ART OF RESILIENCE
CONFERENCE
Contemporary art center kim? (in Spikeri, Maskavas street 12/1)
Festival conference invites to lectures and discussions by world renowned visionaries, artists, scientists, art curators and media theorists from Belgium, Thailand, Germany, Switzerland, the US, the UK, Austria, Serbia, Latvia a.o. on scientific theories, artistic ideas and „techno-ecological” development scenarios regarding the future of our planet.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 5
Conference ART OF RESILIENCE – Day 1
10.00-16.30
10.00-10.30 registration and coffee
10.30-12.00 Panel I: RESILIENT TACTICS
Kristian Lukic. TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY – ESCHATOLOGY OF MACHINIC CAPITALISM
Vincent Guimas. MACRO-PARAMETERS FOR MICRO-INDUSTRIES
Anna Trapenciere. HYBRID URBAN GREEN SPACES: “TREE ON WHEELS” BY RETRAP
12.15-13.15 Panel II: RESILIENT PRACTICES
Nathalie Aubret. CACTUS PRACTICE: ACHING SPINES AND ANISOTROPIC PIXELS
Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits. RENEWABLE FUTURES AND EMERGING “TECHNO-ECOLOGICAL” ART PRACTICES
14.00-15.00 Keynote lecture
Michel Bauwens. FOUR SCENARIOS FOR A GLOBA-LOCAL P2P FUTURE
15.10-15.40 Panel III: RESILIENT ECONOMIES
Eric Kluitenberg. ECONOMIES OF THE COMMONS
15.45-16.30 Artist Talk: Christian Hübler / Knowbotic. MACGHILLIE – JUST A VOID.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6
Conference ART OF RESILIENCE – Day 2
10.30 – 16.30
10.30-11.00 coffee
11.00-12.20 RESILIENT ART
Sabine Himmelsbach. NETWORKING NATURE – ECOLOGICAL ASPECTS IN CONTEMPORARY MEDIA ART
Vytautas Michelkevicius. ARTEFACTS FROM THE LOCUS OF NIDA ART COLONY: NATIONAL NATURE PARK AS A SITE FOR TECHNO-ECOLOGICAL INTERVENTIONS FROM XIX TILL XXII CENTURY
12.30-13.30 RESILIENT THEORIES
Armin Medosch. TECHNOPOLITICS: RESILIENT THEORY CONSTRUCTION KIT
Léonore Bonaccini and Xavier Fourt / Bureau d'etudes. EVOLVING THEATRE – BUILDING URBAN MICRO-ECOSYSTEM FOR HUMAN AND NON-HUMAN INHABITANTS
14.00-15.00 Keynote lecture
David Rothenberg. SURVIVAL OF THE BEAUTIFUL
15.30-16.00 Workshop presentations-performance by Bartaku and ARONIA SESSION No 10 workshop participants
16.00-16.30 Acoustic Space No 11: TECHNO-ECOLOGIES, book presentation.
Admission free
Conference is organized by RIXC Center for New Media Culture together with Art Research Laboratory of Liepaja University. Contacts: rixc (at) rixc.lv, 26546776 (Rasa Smite)
FOUR SCENARIOS FOR A GLOBA-LOCAL P2P FUTURE
Michel Bauwens
Based on a recent synthetic review of increasingly integrated trends towards distributed value creation and manufacturing, a p2p infrastructural future seems all but inevitable. Nevertheless, humanity faces choices around at least to axis: will the infrastructure that enables and empowers horizontal value creation be controlled centrally, or will it be distributed; will it be orientated towards further profit-maximisation, or towards strengthening the commons? These are human and technological choices that yield four main scenarios, which we will describe in our talk:
1) netarchical capitalism, in which centralized capital controls our platforms and uses it for profit-maximisation;
2) distributed capitalism, the libertarian dream of inclusionary exchange mechanisms bypassing the power that be;
3) local community-based resilience, a focus on the local, or even on lifeboat strategies that take the deterioration of global conditions as a given;
4) the global commons approach, that looks for a thrivable global society entirely refounded on p2p and commons principles.
