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Table of Contents: You are invited to join Undercurrents geert <geert@xs4all.nl> arts jobs in vancouver geert <geert@xs4all.nl> SubmarineChannel; a new online channel "Janneke van de Kerkhof" <janneke@submarine.nl> [transmediale] transmediale_ausstellung & screenings, letztes Wochenende Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@transmediale.de> kleine bitte erwin mohammed osman <osmo@gmx.at> Global Forum (FfD), Press Release <comite_organizador_foro_global@yahoo.co ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 12:51:59 +1100 From: geert <geert@xs4all.nl> Subject: You are invited to join Undercurrents From: <Animas999@aol.com> You are invited to join Undercurrents, a new on-line discussion about how cyberfeminism, new technologies, postcoloniality and globalization are interrelated. What follows is our opening statement and the announcement of a special Undercurrents project. We have composed this introduction in the hope of providing a solid basis for the development of a productive and enriching discussion that could evolve into events, publications and other projects. To subscribe send the following message to majordomo@bbs.thing.net: "subscribe undercurrents YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS" We hope that you will join us. Undercurrents Moderators: Irina Aristahrkova, Maria Fernandez, Coco Fusco and Faith Wilding What is Undercurrents? - - currents below the surface - - hidden opinions or feelings often contrary to the ones publicly shown - - electronic communication from other sites - - heretofore unspoken questions about the racial politics of net.culture, new media and cyberfeminism Undercurrents is a new on-line discussion about how feminism, new technologies, postcoloniality and globalization are interrelated. Although each of these terms has generated its own enriching debate, we see a need to bring these fields of inquiry together. We seek to challenge the utopian ideology of cyberculture that posits technology, in the words of Lisa Nakamura, "as a social equalizer which levels out race and gender inequities, since bodies are supposedly left behind in cyberspace." We believe that there are many practical and philosophical reasons to question libertarian characterizations of electronic culture and virtual reality. As much as we support the democratic goals of many who have contributed to alternative discourses within net.culture, we do not agree that the ideal of a digital commons, feminist or otherwise, necessarily transcends the problematic logic of race and racism. We are deeply skeptical of such assumptions because we understand that race and racism involve much more than skin, bodies, overt s egregation or physical violence. We argue instead that race is manifest in both the essentializing ventures of law and science and in the arenas of performativity that denaturalize and de-essentialize embodiment, including cyberspace. We believe that electronic communication and postcolonial migration are parallel forces that jointly affect who we are as human collectivities and how we live regardless of whether we ourselves are migrants. We are launching the list-serve to join minds with those who want to discuss how these phenomena relate rather than assuming that the virtual world can or should completely overtake the social, political and economic force of lived experience in the physical world. The digital divide is one important issue that many activists have tried to address in relation to racism's effect on access to new technologies, but it is not the only way that racial inequities are manifest in new media culture and theory. Our world remains polarized along racial lines, and in it, non-white peoples are the most likely to be exploited as lab rats for biotechnology, cheap labor, and sex slaves. The visual content of electronic culture is shaped by the racialized power relations of the physical world -- in the fantasmatic territory of cyberspace those realities are reconfigured, but not transcended. In this era of racist attacks against non-whites throughout Europe, rising xenophobia in North America, and overtly racist immigration policies through the developed world, claiming that "we are beyond race" is not only symptomatic of willed ignorance but constitutes an act of political negligence in the service of white hegemony. Universalized Whiteness is the Strategy/ Spatial Rhetoric is the Tactic It has become commonplace in contemporary cultural theory about the internet and virtual identity to describe net.subjectivity as nomadic, deterritorialized, and hybrid. These terms cast the embodied experiences of poor and mostly non-white people in spatial terms, masking their socio-historical origin. At the same time, all too often in discussions of the net.cutural politics, attempts by people of color to raise the issue of race are dismissed by the white majority as "identity politics" that do not belong in analyses of cyberspace. We believe there are good reasons to question the tendency in net.culture to adopt terminology that describes the experiences of radically marginalized and disenfranchised peoples, most of whom are not white and who have little choice over their fate, to represent the imagined freedom that the majority white netizen population associates with being in cyberspace. Cybertheory's tendency to view postcolonial realities through the lens of a limited Deleuzian vocabulary and to simu ltaneously dismiss both race and auto-ethnography as "passé" limit our ability to grasp the complex interplay of identity and technology on and off line. This approach effectively silences postcolonial subjects by de-legitimating the strategies that have evolved over five centuries to describe colonial domination in which the conquest of territory and the imposition of racial logic have been enjoined as the key means of commanding and controlling populations. Centuries of anti-colonial and anti-racist cultural resistance should