Multiplace - Network Culture Festival - 16 cities / towns in 8 countries + the Internet :: April 26 - May 3, 2008 :: Bahon, Banska Bystrica, Bratislava, Kosice, Nitra, Trnava, Zilina (Slovak Republic), Berlin (Germany), Brno, Prague, Ostrava (Czech Republic), Budapest (Hungary), Glasgow (UK), Novi Sad (Serbia), Reykjavik (Iceland), Wroclaw (Poland).

Multiplace is a network of people and independent organizations interested in the interaction between media, technology, the arts, culture and society. The activities of this network culminate each year in this festival that simultaneously takes place within various independent organizations internationally. Continue reading

Shoot ‘em up (or shmup for short) is a computer and video game genre where the player usually controls a vehicle or character and fights large numbers of enemies with shooting attacks, typically of a highly stylized nature. In Japan, where the genre is still a lively one, they are simply known as “shooting games” and they are focused on avatar actions using some weapons. But what could happen when the weapons are instead “memes”? The game might become a memetic simulation as in Joseph Hocking’s Memetic simulation no.2.

Memetics is a neo-Darwinian approach to evolutionary models of cultural information transfer based on the concept of the “meme”. Started from a metaphor used in Richard Dawkins popular writings, it has later turned into an approach in the study of self-replicating units of culture. Continue reading

CHINA CHINA CHINA!!! - CHINESE CONTEMPORARY ART
BEYOND THE GLOBAL MARKET :: March 21 - May 4, 2008 :: Strozzina Contemporary Culture Center, Florence (Italy).

CHINA CHINA CHINA!!! will present the work of 18 contemporary Chinese artists from three different cities - Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou - who are all seeking to define a new cultural identity unfettered by the rules of the global market. A publication (published by Silvana Editoriale) and a series of lectures are planned with the exhibition. This event ties in with the exhibition on the first floor of Palazzo Strozzi, devoted to the Tang dynasty, universally recognized as a high point in Chinese civilization and central to the Chinese Renaissance. Continue reading

The latest issue of Artnodes Journal, the UOC’s e-journal on art, science and technology is now online. Gameplay: Art, Videogames and Culture is dedicated to exploring the relationships between art, videogames and culture, focusing on the idea of gameplay as the common thread to the monograph. In the study of play as a cultural phenomenon, there are a number of important milestones, such as the book Homo Ludens written by Johan Huizinga in 1938 or Man, Play and Games written in 1958 by Roger Caillois, which established a clear link between play and culture, where games are not merely an element in culture but an element of culture. Continue reading

Free Soil will present a bus tour, outdoor film / video festival and on-site exchange (June 5-7, 2008) in conjunction with the 2nd Biennial 01SJ Global Festival of Art on the Edge in San Jose, California :: Call for Submissions - Onsite Learning Exchange / Post Tour Teach-In :: Deadline: March 30, 2008.

Building upon the energy of our first bus tour — A Journey through the techno-utopian beginnings and environmental currents of the Silicon Valley — Free Soil would like to use this year’s gathering of artists and practitioners to think about how we learn. How can we use our tools and practice to reflect and engage with the world around us? Continue reading

Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG and Bani present: The Influencers - Festival of Media Action and Radical Entertainment with Alan Abel, Alterazioni Video, Santi Cirugeda, Brody Condon, Laibach, Monochrom, Trevor Paglen :: February 28 - March 1, 2008 :: Center of Contemporary Culture Barcelona.

The Influencers explores controversial forms of art and communication guerrilla, presenting independent projects that play with global popular culture, infiltrate the mass media, and transform fashions, consumption and technological fetishism. The key to The Influencers is found in its guests and stories: impostors, pseudo-totalitarian musicians, conceptual hackers, deviant geographers, anarchitects and actors from invisible theatre. Continue reading

We are currently looking for volunteers / NGOs / Academics / Researchers / Institutions who have interest and would be willing to contribute to the two month Urban Body studio organised by Spacelab research laboratory for urbanism / city from Technical University of Delft, the Netherlands with a special focus on Mapping Dharavi, Mumbai.

The project aims at exploring and mapping the complexity of elements, which constitute the urban, social and cultural texture of squatter settlements in the city of Mumbai. Considering these areas within the broader framework of urban transformations and redevelopment projects, the studio looks at the slums as forms of ‘emergent’ urbanities, which function with a multiple logic and structure of relations both within itself and with the outside. Continue reading

Participation and Media Production: Critical Reflections on Content Creation; The ICA 2007 San Francisco Conference Theme Book; edited by Nico Carpentier and Benjamin De Cleen - In an era when (especially new) media are celebrated for their participatory potential, questions about the nature and intensity of these participatory processes seem to be superfluous. But raising these questions pushes us into a critical mode towards the changes that have lead to the present-day media landscape. This volume’s authors aim to activate this critical mode and reflect on the participatory nature of contemporary media organizations and products.

In order to stand even a remote chance to realize this objective, and to critically unravel the societal role of participation, we need to acknowledge that participation is a complex and contested notion, covering a wide variety of meanings and practices that are converging into a hybrid of technologies, genres, and formats. Continue reading

Crafting Protest - Panel Discussion & Craft Reception :: Panelists: Liz Collins, artist/designer; Sabrina Gschwandtner, artist; Cat Mazza, artist/activist; Allison Smith, artist :: Moderator: Julia Bryan-Wilson, art historian and critic, University of California at Irvine :: January 26, 2008; 3 - 5 pm :: The Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor, New York City.

Many contemporary artists are using craft as a largely unregulated place of protest where diverse and timely political statements are being made. Continue reading

I’ve been invited to Alexandria, Egypt by the Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF) to work on a site-specific project, as well as lead a workshop with local art and architecture students. I’ve begun a web site for the project here. I’ll also be posting photos regularly on Flickr to this photo set. Here’s a somewhat “official” blurb about my anticipated work:

Pedestrian histories suggest a multiplicity of stories and perspectives from which to consider a place, from which to consider Alexandria and the people who inhabit it. These petites histoires, or minor histories, depend upon the itineraries and movements of inhabitants between static points of rest (places) within the city. Continue reading