Bio
Michel Bauwens is the founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives and works in collaboration with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. He has co-produced the 3-hour TV documentary “Technocalyps” with Frank Theys, and co-edited the two-volume book on anthropology of digital society with Salvino Salvaggio. Michel is currently Primavera Research Fellow at the University of Amsterdam and external expert at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (2008, 2012).
Michel Bauwens is a member of the Board of the Union of International Associations (Brussels), advisor to Shareable magazine (San Francisco) and to Zumbara Time Bank (Istanbul). He functions as the Chair of the Technology/ICT working group, Hangwa Forum (Beijing, Sichuan), to develop economic policies for long-term resilience, including through distributed manufacturing. Michel writes editorials for Al Jazeera English and is listed at #82, on the Post-Carbon Institute (En)Rich list, http://enrichlist.org/the-list/. He recently produced a 300-page synthesis of distributed infrastructures and manufacturing for Orange Labs.
Michel currently lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand, has taught at Payap University and Dhurakij Pandit University's International College. He is a founding member of the Commons Strategies Group.In his first business career, Michel worked for USIA, British Petroleum, riverland Publications, Belgacom, and created two internet start-ups.
SURVIVAL OF THE BEAUTIFUL
David Rothenberg
Why did the peacock's tail so trouble Charles Darwin? Natural selection could not explain it, so he had to contrive a whole new theory of sexual selection, which posited that certain astonishingly beautiful traits became preferred even when not exactly useful, simply because they appealed to the opposite sex, and specifically so in each case. And yet the parallels in what gets preferred at different levels of life suggest that nature may in fact favor certain kinds of patterns over others. Visually, the symmetrical; colorwise, the contrasting and gaudy; displaywise, the gallant and extreme. Soundwise, the strong contrast between low note and high, between fast rhythm and the long clear tone. For that matter, plenty of beauty in nature would seem to arise for reasons other than mere sexual selection: for example, the mysterious inscriptions on the backs of seashells, or the compounding geometric symmetries of microscopic diatoms, or the live patterns pulsating across the bodies of octopus and squid.
Humans see such things and find them astonishingly beautiful: are we wrong to experience Nature in such terms? Far greater than our grandest edifices and epic tales, Nature itself nevertheless seems entirely without purposeful self-consciousness or self-awareness. Meanwhile, though we ourselves are as nothing compared to it, we still seem possessed of a parallel need to create. So: can we in fact create our way into better understanding of the role of beauty in the vast natural world?
http://www.survivalofthebeautiful.com
Bio
American philosopher and musician David Rothenberg is the author of “Why Birds Sing”, also published in Italy, Spain, Taiwan, China, Korea, and Germany. It has been turned into a feature length BBC TV documentary. Rothenberg has also written “Sudden Music”, “Always the Mountains”, and “Thousand Mile Song”, about making music live with whales. Rothenberg has seven CDs out under his own name, including On the Cliffs of the Heart, named one of the top ten CDs by Jazziz Magazine in 1995. His latest book “Survival of the Beautiful” is on aesthetics in evolution. His first CD on ECM Records, with pianist Marilyn Crispell, One Dark Night I Left My Silent House was released in 2010. In 2011 he has released CDs with Lewis Porter and with Scanner. Rothenberg is professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY – ESCHATOLOGY OF MACHINIC CAPITALISM
Kristian Lukic
The specters of human and machine autonomies are haunting again. With the increase in sophisticated automation and investment drive towards more machininic autonomy in everyday military and civilian use, several issues are appearing. Automatization in financial markets, in global logistics and transportation, autonomous cars, proliferation of smart-phones and mobile devices are to resurrect the old “strong AI” myth and boost the revival of posthumanist and transhumanist ideas. There are voices from different sides, about inevitability of point when machinic intelligence will surpass human one. The studies in Technological Singularity are being funded by different key players in IT business such are Google, Cisco, Nokia to name a few. The stories about this eschatological point of machinic takeover are being widely discussed and lectured, and in the same time they are creating excitement and anxiety among followers. Is Technological Singularity the spiritual upgrade of Californian ideology?
