SoundScape Movement Fest: May 18-21, 2006

The festival is an improvisational based sound and movement festival in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area. International and local artists will put on nightly performances and daily educational workshops. The festival will take place at local venues including the Nightlight, the ArtsCenter, the Local 506, Balanced Movement, Carolina Fitness and the Internationalist Bookstore. For a complete schedule and details, please see: www.soundscapefest.org


Our own Michal Osterweil is performing a piece on public space, Friday May 19 with Jen

Padilla, Alexis Mastromichalis and others at Local 506 as part of the Soundscape Movement Fest. http://esotic.com/media/SoundscapePSA.mov

The international guest artist for the festival is — Ivo Dimchev (check out his website at www.ivodimchev.com). He is performing at the ArtsCenter on Thursday, May 18th (8pm) and the Nightlight on Saturday, May 20th. (10pm). Also, see www.soundscapefest.org for a complete list of performances and schedule info. In the recent several years Ivo Dimchev has become known to the audience mostly due to his radical work in the field of physical theatre. He is author of the choreography and the music of the Butoh – performance ”Sleeping Dog”, realized in collaboration with Masaki Iwana on the stage of the National Theatre ”Ivan Vazov” in Sofia 2001. The performance has been presented on festivals in France, Italy, Egypt, etc. He is a choreographer, composer of the music of the performance ”The Garden of the Singing Ficuses”, a production of The Red House for Culture and Debate staged at the National Theatre ”Ivan Vazov” 2002 presented at festivals in France, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, etc. In 2003 Ivo created the improvisational video street-performance ”Volk’s Mother”, the video-version of which has successfully given arrive in ”They Are Leaving” Sofia, 2003, Balkan Dance Platform Bucharest, 2003, Art Expo Madrid, 2005 and the Biennale for Young Visual Artists Bucharest, 2005. He is author of the photo-installation ”The Last Room”, presented for the last time within the framework of ”The Ideal” A Week of Contemporary Art – Plovdiv, 2005. In 2005 he creates ”Lili Handel -blood, poetry and music from the white whore’s boudoir”- 44 min. physical performance.  Ivo Dimchev is also a founder and director of HUMARTS foundation.

Lauren Rosenthal exhibition at the Ackland

The show will open to the public with an informal reception from 5:30 until 9:00pm.  It will be on view for one month. On Sunday, April 23rd, there will be a more formal “opening” reception on from 2:00 until 5:00pm.  Also, on Wednesday, May 3rd at 12pm, all of the artists in the show will be giving artist talks in the Museum.


Lauren writes:

“I have been making artwork that depicts river networks for the past year and half.  I am interested in both the literal and metaphorical implications of these freshwater systems which highlight our incredible interconnectedness, both with one another and with the earth. My experience as coordinator of the Haw River Learning Celebration has had a profound impact on me, and I have made a number of pieces that image this dynamic and beautiful system. 2 of them will be on view at the Ackland Museum.

More recently, I have been using GIS technology to make maps of possibility and critique.  My most current work is a river-centered atlas of the United States of America.  I have redefined all of the political boundaries in this country so that state lines are defined by watershed divides.  I hope that by imagining a nation that puts water at the center of its value system, this project might provoke dialogue and stimulate change around how we construct both the social and physical the landscapes in which we live.”

March 30-31, kanarinka visit

kanarinka (Catherine D’Ignazio) is a new media artist who creates collaborative experiments in public spaces both online and offline using old calculus texts, techniques from cartography, and the participation of the general public. Her current project, “The Institute for Infinitely Small Things,” is a research organization that supports various ways of going on expeditions in the world to find and create infinitely small things. By conducting microperformative interventions and supporting research into infinitely small things, “The Institute for Infinitely Small Things” creates experimental social and political spaces for members of the public to imagine new forms of resistance to the current condition of Empire.     kanarinka is Co-Director of iKatun, a collaborative group of artists and technologists, and the Associate Director of Art Interactive, Boston’s premier new media arts space. She is a regular contributor to GlowLab, a collective of artists interested in psychogeographic practices. kanarinka has been commissioned by Turbulence.org and the 7a*11d International Performance Art Festival. Her work has been shown at MASSMoCA and the DCKT Contemporary Gallery in NYC among other locations. kanarinka is a 2005 candidate for an MFA degree in Studio Art from the Maine College of Art.


