A list of recommendations, reflecting the dynamic culture we are part of, straddling the fields of art, technology and social change.
Events, Exhibitions, Festivals and Conferences
TransLocal Cooperation Exhibition | 13 March – 19 April | An exhibition of works born of cooperation and knowledge exchange between Turkish, Greek, Serbian and British artists seeking translocal solidarity in a hyper-connected world. As our world has become hyper-connected it has enabled us to simultaneously occupy or travel through numerous physical and virtual locations. A result of this is that we increasingly each identify with more than one place or culture. This social and cultural aspect of globalisation is often described in terms of ‘translocality’, where the events, conditions, and attachments of one location can rapidly influence and connect with another | Furtherfield Gallery | Finsbury Park, London | Opening Event | Thur, 12 Mar, 18:00 – 20:00 | Booking Essential – https://cutt.ly/ntwYrtw
Cassie Thornton presents The Hologram: Collective Health as a “Beautiful Art Work” | A series of talks from the Love Machines season | Artist Cassie Thornton, of the Feminist Economics Department (the FED), will discuss The Hologram, a mythoreal collective peer-to-peer health project currently incubating at Furtherfield Gallery in London. The Hologram, based on the understanding that all our crises are connected and everyone is a little sick, is a viral four-person health monitoring and diagnostic system practiced from couches all over the world. This health distribution system is based on the experimental care models developed in the Social Solidarity Clinics in Greece during the height of the financial and migration crisis. The result is the construction of a robust network of multi-dimensional health, collectively oriented social practices, and trust that can outlive racial capitalism as an act of resistance. Furtherfield Commons, Finsbury Park London, UK | 10 March 2020, Tues 18 March 2020, Weds 13:30 – 17:00 | Booking Required – https://cutt.ly/ntwYddK
Dawn of the Transhuman Era | Tuesday, 17 March 2020 | Transhumanism argues that we should preserve and extend the unique properties that make us human by radically altering ourselves and the environment around us. Recently transhumanist thinking has seen a resurgence thanks to new technological developments that point towards the possibility that many of its promises will be realised. This raises a number of challenging issues that aspiring transhumanists must soon face: from how they will choose to manipulate or upgrade their body; to how they will approach the taboo of death – especially if, in principle, you could live forever | Join transhumanist Prof. Steve Fuller and bioethics researcher Francesca Minerva for FUTURES Podcast LIVE, Hosted by The Truman Brewery, FUTURES Podcast, Schwabe Verlag, Experimental Thought Co, and Luke Robert Mason – Eventbrite – https://bit.ly/2TBEOT0
Deffffffficiency | Solo exhibition by Joana Moll | 18 March 2020 – 04 April 2020 | Panke gallery, Berlin | Joana Moll is a Barcelona/Berlin based artist and researcher. Her work critically explores the way post-capitalist narratives affect the alphabetization of machines, humans and ecosystems. Her main research topics include Internet materiality, surveillance, social profiling and interfaces – https://cutt.ly/ctekvX2
Workshop: Subvertising for the Right to Housing | Hosted by Disruption Network Lab | Thursday, 26 March 2020 | With Steal This Poster (Subvertising Collective IT/UK) and Kunstblock And Beyond (DE) | Subvertising is the combination between subvert and advertising. During this workshop we will work with Steal This Poster (Rome/London), and Kunstblock (Berlin) to learn tactics and techniques of subvertising related to aggressive corporations in the context of housing eviction.Part of the Disruption Network Lab 19th conference: “EVICTED BY GREED: Global finance, Housing & Resistance” (27-28 March, 2020, Studio 1, Kunstquartier Bethanien). Location: Supermarkt Berlin, Mehringplatz 9, 10969 Berlin – https://pretix.eu/disruptionlab/evicted/
The Festival of Alternative Art Education | Festival of Alternative Art Education, London | Sat 21st March | Fuelled by economic crisis, austerity and the liberalisation of higher education, the landscape of alternative art education features a multitude of diverse organisations that offer free or affordable art education. Bringing together alternative art schools, peer-support groups and collectives in a range of events, performances, discussions, installations, stalls and workshops on education, pedagogy, peer-support, co-operation, self-organisation, labour and precarity. Come along to participate, learn, play and meet representatives from the schools to find out what they do, how to get involved or how to start your own art school – https://bit.ly/3ai94ZF
Zanele Muholi | Tate Modern presents the first major mid-career survey of visual activist Muholi in the UK | 29 April – 18 October 2020 | Born in South Africa, Muholi came to prominence in the early 2000s with photographs that sought to envision black lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and intersex lives beyond deviance or victimhood. Muholi’s work challenges hetero-patriarchal ideologies and representations, presenting the participants in their photographs as confident and beautiful individuals bravely existing in the face of prejudice, intolerance and, frequently, violence. Muholi’s striking portraits will be on display in their upcoming exhibition at Tate Modern – https://bit.ly/2VEU97B
Books, Open Calls, Papers & Publications