Bio
Kristian Lukic (Slovakia) is a theorist, curator and artist. He is a co-founder of the Institute for Flexible Cultures and technologies – Napon from Novi Sad and a PhD candidate on Science Technology Society studies, Institute for Science Studies, University of Vienna.
MACRO-PARAMETERS FOR MICRO-INDUSTRIES
Vincent Guimas
The creative economy, mired in its short-term variables, continues to create new innovation champions (leaders). Designers are at the core of these issues: they appear as an essential lever by their ability to combine a variety of skills to imagine objects or services of tomorrow. Corporate societies expect these new industrial wizards to incorporate the paradigms of a society in motion, although they are still market driven and unable to combine wealth and well-being, desire and values. The city runs its standardized consumption patterns where public space merges with the Megamall. It is time to involve a new figure of the commitment, the designer/producer.
Bio
Since 2005, Vincent Guimas is the director of Ars Longa, NGO dedicated to the production and distribution of projects at the crossroad of art, research and society issues. Active in several European cultural networks, he has been coordinating for the past 2 years a reflection on locally-grown creative micro industries, together with artists and art/design schools. This applied research will be embodied in an experimentation and training place aimed for artists, designers and amateurs, 'the New Factory', that will be opened in autumn 2012.
HYBRID URBAN GREEN SPACES: “TREE ON WHEELS” BY RETRAP
Anna Trapenciere
Tree on Wheels' is a prototype for a changing urban networked world. By demonstrating satisfaction of its basic needs, the tree welcomes people around it to communicate to each other in a somewhat different context, as well as to take care of it.
Through being a utopian idea the project 'Tree on Wheels' communicates to people by the use of moisture and light sensors that construct the 'feeling' that the tree experiences in a certain space. For example, if the moisture or light level is too low the LEDs on the tree pot's interface show the lack of satisfying needs of the tree. The opposite happens if the moisture or light level is too high. Therefore people can understand it easily and move it around to shade or light, as well as water it.
The idea of 'Tree of Wheels' serves as a starting point
for 2 challenges that we as humans face:
- such concepts as 'mobility' and 'network': we (ReTrap) would like to question how these ideas can be implemented in physical space and what we as humans can do to make our environment more viable to these strong conceptual and somewhat abstract inputs. What is the role of our physical space in our minds?
- living in a society as a whole: we (ReTrap) would like to question what it means to be a part of something called 'we' instead of 'me'. We are often used to the fact that someone takes care of the environment surrounding us. Is it possible that with simple social input we make our surrounding environment a space for communication among people?
One of the future possibilities for the 'Tree on Wheels' project is to become a natural urban space object that is not alone, but can be a part of a larger network. An example of this could be a mobile networked park (or any other public space) that can be transformed depending on social needs or wishes of the community therefore playing an important part of the social interaction process.
CACTUS PRACTICE: ACHING SPINES AND ANISOTROPIC PIXELS
Nathalie Aubret
The presentation will be on Pixelache's explorations of what may an 'actually sustainable' cultural production infrastructure be. The author will present illustrations through a few projects and initiatives committed to building resilience across a wide range of areas (food, economics, energy etc).
Bio
Nathalie Aubret is a French cultural producer based in Helsinki (Finland). Since 2006, she coordinates and accompanies various projects, processes and collaborations as the coordinator of the cultural association Pixelache. She has been one of the organisers of Pixelache annual festival since 2006 and has produced long-term residency projects such as Nuage Vert / Vihrea Pilvi (2008) and Suomenlinna Money Lab (2011-2012). She is also involved in the development of Pixelache's 'Signals from the South' programme initiated in 2009 and focused on presenting media projects from Africa, Asia and South America. In 2012 she set up Pixelache Micro-residencies, spaces for informal knowledge exchange and inspiration between professionals from the media art field and Pixelache.
