A list of recommendations, reflecting the dynamic culture we are part of, straddling the fields of art, technology and social change.

Events, Exhibitions, Open Calls, Festivals and Conferences

SOUL KALEIDOSCOPE | A 2-day course about the I Ching | Maria Lusitano | Soul Artist, Healer, Teacher | Sat & Sun 10 to 1 pm 11th, 12th, July 2021 | This workshop will explore the I Ching through drawing. The I Ching, or the Book of Changes, is an ancient Chinese Text that has served for thousands of years as a philosophical taxonomy of the universe. Each hexagram is composed of 2 trigrams that represent respectively, heaven, a lake, fire, thunder, wind, water, a mountain, and earth. These are the building blocks of the cosmos and through their interaction, all aspects of civilization and human behaviour are developed – https://bit.ly/3xkgF5G

SENSITIVES STREAM | Arts Catalyst presents an online project by Matterlurgy that highlights the importance of river-dwelling organisms | Tue 18 May 2021 – Tue 31 August 2021 | How do water organisms register and reveal complex meaning in relation to river health? How can environmental data be both sensible and sensuous? What fieldwork is required when you cannot access, see or hold that which is being studied? Sensitives Stream is an online project by Matterlurgy (Helena Hunter and Mark Peter Wright) that shares research and practice from their residency with Arts Catalyst as part of Test Sites. The project highlights the importance of river-dwelling organisms and how their presence or absence indicates broader stories in relation to ecosystems, environmental stress and human activity – https://bit.ly/3jwG882

The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025 | Furtherfield and The New Design Congress, supported by CreaTures Creative Practices for Transformational Futures | August 2021. “Catapulted several years into the future where all the species of the park have risen up to demand equal rights with humans. A new invention – The Sentience Dial – allows humans to tune into all the flora and fauna of Finsbury Park.” This series of immersive games played from more-than-human perspectives depicts the story of the dawning of interspecies democracy – a new era of equal rights for all living beings. All species come together to organise and shape the environments and cultures they inhabit for bountiful biodiversity in Finsbury Park, urban green spaces across the UK, the world, and beyond. The Interspecies Assemblies Need YOU! https://www.furtherfield.org/the-treaty-of-finsbury-park-2025/

Secrets of Soil | By Henry Driver | An interactive journey that explores the hidden world of soil and its role in combating climate change. Your journey will take you to a microscopic world, witnessing the essential life forms that live there. It is freely available as a 360-degree video accessible on most devices, as well as on Steam as a fully interactive experience. Henry Driver’s new interactive journey, Secrets of Soil, was inspired by his family’s attempts to make their farming practices carbon negative. He presents a visually striking view of the world beneath our feet and explores his thoughts around how it would be possible to better care for and preserve it. The project was commissioned by BBC Arts and ACE as part of New Creatives. Steam Page – https://bit.ly/3qBsmT0 360-degree video direct link – https://bit.ly/3xkk3NW

Based on a Tree Story | Hervisions x Ayesha Tan Jones | Live in June and August 2021 | As part of Peoples Park Plinth at Furtherfield Gallery | A sonic augmented reality encounter with a digital tree sprite. Dubbed the Trunk Triplets Tree, situated in Finsbury Park and the soils from which they grew, this tree is part of the now-extinct ancient woodland, Hornsey Woods. From the medieval history to sci-fi futures, their stories are told through an augmented reality and audio experience, giving viewers an insight into the past, while arming them with inspiration and knowledge to help protect the trees into the future. The project activates a digital tree sprite that shares a fable crafted through local research, site visits and discussion with Ricard Zanoli, the Park Ranger. For this first iteration of the artwork for the People’s Park Plinth revealed in June, we are sharing the stories of the London Plane tree. If this work is selected in a public vote in August 2021, the audience will be invited to follow a magical trail of clues to find other tree sprites and experience their stories. – https://peoplesparkplinth.org/

Moment 48 > Now&Here = Everywhere | Event by Iceberg Fernandez and Quantum Filmmaking | Online event | Free for anyone on or off Facebook | 10th July 2021 at 6 pm BST for international video art collaboration | A Quantum Filmmaking project which entangles people internationally into co-creation through the camera-phones For the Arts’ Sake. In the video art project, we co-create and re-create simultaneous moments happening in different points of Planet Earth while celebrating and inter-connecting cultural diversity. To participate make a 30-second film with your mobile phone of the situation, a detail or the place you are at that precise date and time, and send it as soon as you can, along with the name of the city – https://bit.ly/2TkvzdC

