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Mediaspace
For the first time Wand 5 e.V. was announcing an open competition to select the media-space 09 curatorteam. There were no limitations on the means of implementation. The purpose of this open competition was to establish a new experimental space - an >open space< in which artists can perform. (>> more) -
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.. just some numbers …
Barry Ritholtz: “In doing the research for the “Bailout Nation” book, I needed a way to put the dollar amounts into proper historical perspective. If we add in the Citi bailout, the total cost now exceeds $4.6165 trillion dollars.
People have a hard time conceptualizing very large numbers, so let’s give this some context. The current Credit Crisis bailout is now the largest outlay In American history.
Crunching the inflation adjusted numbers, we find the bailout has cost more than all of these big budget government expenditures – combined:
• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billionTOTAL: $3.92 trillion”
via boingboing
D.I.Y. - The artist as model of the crisis
My favorite example of our topic the role of artist Damien Hirst in regards of the crisis got a new contribution by a today’s SZ (Süddeutsche Zeitung) article. While the ‘hardcover copy’ of the newspaper titles ‘Mach’s doch selbst’ Daminen Hirst: Der Künstler als Leitbild der Krise the internet version reads as following:
Kunst und Krise / Mal gewinnt man, mal verlieren die anderen
Damien Hirst wusste schon die florierende Wirtschaft zu nutzen - nun meistert er ihr Scheitern. Der Künstler als Leitbild der Krise.
Artist and crisis / At times one wins, at times others loose
Damien Hirst knew how to use the flourishing economy - now he masters its failure. The artist as model of the crisis.
>>> just quickly posting the link (german only / here a private english translation pdf can be found
… more to follow
Media-Space: New Media Art – Past, Present, Futures
Discovering another namesake: The Australian Media-Space Journal just published it first issue based on papers which were presented at the 2007 International Digital Arts and Culture Conference themed ‘The Future of Digital Media Culture’.
The papers in this issue were selected from the perthDAC 2007 conference proceedings, and each contribution presents and critically situates either existing creative works or works-in-progress, or future-casts the possibilities of specific forms of new media art. […]
Each of these papers makes a significant and critical contribution to our understanding of new media art and its possible futures. We hope you find this first issue of Media-Space Journal both stimulating and provocative.
The Capital Crime
‘Das Kapitalverbrechen / The Capital Crime‘ is the title of the coming week’s cover story of the german magazine ‘Der Spiegel’. It is an extensive report, which attempts to create a timeline for the understanding of the developing of the current financial crisis.
For the moment I only want to pick out two points, which I thought specifically interesting and/or telling and will either post here english references from the net or my own translation. I won’t add further comments for the moment, but highly appreciate any feedback.
point 1) “Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.” brought up by Warren Buffet, one of the richest guys worlwide, as early as March 2003. >>> BBC reference / alternet reference
point 2) “If you just take and pass on mortgages, thus remove them spatially from the borrower and tie them to bundles together with other mortgages somewhere else, you depersonalize them from the original business. You cut the connections. And you ignore the nature of globalization, where everything is interconnected. But indeed you cannot cut connections any longer, as everything returns, because anything has an effect on everything. You bet on houses in Ohio and thereby might ruin the national economy in Iceland. You should be aware of these facts.”
excerpt taken from a german ‘Der Spiegel’ quote of Dov Seidman
These points reminded me again of Strange Weather ….. “In an increasingly confusing world, Strange Weather offers the opportunity to draw connections between the seemingly mundane details of your everyday life, and shifts in the increasingly unstable global environment.”
Postcapital
This announcement for an upcoming exhibition in the Stuttgart Kunstverein, which will end just a few days before media space 09 will hopefully start, just caught my attention. Thus its focus seems slightly different, it still sounds interesting and related to our thematic choice.
(May be someone of the Stuttgarters can visit and report a bit?? ; ) … )
“Postcapital” revolves around the far-reaching changes having evolved worldwide in social, political, economic, and cultural realms over the last two decades, their watershed moments emblematized in the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the attacks on September 11, 2001.
