["Myths of Rape" by Leslie Labowitz-Starus, performed for "Three Weeks in May," Suzanne Lacy, 1977. Photo: Suzanne Lacy] Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival :: January 19–29, 2012 :: More than 30 New Works, Re-Inventions, Commissions and Happenings to Unfold Across Los Angeles.

The art of Pacific Standard Time heads into the streets, clubs and public spaces of Southern California from January 19 through 29, 2012, during the Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival. Continue reading

Networked Reenactments: Stories Transdisciplinary Knowledges Tell by Katie King (forward by Donna Haraway), Duke University Press:

Since the 1990s, the knowledge, culture, and entertainment industries have found themselves experimenting, not altogether voluntarily, with communicating complex information across multiple media platforms. Against a backdrop of competing national priorities, changing technologies, globalization, and academic capitalism, these industries have sought to reach increasingly differentiated local audiences, even as distributed production practices have made the lack of authorial control increasingly obvious. Continue reading

Lies, Inc.: Eva and Franco Mattes :: June 9 - July 30, 2011 :: Site Gallery, 1 Brown Street, Sheffield, UK.

Site Gallery is delighted to present the first UK solo-retrospective of tricksters, pranksters and media hackers Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.org. Renowned for their masterful subversions of public media, their work is precariously balanced on the edge of legal, ethical and social boundaries.

For example, for Nike Ground, their notorious (and unauthorised) Nike advertising campaign, they changed the name of the historic Karlsplatz, in Vienna to Nike Platz and provoked significant debate about public and private space (as well as a law suit). From impersonating the Vatican (through copying and subtly changing the Vatican website), to stealing fragments of artwork from major museums, they use the tools of the time to question the rules of the games we play. Continue reading

Vacanza! (Holiday!): A Relaxed Augmented Reality Workshop :: April 1-3, 2011 :: @ AHAcktitude, Carrara, Italy. Continue reading

The Second Time as Farce: Reenactment and Reperformance in Context by Martha Rosler, IDIOM, February 21, 2011:

“… Let me attempt some interventions into the discussion of performance reenactment. (In other words, I have some questions about re-enactments.)

What are the benefits, and who gains? What are the losses and who loses?

If we can say that the aim is the conservation of the performances themselves, we need to know more. What exactly is conserved? Is performance art strictly analogous to dance, music, and other live time-based arts? If so, does that mean that performances are actually scored or must be in the future, in order to be taken seriously? Are such scores to be fully codified and rigid, or are they to be sketchier notes, such as musical scores? That is, are they choreographed or a set of general directions?…” More here.

East of Borneo: A Collaborative Art Journal and Multimedia Archive edited by Thomas Lawson:

The launch of East of Borneo marks the convergence of two very distinct lines of thought. What is the nature, and the future, of art magazines? And how might we give form to the sprawling history of art in Los Angeles, a form that can be generative and productive, not merely descriptive or fancifully speculative?

Launched in October 2010, East of Borneo is a collaborative online art journal and multimedia archive that offers a new way to research and present the various histories of contemporary art. Its hybrid form — which publishes newly commissioned art writing within a larger context of user generated material — reflects an editorial process of thinking through the delights and constraints of printed magazines, and fully considering the transcendent possibilities of online publishing today. Continue reading

Contractions of Time: On Social Practice from a Temporal Perspective by Nato Thompson, e-flux journal #20: Rather than make normative claims regarding the display or function of these works, my intention is to clarify the emerging cultural landscape across which these aesthetic experiments function. The reenactment of these performance artworks of the past allowed the work to fit neatly into the current aesthetic needs of a public deprived of its own bodies, wherein any renewed interest in performance has to be reframed and displayed in a manner that accounts for the dematerialized and accelerated climate of today.

“[...] When Marina Abramović sat for hours at a time in the central gallery of MoMA, bright lights beaming down on her as she met visitor after visitor with her steady gaze, what shook the audience was her commitment. Continue reading

LPDT2 is a reworking of Roy Ascott’s 1983 work La Plissure du Texte (The Pleating of the Text) in Second Life. [via Network Research]

The Center for Historical Reenactments and Johannesburg Workshop in Theory and Criticism present PASS-AGES: references & footnotes with Dineo Seshee Bopape, Ernest Cole, Kemang Wa Lehulere, Zanele Muholi and Mary Sibande with contributions from Sean Jacobs, Coco Fusco, Desiree Lewis, Hlonipha Mokoena, Gabi Ngcobo and Zamani Xolo :: July 24 - August 1, 2010 :: 80 Albert Street (the old Pass Office, between Delvers and Polly Streets), Johannesburg, South Africa.

What is the relationship between art and history? How can art contextualize history and how can it affect how we receive or understand history? The ‘Center for Historical Reenactments’ (CHR) collaborates with artists who use these questions as the departure point for their work as they consider how society acknowledges certain historical narratives. Continue reading

Upgrade! Boston: Joseph DeLappe + Pete Froslie :: March 11, 2010; 7:00 - 9:00 pm :: ACT - MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, 3rd Floor, Cambridge, MA (Entrance to the right of the MIT Museum).

Joseph DeLappe is an Associate Professor of the Department of Art at the University of Nevada where he directs the Digital Media program. Working with electronic and new media since 1983, his work in online gaming performance and electromechanical installation have been shown throughout the United States and abroad - including exhibitions and performances in Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Peru, China and the Netherlands. Continue reading