Black| White ::: Online Dance/Music Performance Workshop | Free  · Online event | 15 July 2021 | Third Space Network (3SN) and the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company present Black|White, an online dance/music performance workshop on Thursday, July 15th, 6 pm EDT. The workshop showcases Los Angeles tenor and performance artist Charles Lane, along with dancer/choreographer Daniel Charon, artistic director of the Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company in Salt Lake City. The two artists, performing live from their home studios, will be united live & online in the Deep Third Space Performance Lab. Register & Save Your Spot – https://www.crowdcast.io/e/black-white

Tuned Circuits, the 2021 edition of Oscillation Festival | It borrows its title from Daphne Oram, the early electronic composer and instrument inventor. Oscillation — Tuned Circuits takes place over 4 days as a live broad­cast from MILL, Brussels and addi­tion­al loca­tions. The fes­ti­val will mix talks, per­for­mances and works for radio. Each day focuss­es on a sub-the­mat­ic: attun­ing, as a move­ment of con­ver­gence; feed­back, as a cir­cu­lar move­ment which ampli­fies itself; detun­ing, as a move­ment of unlearn­ing and a con­di­tion for regen­er­a­tion. The open­ing evening we ded­i­cate to Daphne Oram, whose research the­mat­ic we take as our own: ​“to fol­low curiosi­ties with­out flinching”. For dates – http://www.q-o2.be/en/

Artists Talk: Caroline Sinders with Tamiko Thiel | Photographers Gallery | 6:30 pm, 20th July 2021 – 8:00 pm | To mark Caroline Sinders new Media Wall commission, hear her in conversation with artist Tamiko Thiel. Caroline Sinders Racialised Disinformation | Using performance, design, activist-based research and machine-learning, artist Caroline Sinders looks at digital human rights and the technical infrastructure that perpetuates hate speech and violent misinformation. In this new talk with artist Tamiko Thiel, we will look at the intersections of their two practices to investigate the deceptive terms and conditions of platforms like YouTube — at the responsibility they have for the content they host and the influential role they have in shaping public opinion – https://bit.ly/3qy0AHe

Overground Resistance | Q21 exhibition space in the Museums Quartier in Vienna | Curator: Oliver Ressler | 2021-06-29 | Extreme weather conditions have become the global norm. Forests are burning, permafrost soils are thawing, polar ice and glaciers melt, drought strikes once-fertile regions, plant and animal species are becoming extinct on a massive scale. Yet even as the impact of climate breakdown comes to be felt everywhere, government climate policy worldwide is woefully inadequate to the urgency of the crisis. On one day, states declare a climate emergency; the next day they still sponsor fossil-fueled energy, building freeways, airports and gas pipelines, enclosing territory on whatever scale the projects demand. „Overground Resistance“ brings together artists who produce their works in dialogue with the climate justice movements in which they consider themselves participants – https://bit.ly/3y8rUyl

Books, Papers & Publications

Assuming the Ecosexual Position: The Earth as Lover | Authors: Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, with Jennie Klein | The story of the artistic collaboration between the originators of the ecosex movement, their diverse communities, and the Earth. In 2008, Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens married the Earth, which set them on the path to explore the realms of ecosexuality. Assuming the Ecosexual Position describes how the two came together as lovers and collaborators, how they took a stand against homophobia and xenophobia, and how this union led to the miraculous conception of the Love Art Laboratory | 29 Jun. 2021 – https://bit.ly/2U6ZXIo

Dark Academia: How Universities Die | By Peter Fleming | There is a strong link between the neoliberalisation of higher education over the last 20 years and the psychological hell now endured by its staff and students. While academia was once thought of as the best job in the world – one that fosters autonomy, craft, intrinsic job satisfaction and vocational zeal – you would be hard-pressed to find a lecturer who believes that now. Fleming delves into this new metrics-obsessed, overly hierarchical world to bring out the hidden underbelly of the neoliberal university. He examines commercialisation, mental illness and self-harm, the rise of managerialism, students as consumers and evaluators, and the competitive individualism which casts a dark sheen of alienation over departments | Pluto press – https://bit.ly/3x6NbbG

Tactical Entanglements: AI Art, Creative Agency, and the Limits of Intellectual Property | By Martin Zeilinger | How do artistic experiments with artificial intelligence problematize human-centered notions of creative agency, authorship, and ownership? Offering a wide-ranging discussion of contemporary digital art practices, philosophical and technical considerations of AI, posthumanist thought, and emerging issues of intellectual property and the commons, this book is firmly positioned against the anthropomorphic spectacle of “creative AI.” It proposes instead the concept of the posthumanist agential assemblage, and invites readers to consider what new types of creative practice, what reconfigurations of the author function, and what critical interventions become possible when AI art provokes tactical entanglements between aesthetics, law, and capital. Published by meson press – https://bit.ly/3jKPNZ0