Call Out | Let’s Create An Artist in Every Community (and let’s create it now)… | Stephen Pritchard | This article sets out how we could easily and relatively cheaply employ artists in everyday community and how such a simple, yet radical system would create just the sort of transformative cultural change that is at the heart of Arts Council England’s new 10-year strategy, Let’s Create. Create a working group to develop this idea and hopefully trial it as a participatory action research project somewhere. So get in touch if you’re interested – https://cutt.ly/5twO1Uy
Control Shift | Call out open for artworks, workshops and provocations | Deadline 15th March | An exciting new arts programme coming to Bristol (UK) in June 2020 exploring creative and critical approaches to technology, rooted in embodiment and materiality. Control Shift asks how we can reframe and rethink our relationships with technology. How could we conceive of new possibilities beyond neoliberal versions of computing? What might happen if there was more space for poetic or tactile engagements with the digital? Can we reconsider our connections, responsibilities and embodied entanglements with technology? – https://www.control-shift.network/
Call Out: Piet Zwart Institute Experimental Publishing (XPUB) | A two-year master focussed on the acts of making things public and creating publics in the age of post-digital networks. Calling all AI hiding blockchain comics, adults screaming hyper-binary screensavers, governments designing multi-DIWO architectures, viruses disrupting top-down traditions, hobbyists sending non-industrial software, teachers seeing copyrighted blogs, whistleblowers spamming shared files, celebrities criticizing homemade synthesizers, judges demanding AI carpets, individuals showing inter-anarcho-capitalist corruption, more here – https://www.pzwart.nl/experimental-publishing/
Applications Deadlines: 06.03.2020: NON-EU + EU priority | 24.04.2020: Final EU deadline
The new Neural issue | (co-edited with Nicolas Maigret, Maria Roszkowska) is hot from the press. Subscribe now! Because only subscribers will get a free extra Post-Growth Toolkit by Nicolas Maigret and Maria Roszkowska. You can also subscribe to the magazine Digital Edition accessing all issues since #29. Or you can buy the magazine from the closest of the almost 300 stores stocking it. A back issues pack is available – http://neural.it/issues/neural-64-post-growth/
Mycelium Network Society | An open, living, organic network. Observing the concept of nature’s distributed network in self-expanding mode, we seek your participation as a node, a node that cultivates locally and connects globally. Interlacing mosaics of mycelium infuse habitats with information-sharing membranes. The mycelium stays in constant molecular communication with its environment, devising diverse enzymatic and chemical responses to complex challenges. To become a node join Mycelium Network Society – http://mns.stwst.at/
Open Call: Summer Sessions 2020 | V2_Lab for Unstable Media | The Summer Sessions are short-term international art and technology residencies for emerging artists and designers. A network of cultural organizations all over the world sponsors and hosts the residencies. Every summer we offer early-career artists and designers support so they can take part in production residencies abroad. If selected, you will gain an opportunity to work in a highly productive atmosphere with support, feedback and expert supervision. Each Summer Sessions residency lasts approximately eight weeks and takes place between June and September. During this period you will develop your project from concept to presentable work, ready to show – https://cutt.ly/1twSy99
A Course in: Feminist Art and Exhibitions: History and Challenges | Online Course by Node Center, Berlin | By Anja Foerschner | Duration: Apr 08 – Apr 29, 2020, Enroll before: Apr 4, 2020 | This course will look at how feminist thinking has influenced the arts since the 1960s, both in Western as well as selected non-Western contexts. It will present the foundational feminist theories that furthered the radicalization of female artists and trace their manifestation in the visual arts. Due to its strong political content and often taboo-breaking visuality, feminist art continues to present its own set of challenges to curators and museum professionals. The course will introduce students to the most important exhibitions of feminist art and discuss their strategies, premises, and criticism. In addition, the course will present curatorial practices and exhibition formats that follow feminist premises – https://nodecenter.net/course/feminist-art
A DAO of One’s Own? Feminist strategies for P2P Organisations | White paper by Denise Thwaites | On P2Pmodels | Experiments in building and deploying Decentralized Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) have proliferated, marking a transition (in many cases) from software design and development towards alpha and beta testing stages. From a technical perspective this is a key moment in the evolution of such systems, as communities of users test and provide feedback on the functionality of these products. For those interested in the potential social impact of DAOs, the stakes of this moment are even higher: it is the period where community needs are defined beyond the theoretical user. It provides opportunities to challenge the form and functionality of these decentralized socio-technical infrastructures while they are still relatively plastic. For this reason, we must look closely at the composition of participants at this stage of DAO development, to consider whether their engagement can lay foundations for alternative social configurations, or further entrench existing social biases – https://cutt.ly/PtwYbcL
The Ghost In You by Jeremy Hight | On WTBC Radio | Is your life like a ghost… or is a ghost living in your life? Would either of you know it? In this novel, a teacher comes to grips with the emptiness of her life, while a ghost attempts to do the same. This novel explores the places where many of us live, inside and outside of our heads. Limited to 100 Print copies, with a translucent cover. Get yours today – https://cutt.ly/itri9Xs