RENEWABLE FUTURES AND EMERGING “TECHNO-ECOLOGICAL” ART PRACTICES
Rasa Smite, Raitis Smits
This lecture will introduce the growing tendency in contemporary media art to address and work with sustainability issues from mixed perspectives - social, cultural, ecological and technological. We suggest that more than just a new trend, this is a testimony for an ongoing fundamental shift from a "techno-scientific" to "techno-ecological" paradigm. It is not just a coincidence that artists who have a background in digital media are among those who today are in the vanguard of the quest for a sustainable future. On the one hand, we can claim that this emerging tendency is the progeny of the so called 'new media art' practices that emerged along with the Internet culture in the 90s. Hence, it has been influenced by both - the development of new media technologies, and the new approaches which new media practice have exploited to a large extent, such as process, feedback and collective creation. Yet, on the other hand, as we would also like to talk about an ecological perspective here, we suggest that it is important to also follow other lines of development in modern and postmodern art practices of the 20th century; such as Joseph Beuys's "7000 oaks". Accordingly, in order to perceive and contextualize the emerging "techno-ecological" art practices, our text retraces several parallel lines of development in the 20th century art practices, as well as studying those media theories which instead of techno-determinism suggest other paradigms, for instance, "post-media". In this context we will be providing case studies of Renewable network artist practices, including our own work created together with RIXC, as well as "techno-ecological" projects by other artists, thereby making more concrete the outlines of the suggested "techno-ecological" paradigm.
Bio
Rasa Smite is an artist, network researcher and cultural inventor, working with emerging media since the mid-1990s. She holds a PhD in sociology from the Riga Stradins University and currently is an Associate Professor and Researcher in the Art Research Lab at Liepaja University. Rasa Smite is the founding director of the Center for New Media Culture RIXC in Riga (www.rixc.lv) and the founder of Internet culture and networked art projects such as Xchange, Acoustic Space Lab and more recently the Renewable Network. Together with her centre she organizes the annual festival Art+Communication (since 1996), curates networked art exhibitions and publishes Acoustic Space journal series, introducing novel themes such as internet radio (1997), locative media (2003), electromagnetic waves as material and medium in art (2006), art and renewable energy (2009), techno-ecologies (2009) and the art of resilience (2012).
Raitis Smits is an artist and curator. He is an Assistant Professor at the Visual Communication Department at the Latvian Arts Academy, and PhD candidate there. The title of his thesis “Problematics of Archiving and Representing New Media Art”. He also teaches New Media Art students at Liepaja University, and is the artistic director of RIXC. Together with Rasa Smite he is a key founder of the E-Lab (1996) and RIXC (2000). Since 1996 organises the annual “Art+Communication” festivals in Riga. He works as an artist, organiser and curator, initiating and implementing a number of networked art projects. He has organised and participated in numerous conferences, exhibitions, symposiums and festivals; and has been the expert and member of various boards on new media culture.
http://rixc.lv
CONTESTATION AND SUSTAINABILITY OF THE DIGITAL COMMONS
Eric Kluitenberg
Less than a week after the Art of Resilience festival in Riga, the third Economies of the Commons conference will take place in Amsterdam (October 11/12). In this series of 'eCommons' conferences (2008 / 2010 / 2012) some of The Netherlands most prominent public archive and cultural institutions, including the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, the new Eye Netherlands Film Institute, the National Archive and the National Library of The Netherlands, Kennisland Foundation, and previously De Balie and the Institute of Network Cultures explore the question how to develop sustainable models for creating open access online for the very large and incredibly rich cultural collections these institutions hold.