 

THURSDAY  March 30 4pm–5pm. — elin slavick studio, Hanes Art Center #312, red door — US bombsites and other projects

FRIDAY March 31 1.00-2.00pm: kanarinka presentation: ‘how to make the invisible stay invisible: on biopolitical engineering’ Saunders Hall 2nd Floor Conference Room.

FRIDAY March 31 5.00-7.00pm: A gathering on critical mapping. 204 Saunders Hall.
Short presentations of various critical cartography and alternative economies projects. Presenters (5-10 minutes each): Bring material to share (including maps, texts, flyers, etc both electronic and touchable) we can project them and hang them on the walls as a mode of temporary exhibition. The presentations could be timed, no more than 10 to 15 min. each, including a time for brief discussion at the end of each one.
kanarinka — new projects
Maribel Casas Cortes — feminista de la deriva
Sebastian Cobarrubias, MC, Juan Aparicio, and JP – delete the borders
Tim Stallman and Craig Dalton — dis-Orientations
Michal Osterweil — alternative economies network
Lauren Rosenthal — maps and art activism
Denis Wood – projects on art mapping
UNC derive, Dana Powell, Angela Cacciaru, Others.

kanarinka’s Affiliations:
http://www.ikatun.com
http://www.infinitelysmallthings.net
http://www.artinteractive.org
http://www.glowlab.com

Recent Projects:
http://www.ikatun.com/100-11/
http://www.funeralsforamoment.net
http://communitygarden.typepad.com

Institute for Infinitely Small Things
www.infinitelysmallthings.net
http://www.ikatun.com/institute/infinitelysmallthings/
http://www.turbulence.org/studios/kanarinka/index.html

Corporate Commands Database
www.corporatecommands.com

42 or 363 Definitions of Cartography (Book)
http://tinyurl.com/aahcg

100(11) Instruction Works
www.ikatun.com/100-11

online studio
www.turbulence.org/studios/kanarinka

ABOUT GLOWLAB
Glowlab is an artist-run production and publishing lab engaging urban public space as the medium for contemporary art and technology projects. We track emerging approaches to psychogeography, the exploration of the physical and psychological landscape of cities. Our annual Conflux festival, exhibitions, events and our bi-monthly web-based magazine support a network of artists, researchers and technologists around the world.
http://glowlab.com

ABOUT iKATUN
In South Slavic, “katun” means “temporary village” and is used to designate seasonal communities near pastures and bodies of water. iKatun’s mission is to foster and develop temporary communities that experiment with art, geography  and political engagement in everyday life. iKatun provides fiscal sponsorship to artists, produces experimental educational gatherings such as conferences, walks and reading groups, and conducts field research with the Institute for Infinitely Small Things.
http://www.ikatun.com

Micropolitical Machines
www.ikatun.com/k/thesis/catherine_thesis.doc

Micropolitical machines are social technologies engineered by  distributed agents to produce experiences of dissonance,  complexifying encounters, qualitative difference, multiplicity,  disrecognition and invisibility. The Control Society – our current  sociopolitical configuration under global capitalism – deploys  quantitative, over-determining technologies to produce complex  circuits of consumer desire. Though decentralized and rhizomatic in  structure, the Control Society constitutes a new kind of overcoding  machine concerned at all times with social production to accelerate  economic exchange.

Micropolitical machines are engineered not as mechanisms of  resistance or revolution in response to the Control Society, but as  the effectuation of molecular lines of flight from it – the  deployment of tiny, sociopolitical beginnings. The performance- frameworks and social systems discussed in this paper reengineer  circuits of consumer desire, stage encounters with qualitative  multiplicity, and, most importantly, operate in the Virtual as  opposed to the Real. These micropolitical machines utilize existing  capitalist infrastructure in order to deploy a beginning (or the  beginning of a beginning) of another society, another politics,  another world. This is the territory of the micro-: instead of  relying on representation, symbolism or didactics, these artists  traffic in affect to effect social transformation.

