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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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aesthetics of current affairs in blue
Just came across this announcement of a new exhibition displaying the ‘Aesthetics of Capital’ .. and wondering if putting aesthetics into the blue helps to understand the current developments …
In his Capital + Code exhibition, Richard Kriesche homes in on interconnections, focusing on the structure of phenomena. In the Aesthetics of Capital light installation (2008) especially created for the Kunsthaus Graz, he bathes everything in a technoid computer-blue light. The installation uses eight projectors and visualization software (which also sees use in the money markets) to project market-type fluctuations on the interior wall of the building. The constantly changing images are real-time responses to search questions on Google involving different combinations of the words art, work, capital and freedom. The images are an indication of an elusive global state.
view >>> animation
Ronnie and the Depression
“A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours.” -Ronald Reagan, 1980
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.
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
Back to Materiality
After the Federal bailout proposal rejected on September 29, 2008, the stock market dropped big time in New York. I checked out the Map of the Market to see which sectors are down, it was full red. But there was one spot that was still green: gold (Barrick Gold ABX). This might just be a moment in the market, but it is an ironic moment where the immateriality of the markets dissolved as people lost their trust. A sign to go back to make things, sell things, and count the money by hand.
* Click on the image to enlarge.
** Cross post from my blog.
installation
hi, Chris, yesterday I was looking to your project idea worldtrade ! There are many interesting and important thoughts and I like the possible interactivity with the visitors. I only was thinking of that the interpretation of the worldtradecenter catastrophe as the main subject gets too much weight in a discussion about the actual world wide finance crisis and what are the currently consequences. Could you imagine to include more ideas in your installation in addition to?
analyses I could work with
Wow, Steffi, your posting from 10/27 gives links to impressive analyses:
- two long comments about the crisis in german language - interviews with Robert Kurz and Erwin Wagenhofer.
- a trailer about Wagenhofer´s right-in-time-coming movie “let´s make money”. This movie, growing since three years, will give us “problems” to say things closer, more emotinal, in our way, in Media Space installations to the same theme.
Until this moment I wanted to invite members of Attac for an evening of discussion in Media Space Stuttgart… but I feel inspired after reading Robert Kurz, to sit on these already given correct analyses, and to try the artistical crazyness of giving - don´t laugh - ideas of solution.
From me there will come three ideas… but I must imagine a government beyond actual governments, watching three focusses - the impossibility of long-time credit akkumulation, the climax of richess if you have your first two million dollars, and - this is no actual, but for me an important focus - the growth of money and time consuming adminstrations in large social structures.
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