[…..] Emerging here is the question as to what extent capitalist societies have changed in absence of their erstwhile counterparts and which new walls have been erected through the global politics following events of 1989 and 2001.
The triumphal course of capitalism and of the Western democracies has by no means proved to guarantee peace, security, and stability, as the conflicts in former Yugoslavia, the war in Iraq, or, even more recently, the slumps in the U.S. financial markets have demonstrated. “Postcapital” is an attempt at reading the complex and divergent realities of the twenty-first century by virtue of their forms of representation: the review of an age whose prelude has been pinpointed by Andújar as localized between 1989 and 2001.
The English term “postcapital” references financial capital as well as capital cities. As such, the project explores both the transformations of capitalist societies and the shifting of their urban loci of power.
In 1989, the first cornerstones were laid at the Genevan research institute CERN for the World Wide Web, the significance of which for the transition from industrial to knowledge society has been sufficiently noted. “Postcapital” therefore alludes less to the utopias of a vanquished capitalism than to those upheavals affecting all areas of life that are both spawned and exacted by the networked age of information. In view of contemporary information and storage media, knowledge is, according to the artist’s theory, no longer acquired by visiting archives but rather through life in the networked archives. Thus, an essential role is inherent in the interpretation of information….(read on)
asymptote NYSE
Almost exactly five years ago time.com started a review on the 1999 asymptote NYSE cyber project with these lines:
We live in an era that puts little stock in stability. Solidity and permanence read as rigidity and torpor. The future will be only more unruly, tossed and pulled by disparate forces like a piece of bread among sea gulls. So where does this leave architects, whose work is all about permanence? Buildings are supposed to be hefty, purposeful and unyielding. How can you create structures that embody a quicksilver society when they have to stand still?
ARCHITECTS DESIGN IN CYBERSPACE AND REAL SPACE FOR THE NYSE
ASYMPTOTE PROJECTS
Next Phase: Asymptote 3.0
Kurt Tucholsky poem
There’s a poet that is accredited to Kurt Tucholsky and accurately describes the actual finance-crisis. Monika found out that this is a fake floating through the net since a while.
(see comments).
.
Wenn die Börsenkurse fallen,
regt sich Kummer fast bei allen,
aber manche blühen auf:
Ihr Rezept heißt Leerverkauf.
.
Keck verhökern diese Knaben
Dinge, die sie gar nicht haben,
treten selbst den Absturz los,
den sie brauchen - echt famos!
.
Leichter noch bei solchen Taten
tun sie sich mit Derivaten:
Wenn Papier den Wert frisiert,
wird die Wirkung potenziert.
.
Wenn in Folge Banken krachen,
haben Sparer nichts zu lachen,
und die Hypothek aufs Haus
heißt, Bewohner müssen raus.
.
Trifft’s hingegen große Banken,
kommt die ganze Welt ins Wanken -
auch die Spekulantenbrut
zittert jetzt um Hab und Gut!”
.
Soll man das System gefährden?
Da muß eingeschritten werden:
Der Gewinn, der bleibt privat,
die Verluste kauft der Staat.
.
Dazu braucht der Staat Kredite,
und das bringt erneut Profite,
hat man doch in jenem Land
die Regierung in der Hand.
.
Für die Zechen dieser Frechen
hat der Kleine Mann zu blechen
und - das ist das Feine ja -
nicht nur in Amerika!
.
Aber sollten sich die Massen
das mal nimmer bieten lassen,
ist der Ausweg längst bedacht:
Dann wird bisschen Krieg gemacht.
one month of creative work (a parody with a message)
Remember: One month ago, 7.10.2008, Frank Amos opened a „Media Space Wiki“ for us curators. Now, after four weeks of intensive dispute and creativity, the team is ready with lots of suggestions.
I like to pick out the curator´s personal inventions for Media Space:
Burak Arikan
„If my pocket were the USA“
A story of a ruinous life, with fictionary receipts and orders
State: Burak has created all fictionary documents. He is refining the story behind them. He will need four meters on a wall. The movie will last about three minutes.