not be misconstrued as being the same thing as a few years of bureaucratic multiculturalism in North America, a period that is routinely dismissed as informed by "political correctness." Let us not forget that this epithet emerged from the culture wars in the US that were designed to purge the culture any and all art that engaged with the social. Contemporary cybertheory, which cyberfeminism also partakes of, maintains a storehouse of tactics that suppress racial issues and thus tacitly invest in whiteness as the universal identity that underpins net.culture. These tactics don't have to be conscious to be effective -- on the contrary they work best when they are internalized as normative. We have identified the following tactics but welcome contributions from discussants to add to this list. Those tactics include: 1) the insistence on spatialized references to identity and the situation of racism as excentric to virtual culture. People of color have to be "off-grid", migrants or "border subjects" to fit into these paradigms. All too often, net.based discussions focus exclusively on semantics and state repression of subalterns, or on using example of third world peoples who use the internet to disseminate their political opinions and thus champion technology as a liberating force -- but they do not address racism in net.culture. 2) The deployment of falsely linear notions of history through the insistence by new media artists and theorists on terms such as post-human, post-racial, post-identity ontology. These rhetorical moves logically situate postcolonial concerns as part of an undetermined "past" and thus replay the 19th century characterization of colonial subjects as vestiges of an earlier form of civilization. In actuality, the virtual fantasy of having moved beyond embodied identity coexists temporally and physically with embodied subjectivity. The term "post-feminism" generates a similar effect. 3) The reduction of race to somatic factors (i.e. skin) and hybridization to genetic recombination erases the historical and psychological dimensions of race as a phenomenological experience and completely overlooks the cultural specificity of different modes and processes of hybridity and their incorporation into the political agendas of ruling elites in multiracial societies. 4) The derision of postcolonial auto-ethnography as "less evolved" than the allegedly objective and more cultural pertinent scientific discourses of genetics, cognitive and computer science. Even critiques of the corporate control of biotechnology do not necessarily analyze the fetishization of science that masks the return of ideologies that privilege whiteness and appeal to the idea of creating a "master race.". The insistence that science and state surveillance are the only relevant discourses for understanding technology's effect on the body and on the social effectively blind us to how a host of voluntary organizations and private practices that all involve technology and prosthetics are also informed by racial logic. Much more critical analysis is needed about the ways that contemporary media art and culture naturalize our subjection to corporate interests by making the trajectories of techno-science appear desirable, empowering, irrefutable and necessary. Recycling cyberpunk vocabulary that objectifies the human organism through repeated reference to people as "flesh" and erasing the rootedness of collective agency in human will by casting it as "biopower" are not automatically readable as ironic or critical gesture -- on the contrary, these invocations can be interpreted as profoundly alienating endorsements of disembodiment to those of us who identify with long histories of struggle against being reduced to property and against the legacy of disenfranchisement. 5) The techno-formalist fixation on code devalues concern for the narrative content of net.culture, which is precisely the visual regime where racial fantasies are most evident. 6) The limitation of treatment of racialized inequities to the digital divide (to be redressed by workshops managed by white organizations); The power dynamics in these scenarios do not unsettle white privilege and thus focusing on them exclusively while dismissing identity politics conveniently contains the destabilizing threat of otherness within net.culture. With Undercurrents, we want to create a forum for exchange that does not reproduce these tactics. We recognize the ideal of virtual disembodiment as an old idea with a new venue. The Industrial Revolution made possible the Enlightenment with its (disembodied) rational subject and republican ideals - -- but it was built on the enslavement, colonization and dehumanization of non-white peoples. Similarly, the digital revolution has engendered more possibilities of disembodiment while relying on a global economic order that impoverishes, uproots and commodifies human beings, most of whom are not white. Keeping this terrible reality in mind, we would like to promote discussion about the real impact of deterritorialization in contemporary life so as not to lose sight of who is most profoundly affected and how those effects reverberate throughout the societies in which we live. Celebrating virtual disembodiment need not desensitize us to its physical counterpart. In light of this, we welcome the articulation of embodied experiences into this discussion. The postcolonial tactics of witnessing and giving voice to the traumatic experience of political, economic and cultural violence are sorely needed if we are going to understand how technological " development" can and does subjugate as much as it may liberate. Auto-ethnography, whether it is chronicled in a story or manifest in politically engaged telepresence, acts as a needed counterbalancing points of view about the troubling histories of "hybridization" and "disembodiment". We also need to analyze how and why the content of electronic culture remains rife with colonialist imagery and racialized narratives. We think