I wrote short stories. It was a period of two or three years while I wrote short stories and sold them to american magazines. And they started to track my writings, some of them were even commissioned, so I had no plan to write a novel. Then someone with a project with first novels of new novelists asked me to write one.

CA-

Were this short stories science fiction stories?

WG-

Yeah they were very much science fiction. I’ve always had the same material since the beginning.

CA-

Did you chose the liberty to write science fiction novels or did it chose you.

WG-

I think it chose me. It was my native literary culture. It was what I read as a teenager. I knew something about the business on it. I knew people did it, and also it could give me a job. I don’t know if I had more more than I did. I knew that I wanted to write SF that was in reaction to most of the american SF I had read as a kid.

CA-

So you were more less conscious that by writing Neuromancer you were changing the ways of literature and that it would never be the same?

WG-

Well I didn’t think it would change, but I wanted to make a gesture. In fact I don’t think that it has changed, I believe it remains exactly the same.

CA -

I have the sensation that part of the structure of your novels and the way you draw the characters, they could be living on the outside world. You weren’t writing heroes.

WG-

That was a radical strategy on my part to do that. But the central core of American SF remains very much the same. I didn’t affect the core but I may have created a sort of alternative passage of it.

CA -

But however, you’ve chose this world. Instead of conquering or living in other planet, the things you’ve written about come to be part of the daily life. Its the role of human beings of conquering the world. We have human beings that found out and deal with time and with what it creates.

WG-

I think one difficulty I’ve always faced as a writer is that I’ve sorted of wear the SF tag. So this tends to make assumptions of what I’m doing. But my actual artistic program is very different.

CA -

I think that the psychic goings from Neuromancer to Mona Lisa Overdrive, are somehow a number of situations that are setting the characters. With this, in Virtual Light they can get more than one direction, discovering that the possibilities of the novel itself are building themselves so they become part of the characters.

WG-

Yeah, the major, and most important characters have this structure in a sense. I don’t know what it means but I’m continuing to explore. The book that closes the Virtual Light cycle, which I’m just finishing, it treats the cyberspace of those books as a single structure. So there’s no physical structure, but there’s a different sense of the digital.

CA -

What do you think of this corporations controlling territories, and the economy.

WG-

Well I think that the old idea of the nation states as a sort of supreme governing bodies is probably gonna wither away over time. We are already handling technologies that neutralize borders. And I think the thing with digital technologies is that no one is available to control the flux of information. The internet is growing very very rapidly and we’ve realised that any kind of information may be carried. Nation states just want us to get a little bit, but they don’t realize that’s actually impossible.

There’s an imminent situation of control in the world, but it’s so easily possible to encrypt information. You can conceal a text in a graphic image or you can conceal graphic images in a text. So I don’t think that nation states have realized that the day for them to control the citizens acts and the global information is really over, as long as this technology remains in place.

CA-

What do you think bout all that’s said about the millennium change? Everybody is talking about it, and we have all the technologies to see it.

WG-

I think it’s more like a millennium failure. The interesting thing about it, is it shows us how the architectural code that underlies all this functions, is already old and imperfect. We can afford to replace it. The people who wrote these codes 20 or 30 years ago, took for granted that what they were writing would be replaced within a few decades by something much more elegant. But it turns out that is not economically visible to do that. It’s actually cheaper and just as effective to patch it. So they've built all this things on top. The processing circuits are doing 300 instructions to do something they could do on 3. The lack of elegance is invisible because this processing happens instantly. So it’s like, it’s idiot. If you look down into the infrastructure, you see all this layers of old things that are no longer applicable and yet they can’t be thrown away because everything is packed on top of them.

#william gibson #interview #cyberpunk #carlos aranda #neuromancer #monalisa overdrive

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