Artists and researchers discussed include Yoko Ono, Krzysztof  Wodiczko, Cesare Pietroiusti, The Institute for Applied Autonomy,  Lucy Orta, Stefanie Trojan, and my own work with iKatun and with The  Institute for Infinitely Small Things.

March 11, 2006: Counter-Cartography Brunch #1

@ Mess Hall 6932 North Glenwood Avenue,  ‘Morse’ stop on the Redline

www.messhall.org

On the occasion of a random Saturday in Chicago, this event will gather a range of Chicago based activist map makers, experimental geographers and space interveners to meet up with a collection of visitors producing incredibly relevant and related projects/writing for an afternoon of show-n-tell, eating and discussion. We will be presenting an archive of collected mapping projects including the work of Bureau d’études (Fr). Hackitectura (Sp), Friends of William Blake (USa), and more in a temporary exhibition for the afternoon.

March 8, 2006: Delete-the-Border!

Delete-the-Border! Activist Art Movements, New Mapping Projects, and the Reworking of the Euro-Border

Sebastian Cobarrubias, Maria Isabel Casas Cortes, Juan Ricardo Aparicio, and John Pickles. CCC presentation in the special sessions ‘Experiments with Territories: Post Cartographic Map Design I and II’. Annual Conference of Association of American Geographers, Chicago.

Nov-Dec, 2005–Here be Dragons: Cartography of Globalization

Here Be Dragons: Cartography of Globalization

An Exhibition initiated by Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry   12 Nov. – 17 Dec. 2005
Opening reception: Sat. 12 Nov., 8-10pm
Toronto Free Gallery
660 Queen St. East
Toronto, ON
416-913-0461
Centuries ago, map-makers wrote the phrase ‘here be dragons’ on areas that were outside of their known world. Where should this phrase be written on contemporary maps of political and economic territory?


Recently, activists, artists, and researchers have used the form of the map to visually represent the distribution of power, the circulation of information, and the organization of control in the age of capitalist globalization. These critical cartographers make visible the vast networks of national governments, transnational corporations, and international institutions which channel massive flows of people, labour, interests, dollars, and meaning. Making the complexities of our present more graspable, counter-cartography furnishes us with pedagogical tools for cognitively navigating the class-divided, politically administered, and digitally mediated world we live in.

But the point of these maps isn’t to say: ‘Look how trapped we are.’ These networks are contested, and vulnerable. And there exist counter-networks, on whose nodes a multitude of protagonists are searching for and inventing emergency exits. Maps of these powers ‘from
below’ give expression to creative resistances and workable alternatives. These are a different type of dragon.

Believing that counter-cartography is a political provocation, the Toronto School of Creativity & Inquiry is initiating a series of participatory events during the mapping show as forums for the
discussion of questions raised by these critical cartographers. Where are the dragons today? How might we navigate a course within, against, and beyond the enclosures of the known world?

The exhibition features maps, texts, audio, and video by Pierre Bélanger (Toronto), Adrian Blackwell (Toronto), Bureau d’études (Paris), Govcom.org (Amsterdam), Brian Holmes (Paris), Polaris Institute (Ottawa), and Kika Thorne (Victoria). Richard J.F. Day (Kingston) occupies the 24-hour Gallery.

Contact heather(at)torontofreegallery.org torontoschool(at)sympatico.ca

October 7, 2005: 3Cs Planning Meeting

Saunders 2nd Floor at 6pm

This is the agenda it was sent before:

(details below)

1) Drifting

2) Spacing Movements and New Cartographies

3) Alternative Community Economies

4) Artist and Community Movements

5) Webpages

 


1) DRIFTING: At our last meeting, we had a very lively discussion of the meaning, practices, and politics of situationist ‘drifting’ (‘derive’) and its incorporation into the work of Brian Holmes, 16Beaver, and the ‘Continental Drift seminar’ currently underway in NYC. We agreed at the meeting that those who wished to would draft paragraph(s)/pages on aspects of our discussion to compile a summary of our understanding of drifting and our discussion of its forms, practices, and possible uses (and limitations).  I will compile what I have received by Thursday for Friday morning distribution. If you haven’t yet and want to, please send along a paragraph or two.

