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News

Internet Art in the Global South @ Joburg Art Fair 2009 :: curated by Tegan Bristow (Upgrade! Johannesburg and Digital Arts Division of the Wits School of Arts) in collaboration with Upgrade! International: Boston – Turbulence.org, Berlin, Chicago, Lisbon, Paris, Sao Paulo, Seoul, and Tel-Aviv – Jerusalem.

Internet Art in the Global South explores and highlights a broad range of Internet art genres by artists in the global south, and works orientated towards its geography and politics. The project was born out of an interest to uncover artists working with the Internet as a primary medium in South Africa. The selection grew to encompass works from or about South America and Asia. Reviewed in The Times (Johannesburg) and the Mail & Guardian.

News

3333238960_67e6197bb7Recently, I spent a week in Amsterdam attending Network Cultures Winter Camp. Twelve networks were invited, including Upgrade! International. Our group consisted of representatives from Skopje, Munich, Dakar, Zagreb, Berlin, Istanbul, New York, Montreal, Tel-Aviv, Paris, Boston and Eindhoven; Sao Paulo and Chicago participated remotely.

For four days, networks held closed morning and afternoon sessions. At the end of each day, everyone gathered for a plenary session; there were screenings and other festive events in the evenings. Many networks engaged in extra-networking activities: Upgrade! met with freeDimensional, Gengerchangers, Edu-Factory, and MyCreativity to discuss possible collaborations. We also attended a FLOSS Manuals demo.

All in all, Winter Camp was inspiring and productive. The organizers — all of whom did a flawless job — provided bloggers for most of our sessions. Their posts about Upgrade! are available here.

One of the Upgrade! outcomes of Winter Camp was the decision to create an Open Upgrade! listserve. Everyone is invited to subscribe and post announcements about their projects, calls for collaborators, and opportunities for residencies, exhibitions, etc.