it is relevant that the mostly likely place to find women of color on line is on display in pornography, or for sale as mail-order brides. We want to focus our attention on how and why it is that these modes of objectification fundamentally determine women of color's relation to digital technology, and why the colonialist symbols and stories that run rampant in computerized entertainment culture remain compelling in a supposedly post-colonial and post-racial world. ".if representational visibility equals power, then almost-naked young Asian women should be running a very big chunk of cyberspace." Mimi Nguyen, Tales of an Asiatic Geek Girl Where are the Politics in Cyberfeminism? For several decades, feminist thought, art and activism have inspired us and given us tools for deconstructing patriarchal power structures and for uncoupling the biological and cultural factors that determine our understanding of femininity. In the course of the past decade, cyberfeminism has emerged as an important net.cultural discourse in Europe and North America that has helped women working with digital technologies to form professional networks and to stake out an area of thought about the intersection of gender and technology. Cyberfeminist theory has focused largely on electronic space as a venue for transgender performativity, and on biotechnology as it affects human reproduction. The perspectives that are most central to its understanding of subjectivity and gender are derived from anti-essentialist schools of feminist psychoanalysis that emerged in the 1970s focusing on the social construction of the feminine, and from the writings of Judith Butler from the early 90s that rework postcolonial theories of hybridity to apply them to cross-gender role play, or "queering." Because cyberspace offers ample opportunities for transgendered self-presentation, it was perceived from early on as a terrain in which liberation from the constraint of biology could be equated with cross-gender "passing" on line. As a result, many cyberfeminists have identified transgender performance as the prosthetically enhanced embodiment of anti-essentialist femininity. Significantly, the racial history of passing as a survival strategy during slavery and segregation that involved violent erasure of black people's cultural and kinship ties and that ultimately sustained whiteness as a privileged position is ignored or misconstrued as a purely voluntary gesture in these formulations. We believe that some reflection on the history of political manipulation of racial and cultural hybridity in the service of ruling class interests might cast a very different light on what is now a redemptive reading of cross-gender construction, particularly those involving prosthetic re-engineering of human beings. The key difference here is not so much the transfer of a racial paradigm to a gendered one, but a matter of the degree of personal choice involved in the construction of the hybrid formation. That question of choice and of individualized choice is absolutely crucial to understanding how race gets reformulated within cybertheory in general and cyberfeminism in particular. Like many other cybertheorists who deride corporate control of genetics but do not dispute the promise that science can usurp and "perfect" (i.e .rationalize) biological reproductive functions, many cyberfeminists have linked their anti-essentialism with a positive view of genetic reengineering. They promise that their "autonomous" or artistic version is somehow different, ultimately life enhancing, and a truer response to women's desire to escape the strictures of biology. The problem, these cyberfeminists argue, is corporate control, not technoscience. We argue that the problem is not just virtual capitalisim, but also cyberculture's fascination with science. All too often, cyberfeminism has bought into a Eurocentric posture that equates technological development with increased freedom and presumes that technology in and of itself will liberate us from the constraints of living as women in a patriarchal world. They thus imply that the advance of science as something that can be distinguished from economic interests. This position not only fetishizes science but relies on an economically determinist view of how society functions. We agree that the sciences involved in re-engineering human beings and other forms life forms are not objective or disinterested - they are, to quote Antonio Gramsci, "elaboration(s) of concepts born on the terrain of political economy." But the desire for them and their popular appeal cannot be explained as purely economic - they are also racially motivated. Genetics and biotechnology are the nodal points of an ideology that was originally propagated by its predecessor eugenics, another "science" that promised to catalogue humanity, in this case through comparative analysis of bodily surfaces rather than through dissection of the foundational unit of the human organism. That promise of finding the most perfect mode of classification and differentiation with an unimpeachably "objective" basis constitutes the most elaborate scientific rationale for the hierarchicalization of humanity that we have ever known. Racial taxomonies were originally elaborated to justify the unequal distribution of social benefits and political rights. The deployment of genetic information and human re-engineering already serves the same purpose. Those who fetishize science tacitly sanction its use for the fulfillment of such aims. In light of this, the resistance to biotechnological "advances" coming from many indigenous groups and other people of color might be interpreted as something other than backward behavior. That is why Undercurrents seek to promote discussion of subaltern resistance to aggressive technological development as a political stance. Imbuing technology with transformative powers also naturalizes the consumerist underpinning of "prosthetic" identity. In other words, we buy or rent machines and