Goals: Working paper on the methods of drifting and its assessment in the context of a re-reading of Debord and the feminist re-readings by the precarias.

2) SPACING MOVEMENTS and NEW CARTOGRAPHIES: I am currently working on possible webpages for our group and for the broader Cultures of Economies Group. In collating materials, I realized that we have not circulated the ‘Spacing Movements’ readings that initiated some of the discussions that led to this formation of this group. In looking back over them, they seem interesting and worthwhile sharing with new members (they are attached). They might explain a little of the background to topics such as ‘mapping the university’ and what is intended by this.

In preparing the research proposal for our group, we decided on a variety of ways of cutting-into our topic. We have started the semester with some issues of ‘new cartographies’. This phrase derives from Deleuze’s description of one of the major contributions of Foucault — ‘the new cartographer’, and captures something of the Foucauldian-Deleuzian efforts to move beyond representational epistemologies and humanisms of various kinds. This is, in part, the project of several of the groups we have been discussing and is reflected in the readings for the 16Beaver Continental Drift Seminar.  I have attached again the Lazzarato essay on biopolitics, which earlier we had thought of returning to in more detail, and which I think remains useful for our discussions.

Goals: Working group plan for concrete projects on mapping the university.

(a) Labor Day Initiative: Report-back.

(b) Specific project (see, for example, a map of the multiple connections of Bowling Green state university to the biotech industry:

http://www.cyberfeminism.net/biopower/bp_map.html  and “Recomposing the

University” by Tizziana Terranova and Marc Bousquet

http://www.metamute.com/look/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=1&NrIssue=28&NrSection=10&NrArticle=1403).

3) ALTERNATIVE COMMUNITY ECONOMIES: Another cut into our topic was that of the diverse or alternative economies debates and movements. Several of you have been deeply involved in these literatures and activities. Bring along suggestions that will frame our subsequent two meetings and, like the ‘mappings’ discussions will stimulate and frame activities around these issues over the next few months.

4) ARTIST- AND COMMUNITY-MOVEMENTS: In both the ‘new cartographies’ and the ‘alternative community economies’ projects the role of artist- and community-movements has been central to our thinking. In late semester we have events planned around elin slavick’s work. I would enjoy discussing ideas for pushing this aspect of our work further, if only by way of preparing for the spring semester. The Fall is already fairly busy: besides these group issues the Cultures of Economies Group is beginning its reading of Jason Read’s The Microppolitics of Capital October 10 at pm, Steve Wylie and Larry Grossberg will be discussing spatial materialism in mid-October, Derek Gregory comes in late October, Randy Martin (Public Culture) is in early November.

5) WEBPAGES: I would like to prepare webpages for each project, if only to give us a single site to which we can go to find out what is going on when and what is being read and produced. I have spent the last two hours playing with images and sticking together some draft pages. They are attached. Can we spend 10 minutes on Friday discussing (a) whether this approach to representing our work and organizing activities is worthwhile, (b) if so, what suggestions you have for design and content, and (c) recommendations for additional information? This is a little mundane, but I have to do something with my evenings!

 

September 19, 2005: Meeting on Drifting

3Cs Meeting on the Situationists and Drifting.  For readings see below.

 

 


Readings:

Debord’s Theory of the Dérive

http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/314

http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/

Psychogeography: a definition:

http://www.monoculartimes.co.uk/city-tours/psychogeography/workingdefinition.shtml

Psychogeography and the Dérive:

http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/a.evans/psychogeog.html

http://www.psychogeography.org.uk/

Dada maps:

http://faculty.washington.edu/dillon/rhethtml/dadamaps/dadamaps2b.html