The upcoming conference will focus in particular on the results of the Images for the Future project where essential parts of these collections have already been digitised, both for preservation purposes as well as for access for different stakeholders and the public at large. However, as self-evident as the issue of making public collections publicly accessible online may be, it turns out that solutions to this question are far more problematic than anticipated. Besides the obvious copyright conundrum we also face a variety of economic questions that need to be addressed to create sustainable models for public access to these important materials.
Bio
Eric Kluitenberg is an independent writer, theorist, researcher, and curator on culture, media, and technology. He is the editor-in-chief of the Tactical Media Files, an on-line documentation resource for Tactical Media practices worldwide (www.tacticalmediafiles.net)
He was head of the media program of De Balie, center for culture and politics in Amsterdam (1999 - 2011), and has been involved in a large number of key international events in the field of new media culture. He taught theory of culture and media at the University of Amsterdam, the Amsterdam University for Professional Education, Academy Minerva in Groningen, and the Royal Academy of Visual Arts The Hague. He also worked as a scientific staff member at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, and lectures regularly throughout Europe and beyond.
His most recent publications include the Network Notebook Legacies of Tactical Media (Institute of Network Cultures, 2011), the theme issues Im/Mobility (2011) and Hybrid Space (2006) of OPEN - Journal for Art and the Public Domain, Delusive Spaces (essays, 2008), the Book of Imaginary Media (2006), and regular contributions to academic and cultural publications internationally.
NETWORKING NATURE – ECOLOGICAL ASPECTS IN CONTEMPORARY MEDIA ART
Sabine Himmelsbach
The presentation investigates art, and especially media art approaches and strategies that are capable of contributing to the questions and problems of ecological change and the possibility to create informational networks with natural systems. Works of art - with a specific focus on current media art production in Switzerland - will be presented that deal with the complex field of ecology, with sustainability, with renewable energy, resources, as well as visionary approaches to solving the problems related to these subject matters. Works shown and discussed are devoted to the potentials offered by the use of the media to comprehend ecological questions. They draw on the methods and results of scientific research and utilize global communications technologies to actively integrate the viewers into the projects. In a society influenced by medial and electronic networks, artists increasingly provide insights into scientific technological world designs.
Bio
Since March 2012 Sabine Himmelsbach is the new artistic director of the House of Electronic Arts Basel. She studied art history at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. From 1993-1996 she worked for galleries in Munich and Vienna and later became project manager for exhibitions and conferences for the Sterischer Herbst Festvial in Graz, Austria. In 1999 she became exhibition director at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe. From 2005-2011 she was the artistic director of the Edith-Russ-Site for Media Art in Oldenburg, Germany. Her exhibition projects include “Fast Forward" (2003), “Coolhunters" (2004), “Playback_Simulated Realities" (2006), “Ecomedia: Ecological Strategies in Today's Art" (2007), “Landscape 2.0" (2009), “MyWar. Participation in an Age of Conflict" (2010) und “Culture(s) of Copy" (2011). 2011 she curated the exhibition "gateways. Art and Networked Culture" for the Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn as part of the European Capital of Culture Tallinn 2011 program. As a writer and lecturer she is dedicated to topics related to media art and contemporary culture.
ARTEFACTS FROM THE LOCUS OF NIDA ART COLONY: NATIONAL NATURE PARK AS A SITE FOR TECHNO-ECOLOGICAL INTERVENTIONS FROM XIX TILL XXII CENTURY
Vytautas Michelkevicius
Fluxus sand, artificial landscapes, large scale technology, remoteness, networked retreat, forest as a studio, sea as a laboratory, centres in peripheries, site-specificity, itinerant colonies, cultural production and cultural nomadism, translation, artistic research and exhibition making, post-romantic, education breeze, active learning in art & nature community, intercultural artistic and social communication, critical tourism, unconditional time, mind massage.
