Facing Forward: Art & Theory from a Future Perspective (lecture series) :: December 2011 – April 2012 :: Oude Lutherse Kerk, Spui 411 (corner Spui), Amsterdam.

Following the successful lecture series and publications Right About Now: Art & Theory in the 1990s and Now is the Time: Art & Theory in the 21st Century, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the University of Amsterdam, de Appel arts centre, W139, the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam, and Metropolis M, jointly present a new series of lectures and debates: Facing Forward: Art & Theory from a Future Perspective. Continue reading

On nettime, Timothy Druckrey wrote: No doubt lengthy paeans will be forthcoming from the Kittler scholars. They will be, of course, well deserved for a thinker whose work traversed so many spheres. For us in the media, Kittler’s work has been an indispensable source of rigor and insight. Back in 1987, I read the first chapter of Gramophone, Film, Typewriter in the journal October. After that, his name surfaced in many sources and I read everything I could find with voracious interest. He was regularly in the media festivals and his intense presence was a stark challenge to the kind of idiosyncratic history that was/is still so prevalent in the media sphere. 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

Hiroshi Kawano: The Philosopher at the Computer :: September 24, 2011 - January 8, 2012 :: Opening: September 23; 6:00 pm :: ZKM | Media Museum, Project Room, Lorenzstraße 19, D-76135 Karlsruhe, Germany.

The Japanese philosopher, Hiroshi Kawano (*1925), is one of the most important pioneers in the conquest of computer technology for the arts. The ZKM is dedicating a first retrospective to his work. The exhibition comprises numerous works and documents which have never before been presented outside Japan, and draws on the rich Hiroshi-Kawano archive located at the ZKM since 2010. The retrospective emphasizes Kawano’s special role in the circle of pioneers in »computer art«: he was neither artist, who discovered the computer as a new production medium and theme, nor engineer who came to art via the new machine, but a philosopher, who left his desk for the computer center to experiment with theoretical models. Continue reading

Brian Holmes‘ Post-Fordisms and Culture, Presented as part of Living as Form from creativetime.

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Networked Cultures provides a filmic archive of practitioners from the fields of art, architecture, theory and activism talking about their work in the light of global cultural transformation. Continue reading

The Deaths of the Author: Reading and Writing in Time by Jane Gallop, Duke University Press.

For thirty years “the death of the author” has been a familiar poststructuralist slogan in literary theory, widely understood and much debated as a dismissal of the author, a declaration of the writer’s irrelevance to the reader’s experience. In this concise book, Jane Gallop revitalizes this hackneyed concept by considering not only the abstract theoretical death of the author but also the writer’s literal death, as well as other authorial “deaths,” such as obsolescence. Through bravura close readings of the influential literary theorists Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, she shows that the death of the author is best understood as a relation to temporality, not only for the reader but especially for the writer. Continue reading

A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites: Papacharissi, Zizi (Editor), Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo (Introduction by), Routledge:

A Networked Self examines self presentation and social connection in the digital age. This collection brings together new theory and research on online social networks by leading scholars from a variety of disciplines. Topics addressed include self presentation, behavioral norms, patterns and routines, social impact, privacy, class/ gender/ race divides, taste cultures online, uses of social networking sites within organizations, activism, civic engagement, and political impact.

“The complex and sometimes contradictory phenomena of social media are among the most discussed aspects of digital culture today, and A Networked Self examines these phenomena through a variety of perspectives and approaches from sociology and communication theory. Continue reading

Resources.11 — Just Grounds: Cape Town — Post-graduate course in Architecture and Urban Planning :: Royal Institute of Art, Mejan Arc/ Architecture, 103 26 Stockholm, Sweden :: Deadline for Applications: June 13, 2011.

Urban Africa: Africa is rapidly urbanizing. 40% of the continent’s population is now urban, but despite Africa’s extensive natural resources and strong economic growth, neither international nor local investments find their way to the cities. In post-colonial Africa the City is still consider an exception. Basic infrastructure is still lacking and urbanization is occurring primarily in the form of slums, as silent encroachments. However, African urban researchers note that the African city should not be considered simply incomplete versions of their western counterparts. Indeed, the African city is following its own route with a very different map. Continue reading

Calabi Portal Project — a laboratory for ideas and the imagination :: Call for Proposals — No Deadline.

This competition is open to visionary designers, artists, architects, and scientists, and any collaborative combination. All designs will be theoretical. No background or experience in engineering, construction, or actual fabrication materials is required as the structure will be self-generating and assembling. The challenge is to conceive of the possibilities of an architectural visualization of 10 dimensional space incorporating the six dimensional Calabi-Yau manifold. The proposed structure is to take the form of what we loosely describe as a “Tower”, and is open to interpretation. It may also contain or emanate light and sound.

See website for more information. Sponsored by the Multiverse Research Institute.