The Revenge of the Real: Politics for a Post-Pandemic World | By Benjamin Bratton | The future of politics after the pandemic. COVID-19 exposed the pre-existing conditions of the current global crisis. The Revenge of the Real envisions new positive biopolitics that recognizes that governance is literally a matter of life and death. We are grappling with multiple interconnected dilemmas—climate change, pandemics, the tensions between the individual and society—all of which have to be addressed on a planetary scale. Even when separated, we are still enmeshed. Can the world govern itself differently? What models and philosophies are needed? Bratton argues that instead of thinking of biotechnologies as something imposed on society, we must see them as essential to a politics of infrastructure, knowledge, and direct intervention. In this way, we can build a society based on new rationality of inclusion, care, and prevention – https://bit.ly/3qDavLO

Prologue to the Sky River | Elise Misao Hunchuck, Marco Ferrari & Jingru (Cyan) Cheng | The Avery Review | The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is often called the water tower of the world. As the source of most of Asia’s significant rivers—the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, Salween, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow Rivers—the plateau provides water for more than two billion people downstream. In the Yellow River’s catchment, traditional—if extraordinary—water management techniques are reaching their upper limits. Severe stress on available water in the North China Plain, nearly half of which comes from Qinghai-Tibet, is tied to burgeoning consumption, water-intensive agricultural production, and industrial activities. Fears over its future scarcity due to climate change and the depletion of glacial reserves in the Himalayas have led the Chinese government to implement water precipitation enhancement technologies at a dramatically increasing scale – https://bit.ly/3A9ujL7

The Digitally Disposed: Racial Capitalism and the Informatics of Value | By Seb Franklin. Locates the deep history of digitality in the development of racial capitalism Seb Franklin shows how the promises of boundless connection, flexibility, and prosperity that are often associated with digital technologies are grounded in racialized histories of dispossession and exploitation. Vital and far-reaching, The Digitally Disposed reshapes such fundamental concepts as cybernetics, informatics, and digitality. Ultimately, The Digitally Disposed questions the universalizing assumptions that are maintained, remade, and intensified by today’s dominant digital technologies. Vital and far-reaching, The Digitally Disposed reshapes such fundamental concepts as cybernetics, informatics, and digitality. University Of Minnesota Press, 22 Jun. 2021 – https://bit.ly/3d9yHzV

Would you like to share your daily walk? | 25th July 2021 | Australian artist Anita Bacic is looking for contributors for artwork based on hundreds of ‘described walks’. Every day she/her/ will add text versions of the walks received on her blog and on social media. Bacic explores media old and new, with a focus on interactive experiences. Bacic is fascinated with the construction of stories, images and experiences and how we as individuals can actively contribute and interact in these processes. She continues to explore works that encourage curiosity, participation, personal connections and self-reflection that in turn can potentially challenge our perceptions and how we see and interpret the world around us – anyone can take part – https://bit.ly/3x9gevd

Articles, Interviews, Blogs, Presentations, Videos

In Conversation with Casey Reas | One of the most influential figures of modern generative art, and co-founder of Processing and the Processing Foundation, as well as the online gallery Feral File. Casey is both an artist and an educator, teaching at UCLA and working out of his studio in Inglewood. I had the honour of speaking with Casey in advance of his upcoming Art Blocks project CENTURY. https://beta.cent.co/artblocks/+z8kf0r 

with/in languages – a pretty pathetic | An artist talk by Annie Abrahams | Hybrid – Journal of arts and Human Mediations | This article is the “archive” of a performance reading presented by Annie Abrahams at the Languages ​​INTER Networks conference at Lancaster University on June 21, 2019. It talks about languages, people, identities, words and silence, through languages, images, sounds and movements. Annie Abrahams is a Dutch performer specializing in performance-based video and internet installations, often using collaborative and interactive writing techniques. Her performances address the question of the limits and possibilities of communication between Internet users through new media such as cyberformance – https://bit.ly/3h7RMF2

Photographing Thatcher’s Britain | By Ravi Ghosh | Tribune | 17.06.2021 | In the 1980s, documentary photographer Paul Graham used his camera to capture the bleakness of Social Security and Unemployment Offices, painting a stark image of life under neoliberalism. Graham had received several public grants for his work, but had, like roughly three million others in the UK at the time, been classified as unemployed for extended periods. He came to prominence in 1983 with the publication of his first photobook, A1: The Great North Road, a survey of transit and transience from the City of London to Edinburgh. Months after Margaret Thatcher won her second parliamentary term and with the Miners’ Strike looming, Graham was again given free rein to document the nation – https://bit.ly/2TKidHz