Bio
Vytautas Michelkeviãius (LT, Vilnius/Nida) is a theorist, activist, and curator, working with art and media projects and interested in socializing through art, interdisciplinarity between art and research, experimental teaching, and participatory curatorial practices. He holds PhD in Communication & Media studies, lectures in Vilnius Academy of Arts and works as artistic director of Nida Art Colony (www.nidacolony.lt). He edited numerous books, among them Mapping Lithuanian Photography: Histories and Archives - Photo/carto/historio/graphies (MENE, 2007), Voices of Media Culture: Theories and Practices (MENE, 2009), (In)dependent Contemporary Art Histories: Artist-run Initiatives in Lithuania 1987-2011 (LTMKS, 2011), Generation of the Place: Image,Memory and Fiction in the Baltics (MENE, 2011) catalogues as well as internet journal on media culture Balsas.cc (2005-2009).
TECHNOPOLITICS: RESILIENT THEORY CONSTRUCTION KIT
Armin Medosch
Technopolitics is a praxis oriented research project initiated by Brian Holmes and Armin Medosch. The question was, how can we have a kind of toolkit to understand history as it happens. How can we have a cultural theory that does not collapse with the next crisis in symbolic capital and that does not stick to surface impressions? The answer was a process or a method rather than a new theory understood as boxed knowledge. Technopolitics is about self-education, about working out a theoretic framework and vocabulary that makes complex and difficult concepts accessible. Since its launch, the project has generated a discussion group, workshops and conferences and new things have sprouted such as an autonomous university and the project Fields.
Launchpad: http://www.thenextlayer.org/node/1199
Bio
Armin Medosch works as a practitioner, curator and writer in expanded media art practices since the 1980s. Living in Austria, Germany and the UK, he has been shaping the practice and discourse on art and technology as a curator of exhibitions, convener of conferences, critic and theorist. He has recently been awarded the degree of Ph.D. in Arts and Computational Technology at Goldsmiths, University of London.
EVOLVING THEATRE – BUILDING URBAN MICRO-ECOSYSTEM FOR HUMAN AND NON-HUMAN INHABITANTS
Léonore Bonaccini and Xavier Fourt / Bureau d'etudes
Evolving Theatre is a public place for activities and research to do with an urban micro-ecosystem focusing on the cohabitation and fulfillment of inhabitants, human and non-human alike.
Bio
The conceptual group Bureau d'études is developing a collective programme dovetailing art, theory and research, which is conveyed in particular by the making of maps about power networks and complexes. Aware of the limits of an exclusively critical approach, the group is preparing the construction of an Experimental Commune in a rural environment based on a three-way articulation between culture, economy and society. Between 2003 and 2011, Bureau d'études has taken part in many exhibitions throughout Europe, and in particular at the Generali Foundation in Vienna, the Istanbul International Biennial, the Rennes Biennial of Contemporary Art, the Nottingham Museum of Contemporary Art in London, the Karlsruhe art centre in Germany, and the Serralves Foundation in Porto.
ACOUSTIC SPACE 11: TECHNO-ECOLOGIES
Edited by Rasa Smite, Eric Kluitenberg and Raitis Smits
Everyday life is intimately interwoven with complex technological ecologies. We can no longer consider technology as the alienating 'other'. The idea that we 'inhabit' technological ecologies emphasises our connectedness to our environment (material, natural, technological) and our dependence on available resources (material, energetic, biological, cultural). Mastering these conditions is vital to our survival on this planet.
Techno-Ecologies builds upon the urgent call by philosopher Felix Guattari for an integrated perspective on the dramatic techno-scientific transformations the Earth is undergoing. Three crucially important 'ecological registers' need to be taken into account: the environment, social relations, and human subjectivity. This techno-ecological perspective was the topic of the "TECHNO-ECOLOGIES" conference in Riga, November 4-5, 2011.
This publication is structured around three thematic sections related to Guattari's ecological registers, and a fourth that introduces emerging techno-ecological art practices. It brings together contributions by conference participants as well as other authors, engaging issues of social and ecological sustainability and a deeper understanding of technology as an extension of our techno-phantasmatic desires. Techno-Ecologies thus offers a perspective that can help us chart less hazardous routes into the future than the ones currently traveled.