Semblance and Event: Activist Philosophy and the Occurrent Arts by Brian Massumi, MIT Press:

Events are always passing; to experience an event is to experience the passing. But how do we perceive an experience that encompasses the just-was and the is-about-to-be as much as what is actually present? In Semblance and Event, Brian Massumi, drawing on the work of William James, Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze, and others, develops the concept of “semblance” as a way to approach this question.

It is, he argues, a question of abstraction, not as the opposite of the concrete but as a dimension of it: “lived abstraction.” A semblance is a lived abstraction. Massumi uses the category of the semblance to investigate practices of art that are relational and event-oriented — variously known as interactive art, ephemeral art, performance art, art intervention — which he refers to collectively as the “occurrent arts.” Continue reading

Artist Kate Hartman uses wearable electronics to explore how we communicate, with ourselves and with the world. In this quirky and thought-provoking talk, she shows the “Talk to Yourself Hat”, the “Inflatable Heart”, the “Glacier Embracing Suit”, and other unexpected devices.

Time/Bank Restaurant :: September 24 - October 16, 2011, Thursdays through Sundays; 1:00 - 3:00 pm :: Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street, New York City.

Time/Bank will open a New York City branch in the form of a temporary restaurant on the Lower East Side, which will offer daily lunch in exchange for time credits and time currency that you can earn by helping others in Time/Bank community.

There will be a changing menu of meals prepared with recipes provided by a group of artists who like to cook, including Martha Rosler, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Carolina Caycedo, Lawrence Weiner, Liam Gillick, WAGE, and many others. Continue reading

Ultra-red | Art, Collectivity, and Pedagogy: Changing the World in which we Live, Chto delat?:

The art world is going through a period of intense fascination with collectives. This is often combined with an enthusiastic interest in pedagogy. Curators, critics and institutions champion collectivity and pedagogy as, among other things, an alternative or corrective, if you will, to the art-star economy of the 1990s and its spectacular demise. These recent interests have benefited from the enormous influence of the French philosopher, Jacques Ranciиre. Seeking an explicitly political inflection in the terms of pedagogy and collectivity, many have turned to Ranciиre’s writings on spectatorship and the emancipatory potential in art. This appropriation in the visual art context has tended to ignore the extent to which Ranciиre’s own thinking occurs within a nexus of pedagogy and the collectivities that occur in performance. Continue reading

WalkSpace: Beirut-Venice with artist Conor McGarrigle :: June 2-3, 2011; 12:00 - 2:30 pm :: Venice (Piazza San Marco) and Beirut (to be announced later) :: Part of THESTATEOFMIND @ the Lebanese Pavilion, Venice Biennale.

WalkSpace: Beirut-Venice invites the participant on a drift through Venice guided from Beirut and in Beirut guided from Venice. The work involves two simultaneous dérives through the historic cities of Beirut and Venice, connected in real time to each other and to the world. Two interconnected groups of participants will walk in each city, each receiving instruction and guidance from the other as they wander, get lost and explore …the psychogeographical ambiance of the city. Continue reading

CTheory Digital Inflections presents: “Synthetic Emotions” by Barbara Rauch (2:00 pm ) + “Werewolves, Magnetic Fields and Fingerprints of a Technological Imaginary” by Ted Hiebert (3:00 pm) :: March 16, 2011; 2:00 - 4:00 pm (PST) :: Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, Technology and Enterprise Facility (TEF) 170, 2300 McKenzie Street, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada :: Streamed Live.

As director of the e_Motion Laboratory at OCADU, Professor Rauch is a leading researcher exploring the boundaries of natural and digital environments. Her presentation on “Synthetic Emotions” investigates the future of artificial emotions and virtual affect in a posthuman culture increasingly shaped by the power of technology. Here, 3D scans are used to capture the once and future evolution of life in the posthuman future. Continue reading

somatic SENSOR :: January 21-22, 2011; 8:30 pm :: Highways Performance Space, 18th Street Arts Center, 165118th Street; Santa Monica, CA + Attend in Second Life.

Highways Performance Space Artistic Director Leo Garcia presents somatic SENSOR, curated by Micha Cárdenas, Elle Mehrmand, and Dino Dinco. Emerging out of queer experience, the works in somatic SENSOR move along lines of flight exploring desire, technology, the erotic and the viral. Rejecting control society to find new forms of relationality, somatic SENSOR includes performances, digital and networked media, drawing and soft sculpture to open borders between realities and bodies. Continue reading

Performing Participation #1 :: December 11, 2010; 7:00 - 9:00 pm :: empty commercial storefront, 200 Schermerhorn Street (Hoyt-Schermerhron street: A/C/G Dekalb Ave: B,D,N,Q,R).

Performing Participation #1 is a live performance and video screening that question the conditions of participation in contemporary art practice. Performance documentation of Brody Condon’s ‘Level Five’, Nadja V. Marcin’s ‘Nadja by Breton’ and Jon Cohr’s ‘Spice Trade Expedition’ will be screened. Live performances of new works by Zachary Lieberman, David J. Merritt, Alan Bailey and Taeyoon Choi will be presented. Organized by Taeyoon Choi with the Public School New York.

Performing Participation #1 is inspired by the conditions of participation such as the following anecdotes. Continue reading

[Image: Navroze Contractor, "Street sweeper in Jodhpur," 2009. Photograph, dimensions variable] Raising Dust: Encounters in Relational Geography :: December 8, 2010 – February 20, 2011 :: Calvert 22, 22 Calvert Avenue, London E2 7JP.

Curated by Richard Appignanesi, writer, theorist and editor Raising Dust is a provocative multimedia exhibition which explores contemporary notions of identity and relativity by inviting a group of predominantly Eastern European artists to respond to the poetry and politics of place.

Arguably, the very idea of Europe is in itself a dislocation, a ‘nomadic horizon’ which responds differently to the shifting perspectives and desires of its inhabitants. Each artist in Raising Dust has contributed work which addresses this proposition and foregrounds the urgency of creating an autonomous ’space for life’ that overrides dominant mainstream distinctions. Continue reading