Polish Politicians Sue Artist-Activists for Mapping “Atlas of Hate” | Six local governments sued four artist-activists who created the Atlas of Hate, an interactive map charting the country’s anti-gay zones | Hakim Bishara |Hyperallergic | A group of local governments in Poland that had declared themselves as “free from LGBT ideology” are waging a battle in court against four artist-activists who created the Atlas of Hate, an interactive map charting the country’s anti-gay zones. If convicted, they would stand liable for at least 165,000 PLN (~$43,500) – https://bit.ly/3jnTYJY

How Chinese Food Fueled the Rise of California Punk | Words by Madeline Leung Coleman | In the late 1970s, Chinatown restaurants started booking some unlikely dinner entertainment: the rowdy young bands of the nascent West Coast punk scene. It was 1979, and LA was struggling. The entire country had plunged into a deep recession just a few years prior, and now Chinatown and the city’s downtown areas were falling into disrepair. More recent Chinese immigrants had started moving to suburban enclaves like the San Gabriel Valley, bypassing Chinatown and its businesses completely; the non-Chinese customers who used to flock to the neighbourhood for exotic chow mein dinners were now avoiding downtown altogether – https://bit.ly/3qzBQOK

Bad Apples or a Rotten Tree? How Britain Brought its Colonial Policing Home | Hardeep Matharu and Peter Jukes | Byline Times | As the Metropolitan Police is judged to be institutionally corrupt, Hardeep Matharu and Peter Jukes explore how some of the biggest problems still plaguing British policing are embedded in the soil of British colonialism. According to Alastair’s partner, Kirsteen Knight, who has spent the past 25 years joining his campaign for justice, the sense of British – or English – exceptionalism is key to the cover-up, and the failures of the authorities to dig deeper into the allegations of police corruption around the murder. Obsessed with a grandiose, but fragile, sense of national greatness, the British state is very bad at reflecting accurately on itself – https://bit.ly/3dr7PLE

V&A insists it has a responsibility to tell truth about collections | Museum responds to government letter urging alignment with its stance on ‘contested heritage’ | Ben Quinn | 28th June 2021 | The Victoria and Albert Museum has responded to government pressure to align with its stance on “contested heritage” by insisting that it has a responsibility to accurately explain the nature of its collections, including items it said were looted by British forces. The V&A was responding to a controversial letter from the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, in which he suggested that bodies could lose government funding if they fail to toe the line and warned against “actions motivated by activism or politics” – https://bit.ly/3w7HicE

E53: The Gwangju uprising, 1980 | Working Class History | Podcast | WCH have just released a new podcast episode about the May 18 uprising in Gwangju, South Korea, in 1980 against the US-backed military dictatorship of Chun Doo Hwan. We speak with participants in the events as well as researcher Kap Su Seol. Part 1 out now for early listening for Patreon supporters. Sign up today to listen! Part 1: Background, and the beginning of the revolt – currently available for early listening for Patreon supporters. Parts 2 onwards: coming soon – E51: Jeon Tae-il and Lee So-sun – Episode about two important South Korean labour organisers, which contains background information to the political situation in the country in the run-up to the Gwangju uprising. Gwangju Diary: Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Age – Lee Jae-eui – The best history of the Gwangju uprising, translated by Kap Su Seol. 29th June 2021 – https://bit.ly/363qjOo

How the Banning of Joyce’s Ulysses Led to “The grandest Obscenity Case in the History of Law and Literature” | By Barbara Barbas | 22nd June 2021 | Morris Ernst knew he could win the case to “liberate” Joyce’s famously banned novel. So he found a publisher, took a cut of the royalties and had a copy sent by boat to America. In the early 1930s, James Joyce’s Ulysses was the most notorious banned book in the United States. Using a stream-of-consciousness style to describe twenty-four hours in the life of a lower-middle-class Dubliner named Leopold Bloom, Joyce’s classic, published in 1922, was brilliant, dense, convoluted, complex, and legally obscene. Ulysses was the “only volume of literary importance still under a ban” in the country, Morris Ernst declared. He set out to “liberate” it, and the celebrated case, resolved by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1934, was not only a landmark in the law of literary censorship but also a turning point in Ernst’s career – https://bit.ly/3xb1Nqn

Image from: Moment 48 > Now&Here = Everywhere. Event by Iceberg Fernandez and Quantum Filmmaking. Online event. 10th July 2021 – https://bit.ly/2TkvzdC

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