bodily extensions to "become cyborgs" and not even a free software movement will alter that corporate takeover of the most intimate recesses of the self and of public life. The logic that mystifies prosthetic identity has a history - it is the last chapter of a five century long development of possessive individualism in the West, now introjected. The external objects that once granted sacred status to the mercantile bourgeois self have become the machines grafted onto and into the bodies and burned into the retinas of a new cyber-elite. The dynamic of desire for these machines operates according to the logic of lack -- we learn to believe that we need technology because we already believe that it is our existential condition to lack something without which we cannot be complete. This principle is exploited by marketers who generate consumer desire, but it is also fundamental to the construction of subjectivity in psychoanalysis. Early psychoanalytic theories propagated the notion that women's inferiority was derived from their physical lack of a phallus. In response to this obviously sexist formulation, scores of feminist theorists have argued that femininity does not have to be determined by a binary logic of having/not having, that women are not simply "not men" and that difference is not necessarily equated with hierarchy. The transgender role play that pervades the cyberfeminist imaginary veers dangerously close, we would suggest, to reaffirming masculine dominance by associating female empowerment with possession of technology and with prosthetically "enhanced" identity. While some would argue that cross-gender tactics are masquerades that undermine male power, we suggest another view, working with the distinctions delineated by feminist artist and theorist Mary Kelly. In her essay, "Miming the Master: Boy-Things, Bad Girls and Femmes Vitales," Kelly distinguishes between Homi Bhabha's description of the de-essentializing work of hybridity, which displaces value from symbol to sign in the colonial scenario as "an affect of uncertainty that afflicts the discourse of power," and the ways that the displays of male authority in gender play might not always be subversive. She writes, "In particular, the 'gender hybrid' can serve to legitimate as well as disrupt the dominant discourse or to institutionalize the marginal, and through a process of disavowal, can be reconfigured as a fetish." We would add that "institutionalizing the marginal" can be as simple here as playing into the capitalist logic of niche marketing, which commodifies subcultural practices as a consumer relation with "special" products. Those products have to be fetishized in order to engender desire for them and to propagate the illusion that possession of them cancels out lack. What eludes us in this continued concentration on gender play is the question of warrantability, as was once put forth by Sandy Stone; " is there a physical human body involved in this interaction anywhere?" We agree with Stone that new media and communications technologies demand that we ask different questions about the relationship between the self and the body because it is now possible to assume that there might not be a human subject responsible for the actions of a virtual entity that appears to be appended to a physical being. However, as Thomas Foster points out in "The Souls of Cyber-Folk: Performativity, Virtual Embodiment and Racial Histories," Stone is concerned with postponing the question of responsibility, but cyberculture has become enamored with fantasizing "about eliminating questions of responsibility in favor of a disembodied, transgressive situation of boundarylessness." If we limit our interrogation of the construction of gender to the domain of fantasy and presume from the start that cyberspatial engagement begins with free choice, we deny ourselves the means to understand how our choices are proscribed by the programmed interactivity of virtual reality, how most female presence is not the result of free choice but of economic necessity, and how the limitations on most women in the physical world and in virtual reality are not alterable through gender role play. We would like our discussion to reflect on the impact of technology on the vast range of real and imagined experiences of women in the world. Techno-Dreams and Techno-Nightmares This reliance on the fantasmatic scenarios of role play in which freedom and pleasure are predicated on having the power of consent obfuscates the extent to which women of color's bodies have been and continue to be acted upon via the technological intervention without their full knowledge, and certainly without their having the opportunity to make informed choices. It is women of color who have historically been subjected to forced sterilization, who were used as breeders on slave plantations, and whose genitals were pickled for posterity in the service of eugenics. It is indigenous people in the Americas were the first targets of biochemical warfare when smallpox blankets were uses by colonial settlers. It is the five centuries of genocide and destruction in what is now called "the Global South" brought about by technology and eugenics that make many people of color less than hopeful about the supposedly intrinsic ability of science and machines to promote democracy and freedom. And it is the legacy of having been reduced to the status of property that make some blacks think twice about the "joy" of disembodiment. When many of us have tried to voice our skepticism about the fetishization of prosthetic identity or the utopian script of techno-liberation, we have been derided as "luddites" and "essentialists". We argue however, that our position is neither. We seek to question the privileging of prosthetic identity. The process of becoming a wired society is also one of ever increasing consumption which involves the intensified objectification of human beings and human experience. Some social and cultural groups have good reason