Book launch: Critical Strategies in Art and Media — with brief remarks by Marco Deseriis (NYU), Steve Kurtz (Critical Art Ensemble), Andy Bichlbaum (The Yes Men), Ken Wark (NSU), and Trebor Scholz (NSU) :: April 15, 2010; 6:30 - 8:15 pm :: Wollman Hall, New School University, 65 West 11th St, 5th Floor, New York, NY.

For centuries, art has been put on pedestals and in pillories, literally and figuratively, over its supposed capacity to carry a critical, political charge. Yet the trends of the last few decades - the birth pangs of hypercapital and environmental catastrophe - have hardly brought about any form of art potent enough to meet challenges on that scale. Continue reading

[Image: Ricardo Dominguez] “While we believe that poetry, walking art and queer technology cannot be “spread-sheet Excel-ed,” we, in b.a.n.g. lab, harbor our own concerns for the lack of accountability that enables the UC system to continue transforming a public university for the state of California into a private corporation, accessible to a select few. The selective *lack* of accountability that bedrocks that hubris fails to count the number of deaths tragically enabled by the continuous gerrymandering of international borders, for instance.” - Electronic Disturbance Theater

Bang.Lab / EDT Update, Call For Accountability And The Criminalization Of Research

In the past few weeks, a number of developments have occurred in relation to the art/research practices of b.a.n.g. lab and Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), which we wish to share with the public in accordance with our long history of radical transparency. Continue reading

ARE YOU CONNECTIVE or can happiness be synthesized? with Stefanie Wuschitz (artist) + Amir Hassan (coder) :: mzbaltazarslaboratory + metalab/Vienna :: April 20-24, 2010; 2:00 - 7:00 pm daily :: Open to the Public: April 24; 7:00 pm :: West Germany (WG), Skalitzer Street 133, 10999 Berlin :: Register: workshop∗aa-vv∗org until April 15.

Transiting from the ‘ARE YOU CONDUCTIVE?’ workshop, which recently took place in Munich, to the ‘ARE YOU CONNECTIVE?’ a workshop for relative interactions in Berlin, we are hoping to encounter different, but experimentally thinking, DIY and collaboratively working individuals in time, place and space meaningfully and relatively, trying (still) to connect all into an organic ‘whole’ by means of inventing transitions between each other, the inside/outside spaces, analogue and digital, high and low-no-tech. Continue reading

SUNRISE AND SUNSET — Outlook: Untitled by Stephanie Rothenberg:

At sunrise and sunset, a frenzy of faux pop-up advertisements referencing the current world economic crisis take over the screen space of whitney.org. The advertisements are interrupted by a spinning globe that turns into a Magic 8-Ball fortune telling game, inviting visitors to “try me.” The Magic 8-Ball delivers ambiguous messages or cryptic advice about our possibilities of shaping economic structures or affecting the state of the world at the click of a button. Outlook: Untitled employs the strategies of mediated Internet culture in which all meaning is delivered instantaneously in visual packets of bits and bytes, yet at the same time, it generates messages that disrupt and question this creation of meaning. Continue reading

Twitter/Art+Social Media :: April 1 – May 1, 2010 :: Opening Reception: April 1, 2010; 6:00 - 8:00 pm :: Diane Farris Gallery, 1590 W 7th Avenue, Vancouver, BC.

Diane Farris Gallery is pleased to present Twitter/Art+Social Media, a juried exhibition of work by artists using social media for inspiration, production and presentation of their work. The exhibition concept evolved from an original idea by Mia Johnson who has a PhD on the emergence of the Internet as a vehicle for artists and has been responsible for the gallery’s website since 2004.

As an early adopter of the Internet, Diane Farris Gallery has been interested in its possibilities since the creation of the gallery website in 1996, when less than 1% of the world population was online. Continue reading

northern bloc 4 Launch Event :: March 30, 2010: 3:00 - 4:30 pm :: Technium CAST, Ffordd Penlan, Parc Menai Bangor LL57 4HJ.

The event comprises: an interactive installation; a virtual balloon race; an actual balloon release plus the chance to find out about northern bloc’s programme of workshops, clinics and commissions. The event will be followed by an opportunity to take part in the Wales in the World workshop at Galeri, Caernarfon at 5pm.

Find out where we are and what we do. Take a balloon from room 120 (watch out for the performer). Exchange your balloon for refreshment in the ʻopen living areaʼ. ʻTagʼ your balloon in short tales - and interact with the digital projection. Join the physical balloon release on the balcony. Enter the virtual balloon race and maybe win a prize. Continue reading

The Cubinator Project - Online Live Performance :: April 17-18, 2010; 7:00 pm - 7:00 pm :: Online.

Virtualization of our daily tasks, as well as of communication processes, social activity, production, economics, media consumption, etc. probably have more impact on our temporal and special awareness and sensorial processes than we normally realize. Sarah and I came to this conclusion during the research that we decided to undertake for the seminar Scopic Regimes of Vituality. Our final project for this seminar attempts to focus on our altered perception of space and time, as a consequence of our frequent use of new (digital) media. Expanding on Anna Munster’s book (Materializing New Media: Embodiment in Information Aesthetics, 2006), in particular on her chapter on digitality, where she discuss the idea of a “global digital time” and refers to the 24 hours economy, we aim to realize a work of performance to expose multiple layers of our distorted perception of time and space, which are produced by our use of digital media. Continue reading

Tactics of Invisibility :: April 15 - August 15, 2010 :: Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Himmelpfortgasse 13, 1010, Vienna, Austria.

Tactics of Invisibility brings together a variety of artistic positions from almost three decades, including works by pioneering figures such as Sarkis, Füsun Onur, and Ayşe Erkmen, who have influenced the minimalist and conceptual practices of the younger generation and paved the way for contemporary art from Turkey to receive international attention. In particular, the politically and socially engaged artistic practices of the 1990s – a critical period in which discourses such as multiculturalism, identity politics, migration, and minority politics came to the fore – were intensively discussed within the “Western” art world and also focused attention on the sociopolitical context of Turkish art. Continue reading

Art + Science Now — by Stephen Wilson — is a global overview of the ways in which contemporary artists draw on scientific and technological developments to explore new forms of creative expression. In the twenty-first century, some of the most dynamic works of art are being produced not in the studio but in the laboratory, where artists probe cultural, philosophical, and social questions connected with cutting-edge scientific and technological research. Their work ranges across disciplines — microbiology, the physical sciences, information technologies, human biology and living systems, kinetics and robotics — and takes in everything from eugenics to climate change to artificial intelligence. Continue reading