Category: Objects on the wall, website, and movie
Chris Mennel
„World trade airplane“
a media triology about sudden dramatic effects in a longtime growing credit system
State: The basic pictures for all three movies are composed, but there is space for improvement. Messages for the „pin wall“ are written. The interactive part is under construction.
Category: Media Installation
Marius Watz
„Images of turbulence“
Marius has prepared one of his visualisation programs to be handeld by public. He fills in given data material or even internet streams about the world wide financial situation. Visitors create pictures on the screen and can send them via e-mail.
State: The Installation works with given material already. Marius is still searching for filters that enable the online use.
Category: Interactive Computer Presentation
Monica Nunez
„Rich ladies, poor ladies (and the female artist in the middle)“
A found footage montage of youtube videos with images of glam and ruin (yes, it has do do with actual events)
State: Monica has sampled lots of professional photos for that theme, made by female photographers. She thinks about twisting from the „youtube level“ to a pure photographic presentation. Her special idea is to use the whole bottom of Media Space for showing the pictures.
Category: Movie, and a hangout on the Wall, or - as a laminated „layout“ - on the bottom
Monika Jaeckel
„Puzzling the complexity“
A bilingual try to understand what happens in financial systems
State: Monika stopped trying to understand this f… system at all. She will prepare some material in a way that gives visitors a chance to start their own route of analysis.
Category: Presentation on six overhead projectors, on a wall and in the internet
Stefanie Reling
„World Trade Party“
a bar with rising and sinking prices for the drinks
State: Steffi has expanded her basic idea. For example there are „miracle bags“ - people can buy and don´t know what´s within them. „Derivates“ is printed on the bag´s outside. The event may need 2000 Euro of investment, but Steffi hopes to get all money back by selling the drinks and goodies.
Category: Event
Yuan Peng
„Bangin´´gainst reality“
a parade with stressed faces of important people
State: coming soon
Category: movie and website
Correct me, if I wrote anything wrong 
Chris
Beautiful Inside My Bank Account Forever…
I tried to put together some articles which give an outline for the Damien Hirst auction in September, which fell together with the first days of the financial crisis. (During the weekend of September 13–14, Lehman Brothers declared bankcruptcy, auction was held on the 16th .. btw they had some early Hirsts in their collection..)
Aside from this eventually interesting fact one can definitly state, that Hirst’s idea about making ‘the art market more democratic’ eventually did not have any major effect.
“Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” his one-artist, two-day auction at Sotheby’s.
In a move that some say has the potential to change the face of art dealing, Mr. Hirst has cut out his dealers — the New York-based Gagosian Gallery and the White Cube in London — and taken his work straight to auction.
Damien Hirst’s Next Sensation: Thinking Outside the Dealer
Damien Hirst sets new auction record with ‘Investment Banker in Formaldehyde’
Damien Hirst: Beautiful Inside My Bank Account Forever…
Markets Slide, But Hirst Auction Breaks Records
Peter Aspden, an arts writer for the Financial Times, said the exhibition sales are “evidence that there are those who are insulated from the real world.” The superwealthy buyers who are attracted to a sale are not likely to be affected by the fiscal circumstances of the past few months, he said.
.. and as he needs it so desperately:
Damien Hirst X Levis Fall 2008 Spin Denim Auction
WSJ: Sign of the Times: National Debt Clock Runs Out of Digits
From the Wall Street Journal
Sign of the Times: National Debt Clock Runs Out of Digits
The national debt clock, the unofficial tracker of the federal deficit maintained by the Durst Organization in New York, has reached its limits. Last month, as the national debt exceeded $10 trillion for the first time, the clock ran out of digits to record the number.
The dollar sign in the clock had to be deleted and replaced with a one to record the massive number. The clock’s owners say a new model — with space for two extra digits — will be in place early next year.
Now the debt clock will be able to reach the quadrillions. Hopefully, that’s not a level that will be breached any time soon. –Phil Izzo
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