to be wary of being drawn into the network. In a global society wracked by economic polarization, it is poor people in the third world who are more likely to experience overwhelmingly abject relations to technology. When the bodies of women of color are subjected to technological intervention, whether it be the mandatory plastic surgery that Latin American wannabe beauty queens accept to have a stab at a career in media, or the force feeding of birth control pills to Mexican maquiladora workers to keep productivity rates high, the interests of multinational capitalism, and its reliance on the most retrograde misogyny and its misuse of technology become glaringly evident. If we only concentrate on the potential for "gender performativity" via genetic reengineering and the liquid architecture of virtual reality, we forsake an ethical responsibility to bear witness to how digital media, voyeuristic and militarist internet entertainment culture and privatized medicine all partake of the sadistic impulses of global capitalism that objectify, dehumanize and impoverish the majority of the world's women. As feminists committed to social change and the respect for human rights, we see a need to broaden the parameters of discussion about women and technology beyond the experiences a select and privileged few. What Does Undercurrents Want? Undercurrents seeks to address what Saskia Sassen has noted as the systemic relation between globalization and feminization of wage labor. We believe that cyberfeminist theory and art have not yet developed the tools and methods we need to develop an activist cultural practice that engages and analyzes how new technologies, the economic systems that they are a part of and the ideologies that celebrate them actually contribute to the disempowerment of millions of poor women across all continents. We would like our discussion to explore how feminist thinkers, artists and activists around the world are contending the social and economic inequities and ills that are also products of the digital revolution, such as labor conditions in export processing zones, biopiracy, gene patenting, the multinational corporate disruption of locally based agricultural, and the global trafficking of women for the sex trade. Our interest in the social impact of globalization and technology does not mean that we are not interested in aesthetic experimentation with new media technologies. On the contrary, we are deeply invested in the creation and analysis of innovative art that engages new media. That said, we are skeptical about assuming that the very fact that a woman uses a computer to make a work makes the work radical, avant-garde, cyberfeminist, interesting, or otherwise notable. We recognize continuities between new feminist computer art and other feminist art forms in the present and past - perhaps because we have been around long enough to remember life without computers. But it is also because we are against adopting a technocratic approach to creativity that would only have us define our artistry in relation to tools and specialized skills. This has never been part of the feminist art movements of earlier decades. Feminists from widely divergent backgrounds revolutionized our understanding of the cinematic apparatus and made groundbreaking contributions to video art in the 1970s, by approaching the production of moving images with an interdisciplinary arsenal of interpretive paradigms, a firm basis in institutional critique of the culture industry and strong commitment to the political advancement of women in the real world. We see no reason to forsake those goals. We are extending invitations to our colleagues in a variety of fields to share their thoughts on these issues and other related ones you propose as starting points for discussion. However, we want to emphasize that we are seeking discussion here rather than looking to produce yet another list for people to post invitations to events, notices of publications and announcements, and then carry on one on one conversations off the list. Ultimately, we hope that this discussion could lead to an important publication and/or and event. But for that to happen, we have to build the structure from the ground up. PROTOCOLS We ask that those who decide to participate in this on-line discussion refrain from using the list for spamming, flaming, or other forms of virtual rudeness. Our goal is to create an exciting and thought provoking atmosphere and an arena for the exchange of ideas and critical reflections on issues that all of us believe are crucial. We are committed to doing our best to make this list open to people whose primary language is not English. In light of this goal, we can offer to translate short posts that are sent in Spanish, French, German and Russian - but please understand that we need some time to do the actual translations. We will also be posting versions of this opening statement in Spanish and French shortly. "Invest in the X" - An Undercurrents Project Undercurrents announces its first financial venture, Invest in the X. This venture is specifically designed to force a shift in the balance of power that multinationals capitalize on in export processing zones. Many companies regularly violate labor laws and the civil rights of workers in Mexico with impunity because they anticipate that the victims will not have the knowledge or the resources to defend themselves. Those workers, the majority of whom are female, assemble the technologies that we use. Invest in the X is being created in conjunction with Casa de la Mujer- Factor X in Tijuana, Mexico, an organization that offers support for women working in maquiladoras. Our program will enable investors to support the empowerment of maquiladora workers in Mexico by providing scholarships for their training as labor organizers and also by subsidizing their legal defense in cases against employers who violate Mexican labor laws and workers' civil rights. Invest in the X will increase the opportunities for these women workers to exercise their rights. Stay tuned for more information about Invest in the X. