Wang Bin Torture in Commercial Quality, High Quality, and Museum Quality :: March 13 -April 6, 2010 :: Opening: March 20; 7:00 - 10:00 pm :: Open Source Gallery, 255 17th Street, Brooklyn, NY.

Ondrej Brody (CZ) & Kristofer Paetau’s (FIN) work, Painting China Now (2007), is the starting point for their new work on display at Open Source Gallery. Painting China Now is a collection of 30 oil paintings depicting violence inflicted by the Chinese government on Falun Dafa members. The paintings were rendered with varying degrees of realism by Chinese craftsmen* specializing in copying pictures sent via e-mail. These pictures, censored and forbidden in China, were painted with oil on canvas in China and then exported to Europe for exhibition display. Continue reading

Radars & Fences III: Borders, Affect, Space — A symposium with Ricardo Dominguez & Amy Carroll, Teddy Cruz, Helga Tawil Souri, Laila el Haddad & Mushon Zer-Aviv :: March 12, 2010; 9:30 am - 5:00 pm :: Hemispheric Institute, 20 Cooper Square - 5th Floor, New York, NY :: Please RSVP.

Radars and Fences 2010 will explore the production of the Israel/ Palestine and Mexico/ US borders, examining how they engage affects, bodies, and spatial scales. Despite their seemingly confounding specificities, it is our intention to open up a dialogue between these borders in order to enable new terms of practical and political engagement. By bringing this plurality of perspectives into dialogue around the themes of affect and space, we hope to reinvigorate critical analysis of the border in all of its (im)materialities and locations.

Test_Lab: Tools for Propaganda — Experience how new media technologies direct, divert, distract and manipulate your gaze on the world :: March 11, 2010; 8:00 -11:00 pm :: V_2, Eendrachtsstraat 10, Rotterdam + and streamed live.

Featuring: Maurice Benayoun (FR) | Marc Lee (CH) | Damian Stewart (NZ/AT) | Opening: Alessandro Ludovico (IT) | Screening: uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki | www.subvertr.com | streetwithaview.com.

The increased accessibility and affordability of contemporary media technologies has greatly expanded possibilities for the dissemination of independent and grassroots information. At the same time, these developments have also greatly increased the opportunities for (mis)use of media technologies as powerful and effective tools for political and commercial propaganda. Continue reading

Spring 2010 Lecture Series: The Theatrical. The Performative. The Transformative. :: Mondays at 7:00 pm :: MIT’s Bartos Theater (Wiesner Bldg, E15), 20 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA.

The Theatrical. The Performative. The Transformative. is a lecture series introducing key figures whose artistic practice is situated at the intersection of performance art, avant garde dance, and activist theater. Focusing on time-based and ephemeral formats that navigate between art, film, theater and dance, the series juxtaposes speakers of different generations and backgrounds who share an interest in feminist discourses and politics. Continue reading

In order to live at sea, we’re pioneering an entirely new form of marine architecture. Open_Sailing acts like a globally-conscious super-organism, a cluster of intelligent units that can react to their environment, change shape and reconfigure themselves. Open_Sailing is a project that is well underway. We are a constantly growing, international team of around 40 people designing and engineering a prototype under the mentoring of numerous experts. Where is the safest location on earth? How can we live at sea? How can we create a life saving floating self-righting architecture? How can we produce reliable renewable energy? What will we eat? What will the politico social organization be made of? How will we entertain ourselves? Continue reading

“[...] But what has intrigued me the most in recent years is the way fan communities, especially around fantasy texts, are inspiring activism around human rights issues. The green politics often implicit in Anime has sparked growing awareness of environmental issues while J.K. Rowling’s background in Amnesty International helps to explain why the Harry Potter books are leading young people to be concerned with repressive governments and human dignity.

The temptation is to evaluate such movements through a focus on the author’s implicit or explicit political commitments, yet we may also explore how fans have used these popular platforms as raw materials for their own public engagement, seeking inspiration there for ways they might work through complex real world issues. It is this focus on fandom as a site for exploring and engaging with social concerns that is the central focus of this second installment in the series…” From How Fictional Story Worlds Influence Real World Politics by Henry Jenkins.

Craftivism :: December 12, 2009 - February 14, 2010 :: Arnolfi, 16 Narrow Quay, Bristol, UK.

With Kayle Brandon + Heath Bunting, Rhiannon Chaloner + Manuel Vason, glorious ninth, GOTO10, Rui Guerra, Household, Christine + Irene Hohenbüchler, JODI, Mandy McIntosh, Gloria Ojulari Sule, Trevor Pitt + Kate Pemberton, Janek Simon, Stephanie Syjuco, Clare Thornton and projects produced with local residents.

Craftivism responds to the resurgent interest in craft as it relates to socially-engaged art practice. It involves fourteen projects developed by artists and collectives that work with craft-based traditions and activist practices, and who employ the tactics of ‘craftivism’ (combining crafting + activism) to question and disrupt the prevailing codes of mass consumerism. Continue reading

Upgrade! New York: Crowdsourcing Labor – Distributed Democracy or Centralized Sweatshop? :: November 11, 2009; 7:00 - 9:00 pm :: The Change You Want To See, 84 Havemeyer Street, Brooklyn, NY.

Upgrade! NY continues its series on open source as it relates to activism and creative practice. Within activist and creative practice there is a range of models for mobilizing the labor and creativity of the crowd (aka “crowdsourcing”). Both practices experiment with a spectrum of autonomy and control within those models. From distributed design to distributed fundraising, MoveOn to Mechanical Turk, a crowdsourcer issues a call and creates structure for participation. Continue reading

Upgrade! New York: Free as in what? A debate on open source vs. free culture :: October 29, 2009; 7:00 - 9:00 pm :: Eyebeam, 540 West 21st Street, New York City :: Live streaming and chat.

Upgrade! NY continues its program series on open source as it relates to activism and creative practice. Join us for a discussion and debate on what constitutes freedom within the Open Source and Free Culture movements. We will examine the strong ideological differences through a provocative panel discussion with Gabriella Coleman and Zachary Lieberman. Continue reading

Urgent Aphorisms: Notes on Organized Networks for the Connected Multitudes by Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter (The OrgMen) [posted on Net Critique] [Forthcoming in Mark Deuze (ed.) Managing Media Work, Sage, 2010]

Four Stages of Web 2.0 Culture: Use. Modify. Distribute. Ignore. – Johan Sjerpstra

In between the blog posting and the tweet there is the aphorism, a centuries old literary form that should do well amongst creative media workers. Zipped knowledge of the 21st century.

Already for 18th century German experimental physicist and man of letters, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, there was an impossibility for knowledge to capture the totality of things. ‘It is a question in arts and sciences whether a best is possible beyond which our understanding cannot go’ (Lichtenberg). The answer to Twittermania is not the thousand page magnum opus. Today, in a techno-culture where the link never ends, there is a need to give pause to thought. Continue reading