Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship — A searing critique of participatory art by an iconoclastic historian, Claire Bishop, Verso Books:

Since the 1990s, critics and curators have broadly accepted the notion that participatory art is the ultimate political art: that by encouraging an audience to take part an artist can promote new emancipatory social relations. Around the world, the champions of this form of expression are numerous, ranging from art historians such as Grant Kester, curators such as Nicolas Bourriaud and Nato Thompson, to performance theorists such as Shannon Jackson.

Artificial Hells is the first historical and theoretical overview of socially engaged participatory art, known in the US as “social practice.” Continue reading

Community without Community in Digital Culture by Charlie Gere, Palgrave Macmillan:

The word ‘digital’ refers to both digital data, as used in computers, and also the digits, fingers, of the hand, and thus by extension touch, which has long been a trope for connectivity, community, and participation. Thus, in its drive towards greater connectivity, our culture is digital in more than one sense, in that it increasingly encourages such contact (from the Latin, ‘com’, together, and ‘tangere’, to touch). But at the same time such technologies always involve separation, gap and distance.

Community Without Community in Digital Culture suggests that networks always involve this other aspect of touch, separation, distance and gap, as a necessary concomitant of our fundamental technicity. Continue reading

[Gustavo Romano, 'The IP Poetry Project', automatic poetry generating software, computer monitors, 2006] Speed Show: Public Access with Natalie Bookchin, Double Happiness, Parker Ito, Geraldine Juarez, Caleb Larsen, Kristin Lucas, Eduardo Navas, Jon Rafman, Gustavo Romano, River of the Net, Brad Troemel, Jonathan Vingiano :: June 12, 2012 ;4:30 - 9:00 pm :: Living Space Internet Café, 1 Coral Street, London, SE1 7BE, United Kingdom.

Public Access is an exhibition of Internet-based works by a group of artists originating from the Americas. It presents a selection of works by artists who address the nature of public participation and relational platforms. Continue reading

Screengrab: New Media Arts Award :: Call For Artists — Deadline: July 2, 2012.

The 2012 Screengrab New Media Arts Award and associated exhibition is looking for challenging creative works by media arts practitioners working in screen based media to submit works on the theme of Control.

The contemporary media milieu would suggest an evolving devolution of the traditional notion of the “society of control”. The boundaries of enclosures and spaces are no longer the rigid and defined perimeters they once were. The browser, the mobile camera/ screen are new enabling simulations the user can exploit to navigate alternative pathways, to experience new modes of expression and to participate in global cultural exchange. Continue reading

Soup / No Soup, Rikrit Tiravanija :: April 7, 2012; noon-midnight :: Grand Palais, 3 Avenue du Général Eisenhower, Paris, Ile de France.

As a prelude to the public opening of La Triennale 2012 at the Palais de Tokyo and associated institutions in and around Paris on April 20th, the renowned contemporary artist Rirkrit Tiravanija will present Soup / No Soup, a project which will transform the main nave of Grand Palais into an enormous, festive, twelve-hour banquet composed of a single meal of Tom Ka soup. Continue reading

Géographies Variables: Martin Bureau and Mathile Chénin in Web Residencies :: until April 22, 2012 :: LA CHAMBRE BLANCHE, 185, Christophe-Colomb Est, G1K 3S6 Quebec City (Quebec), Canada.

Within the framework of the second edition of the Géographies Variables program, LA CHAMBRE BLANCHE will welcome the artists Martin Bureau (Quebec) and Mathilde Chénin (France).

Martin Bureau’s practice is concerned with the notions of geopolitics, colonization and the impact of systems. During his residency at LA CHAMBRE BLANCHE, he will focus on the prevailing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East by considering the problematic surrounding the wall between Israel and the West Bank. Continue reading

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