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 12:16:09 +1100 From: geert <geert@xs4all.nl> Subject: arts jobs in vancouver AD FOR TENURE TRACK FACULTY POSITION University of British Columbia Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory The Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory at the University of British Columbia invites applications for a tenure-track faculty appointment in Studio Art, at the Assistant Professor level, beginning July 1, 2002. The Department seeks an individual concentrating in areas of 2-D media with a strong knowledge of contemporary art issues. The successful candidate must be prepared to teach in areas of painting, drawing and printmaking and will be able to teach across traditional disciplinary boundaries. A good understanding of the integration of new technologies into traditional practices is necessary. The individual will be teaching in both undergraduate and graduate programs. The Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory is a medium-size department within a major university and so an ability to form interdisciplinary collaborations is an asset. The pursuit of studio practice against a strong background of art historical and theoretical concerns is essential to our department and such ability will be sought in the candidates. Requirements include a M.F.A. (or equivalent), an active national exhibition record and post-secondary teaching experience. A publication record will be an asset. Applicants should submit the following package by February 15, 2002: - - - an application letter including a statement of artistic and teaching philosophies - - - visual documentation of current work (e.g.: 35mm slides to a maximum of 30, a cued video no longer than 12 minutes, CD Rom, and/or URL) - - - relevant publications including authored works and reviews - - - detailed curriculum vitae - - - the names, addresses, telephone numbers, and email addresses of three professional references Applications should be sent to: Chair, Search Committee, Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory, University of British Columbia, Room 403-Lasserre Building, 6333 Memorial Rd., Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2. In accordance with Canadian immigration requirements, this advertisement is directed to Canadian citizens and permanent residents of Canada. The University of British Columbia hires on the basis of merit and is committed to employment equity. All qualified persons are encouraged to apply. This position is subject to final budgetary approval. ************************ non-Canadians may apply. Recruiting of Foreign Academics Effective October 17, 2001, Human Resources Development Canada changed its policy regarding the recruitment of foreign academics. The two tier policy, that has been in place since 1981, has now been suspended. The following guidelines are now in effect: Advertisements must provide exposure of the vacancy to Canadian and permanent residents who would be potential candidates. Positions must be advertised for a reasonable period of time. This would normally be a one-month period. Advertisements must include the following statement: "All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority." Positions may be advertised simultaneously in Canada and abroad; positions cannot be advertised abroad unless they are also advertised in Canada. All Canadian citizens and permanent residents who meet the advertised requirements of the position are to be invited to participate in the selection process. Canadian citizens and permanent residents who are found qualified are to be offered the position before it can be offered to a foreign candidate. UBC will provide HRDC specific information on the recruitment and selection process when requesting an employment validation for an academic position, including an explanation of the reason the position is being offered to a foreign candidate, with a report on the top three Canadian candidates. UBC will report annually on the total number of academics hired, and the number of foreign academics hired. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 11:19:36 +0100 From: "Janneke van de Kerkhof" <janneke@submarine.nl> Subject: SubmarineChannel; a new online channel Press release + + + Amsterdam 12 February 2002 SubmarineChannel SubmarineChannel is a newly launched online channel for and about global digital media culture that aims to change the way digital artworks are made, distributed and consumed. Slashing barriers to allow media to bleed into each other, SubmarineChannel harbors and creates beautiful hybrid monsters. Whether it's bringing a graphic novel to life on screen, a travel show to your mobile phone, adapting lo-fi Net animations for high quality TV broadcast, or animating real-life stories. SubmarineChannel gathers the most stylish, offbeat, original and arresting artworks for the net into one place. You'll find linear and interactive works, because the bottom line is using new media to create new experience. SubmarineChannel has been established not just as a distributor, but as an active collaborator, helping creatives do what they do best, media companies look for innovative content, and sponsors to commission new work. What's unique about SubmarineChannel is the range and scope of its activities. From design to Internet, from short digital films to animations and interactive graphic novels, SubmarineChannel provides a showcase for work aimed at a young but critical audience, one with a global perspective on digital culture. It is also genuinely 'cross media', with content delivered not just on the Net, but for mobile devices, TV and other formats. Although based in mainland Europe, SubmarineChannel is global in scope, bringing inspiring and original work from Asia, North America and Europe together under one roof. It uses a range of possibilities for assembling this