Women Warriors: An Unexpected History | By Pamela D. Toler | Who says women don’t go to war? From Vikings and African queens to cross-dressing military doctors and WWII Russian fighter pilots, these are the stories of women for whom battle was not a metaphor. The woman warrior is always cast as an anomaly—Joan of Arc, not GI Jane. But women, it turns out, have always gone to war. In this fascinating and lively world history, Pamela Toler not only introduces us to women who took up arms, she also shows why they did it and what happened when they stepped out of their traditional female roles to take on other identities | Published by Beacon Press – https://cutt.ly/2twwAqO
Articles, Interviews, Presentations, videos
Silvia Federici: The joyful militancy of feminism | By Julius Gavroche | Interview conducted by Victoria Furtado and Mariana Menéndez | While throughout the world the fourth feminist strike is being prepared in hundreds of meetings, activities and assemblies, listening to Silvia Federici is inspiring. In a stop in her travelling about the world, sharing keys of understanding and giving courage, Silvia met with us at her home in New York to discuss current feminist struggles, the popular revolts of recent months, the tensions of feminism with the left and the highlights of her latest book – https://cutt.ly/utwOPn5
B-hind. Celebrating the internet of anal things| Regine Debatty reviews the product launch performance of B-hind: intimate innovation by Dani Ploeger | V2_, the Lab for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam, and In4Art, an organisation dedicated to “art-driven innovation”, challenged artists to select one of the works realised at V2_ over the course of its 40 year old history and to reimagine, reengineer and reenact it today. The first experiment in the series is by Dani Ploeger. The artist and cultural critic decided to revisit Stelarc’s Amplified Body, a performance that took place in 1994 and engaged with the relationship between humans, machines and the surrounding space and ultimately the role and functioning of the body – https://cutt.ly/EtwYJkz
Oceans between Sound | An album from intercultural tele-improvisation internet based music ensemble Ethernet Orchestra. A selection of live improvisations by the internet based music ensemble, Ethernet Orchestra. The album was recorded during located venue performances and online sessions between 2014-2019, featuring musicians from a diverse range of cultures, performing across international time-zones and physical locations in Brazil, the USA, Canada, UK, Germany and Australia. The music was inspired by the ebb and flow of network data as a metaphor for the world’s oceans and waterways separating the members of the ensemble, and their geographically dispersed lives | Published on the Pueblo Nuevo Netlabel – https://cutt.ly/7tebPQ6
For sale: Sponsored Influenza Pandemic Evacuation Rehearsal booklet by Heath Bunting & Kayle Brandon 2005/6 | “A flu pandemic would inevitably take the Cube Microplex and other entertainment venues out of business. We intend to sow the seeds of rebirth by preserving the values and methods embodied within our workers by providing effective advice and procedures for their physical survival. This report is a developmental first step in this DIY health programme.” Price 200.00 eur (plus packaging and postage)
Artist signed booklet from 2005 Pandemic Evacuation Rehearsal. http://duo.irational.org/siper/report/siper_document01.pdf
http://duo.irational.org/siper/
Bus Regulation: The Musical | Ellie Harrison | Video of performance | Inspired by the 1980s hit musical ‘Starlight Express’, the new performance / event re-enacts the history of public transport provision in Greater Manchester from the post-war period to the present day… on roller skates!Staged at Manchester Art Gallery for the closing celebration of the Get Together & Get Things Done exhibition on Saturday 28 September 2019, Bus Regulation: The Musical is produced in collaboration with the Better Buses for Greater Manchester campaign, the Association of British Commuters and local roller skaters – https://www.ellieharrison.com/busregulation/
The Smithsonian Puts 2.8 Million High-Res Images Online and Into the Public Domain | Open Culture | The Smithsonian has released 2.8 million images into the public domain, making them searchable, shareable, and downloadable through the museum’s Open Access platform. This huge release of “high resolution two- and three-dimensional images from across its collections,” notes Smithsonian Magazine, “is just the beginning. Throughout the rest of 2020, the Smithsonian will be rolling out another 200,000 or so images, with more to come as the Institution continues to digitize its collection of 155 million items and counting.” – https://cutt.ly/xtwY9Rm
Let’s Talk about Sex (and Race and Colonialism) | By Layla-Roxanne Hill | As Western societies continue to experience social, environmental and economic crises, our ideas and beliefs on what constitutes work and what kinds of work are valued are ever changing: whether it be the ways care and sexual labour are regarded, the role of exploitation and criminalisation, or imagining what a post-work terrain could look like. Combined with an ever-increasing awareness the impact automation technology like artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics will have on jobs, skills, and wages, the future of work continues to be one of the most debatable topics of 2019 – https://cutt.ly/ltwYNRX
Image: from Panke Gallery, Berlin, for Deffffffficiency. Solo exhibition by Joana Moll. 18 March 2020 – 04 April 2020.
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