content, from exclusive licenses, to acting more as an agent and creating distribution deals with other web sites and media. SubmarineChannel syndicates work not just to other web portals, but TV companies, mobile services operators and other media, both traditional and novel. The12-strong company has full, cross-media production capabilities, from print and video to film and TV, and represents a growing stable of creative talent. These resources can also be used to take existing work and re-format and re-edit it, for example making made-for-Net films TV broadcast-ready. Unlike most existing channels, SubmarineChannel also offers a mix of magazine and content delivery, offering profiles of artists, reporting on digital culture - putting works into perspective rather than just streaming as many as possible. On SubmarineChannel you will find amongst others: + + + The Killer Eavesdrop on the ice-cold monologue inside the mind of a contract killer in episodic graphic novel by Jacamon & Matz. + + + Mr Kahoona Wise-yet-worldly Mr.Kahoona travels the infinity of digital space seeking the best and worst web can offer - so you don't have to. + + + Instant Road Trip A seven-day, personalized /story game experience about a virtual holiday in Venice via e-mail and SMS for people who don’t have the time or money to take a real vacation, by renowned interactive game-director Douglas Gayeton. + + + Tech Pop Japan Dispatches from Japan, the frontier of techno-media urban culture show the fruitful collision between old and new tech, managing to be both neophilic and anxious at having shed the past. + + + Chunks Short works by various artists like Benjamin Stokes, Evan Mather, Erik Loyer and Dave Jones. Some are interactive, others are more linear. Some are animations, others are video or film clips, but they are all short, nice and different. + + + City Tunes City Tunes, the funny world of modern romance as seen in these real-life stories stylishly animated by Submarine. Submarine is an independent studio in Amsterdam producing convergence programming and formats. With expertise of both high quality content and technology, Submarine focuses on the creation of true new media formats that make use of the explosion of media channels and outlets. Submarine in the past two years produced a number of crossmedia productions, such as a funky teen documentary series/website 12x12.nl; and a two hour documentary for VPRO television 'The End of TV as we know it'. For more information, please contact Submarine: www.submarinechannel.com + + + Tel: 31 (0) 20 330 1226 + + + Fax: 31 (0) 20 330 1227 + + + info@submarinechannel.nl ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 10:18:28 +0200 From: Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@transmediale.de> Subject: [transmediale] transmediale_ausstellung & screenings, letztes Wochenende transmediale.02_ausstellung Die Ausstellung der diesjährigen transmediale ist nur noch bis zum kommenden Sonntag, 24. Februar, in der Ausstellungshalle des Haus der Kulturen der Welt zu sehen. Mit rund 10.000 Besuchern ist die Ausstellung ein grosser Erfolg und ein Publikumsmagnet weit ueber die engeren Medien-Zirkel hinaus. The exhibition of this year's transmediale at Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin closes this coming Sunday, 24 February. The exhibition attracted around 10.000 visitors and has proven a big success far beyond the insider circles of media art. Haus der Kulturen der Welt, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, Berlin Bus 100 / 248 taeglich/daily 11.00 - 18.00 Uhr Eintritt EUR 5 / 3 Wiederholung/Repetition transmediale.02 Video-Screenings Begleitend zur Ausstellung werden an diesem Wochenende die Video-Screenings des Festivals wiederholt. At the final exhibition weekend, the festival's video screenings will be repeated. Eintritt EUR 6 / 5 Freitag, 22.2. 14.00 Uhr: Displaced Travellers 15.30 Uhr: New Surrealists 16.35 Uhr: The Power of Images 18.00 Uhr: Discoded Samstag, 23.2. 14.00 Uhr: See, Hear, Feel 15.30 Uhr: Twisted Love Stories 16.45 Uhr: Strange Guys 18.00 Uhr: Ambient Line.02 Sonntag, 24.2. 14.00 Uhr: Displaced Travellers 15.30 Uhr: New Surrealists 17.00 Uhr: Best of transmediale.02 Informationen zur Ausstellung und zu den einzelnen Video-Programmen unter http://www.transmediale.de _______________________________________________ the information list of transmediale international media art festival berlin transmediale: http://www.transmediale.de list-info: http://mailman.transmediale.in-berlin.de/mailman/listinfo/newsletter ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 15:17:14 +0100 (MET) From: erwin mohammed osman <osmo@gmx.at> Subject: kleine bitte Hola! We are an independent cultural youthorganisation from Austria called MEDEA. ( http://www.servus.at/medea ) We work with young people, -migrants and austrians, in the fields of media, culture and art. Our members belong to different cultures and religions, and are between 18 and 26 years old. We plan to make a project on history and culture of Islam with a special focus on the development and influence of the Islam in Andalusia. Therefore we are looking for a partnerorganisation in Andalusia to form together an EU-youth-project ( http://www.mtas.es/injuve/ ) Our group wants to go to Andalusia and we also want to invite a group of young people from Andalusia to Austria. With this project we want to analyse the effects of islamic culture, religion and history in Andalusia. We are interested in contempory arts, independent community-media and the situation of young migrants. We prefer an partnerorganisation which is simular to MEDEA. an direkte Partner- Orgs: If you are prinzipially interested in this exchange-projekt please contact us. We will plan the details of this projekt together. If youself are not interested maybe you know some other organisation, which is ? please send us a message back or you also can call us +43 676 5237597 or write us: Medea - Verein für Medienpädagogik Ontlsatrasse 22 4040 Linz muchos gracias Please could you send us informations about apropiate youth-organisations in andalusia to get in contact for this projekt. please send us a message back or you also can call us +43 676 5237597 or write us: Medea - Verein für Medienpädagogik Ontlsatrasse 22 4040 Linz muchos gracias - -- GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet. http://www.gmx.net ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 02:10:01 -0600 (CST) From: <comite_organizador_foro_global@yahoo.com.mx> Subject: Global Forum (FfD), Press Release Dear colleagues: This is the first press release of the Global Forum: Financing the Right to Sustainable and Equitable Development, which will take place in the City of Monterrey, Mexico, from the 14th thru the 16th of March. This event will hapen just days prior to the United Nations International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD). The Global Forum has been conceived as a space for social movents to express their diverse perspectives. A space where the urgent need to modify the current development model is a priority along with the unique opportunity for strategical political feedback. >From this e-mail message till the end of the event, we'll keep you informed about the Global Forum. Attached, you will find a media advisory. To suscribe to the mailing list: global_forum_ffd-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Organizing Committee Global Forum of Financing for the Right to the Sustainable Development with Fairness www.ffdforoglobal.org Press Contact: Comunicación e Información de la Mujer, Asociación Civil (www.cimacnoticias.com) +52 (55) 5510-0085/5510-2033/5512-5796 February 20, 2002 MEDIA ADVISORY WHAT: In the framework of the United Nations International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD), social and civil movements from all over the world will meet at the Global Forum: Financing the Right to Sustainable and Equitable Development where proposals refering to the issues raised at the FfD along with lacking ones such as gender, environment, economic, social and cultural rights will be discussed. The Global Forum has been conceived as the space for social movents to express their diverse perspectives. A space where the urgent need to modify the current development model is a priority along with the unique opportunity for strategical political feedback. Two main political goals have been defined for the Global Forum: at the long term, the creation of economic alternatives to the current model by means of an efficient networking undertaken by the diverse social and civil actors meeting at the Global Forum, to generate proposals, be able to feedback the Conference and participate in the follow-up process. At the short term, the goal is to feedback the process of the Conference and its final paper, the Monterrey Consensus, so that the Governments really undertake actions resulting from the commitments endorsed in the different summits and conferences from the 90's, from Rio de Janereiro's Earth Summit in 1992 to the Millenium Summit in the 2000, whose most ambicious goal is to erradicate half of the poverty suffered by more than 1000 million people by 2015. WHO The Global Forum: Financing the Right to Sustainable and Equitable Development is being promoted and organized by the Mexican Organization Committee, integrated by six civil organizations' networks and the International Steering Committee integrated by NGO and network representatives worldwide. PROGRAM The Global Forum discussions tents will revolve around five topics, where seminars, workshops, exchange dialogues and debates with the multilateral financial institutions will take place, along with specific workshops for participants. GLOBAL FORUM TOPICS: 1. Natural resources mobilization and structural adjustment. 2. International investment of resources and trade 3. Debt 4. Official Development Aid (ODA) 5. Systemic issues Each topic will be analysed and discussed from a gender, environmental, labour, social and economic human rights perspectives. BACKGROUND As most forums born from the international conferences and summits held in the 90's, the Global Forum: Financing the Right to Sustainable and Equitable Development is meant to be the space for civil society's expression intimately related to the negociating process of the main resulting paper and the oficial Conference itself. The United Nations FfD conference was born from a decission taken by the UN General Assembly in their 50th. Session on 1997 where its goal was clearly stated as: "to raise the mobilization of resources topic so as to implement the results of the previous Conferences and Summits held in the 90's by the UN in the framework of its Development Agenda, particularly regarding poverty erradication". In 1999, the 54th. Session of the General Assembly decided that the General Secretariat would invite the participation of the World Bank (WB), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Oeganization (WTO) Another agreement was that the FfD would be a high profile Conference, this meaning that the participants would be no less than the ministers involved in the financing for development topic. Another agreement held during the FfD negociation process was to open up the participation of the private sector and civil society to both, the preparatory process and the final Conference as well. The participation of the different UN agencies is garanteed, specially the UN Trade and Development Conference. In March, 1999 , during the first PreCom , the agenda was defined and the agreement made was that Mexico would be the facilitating country for the process, the location being Monterrey, Nuevo Leon an the date for the Conference to be held would be March, 18 -22, 2002. The issues to be discussed are mainly the movilization of domestic and foreign resourses, debt, trade, and global systemic issues that enable the coherence of the financing policies, along with the financing actors for each action. In January, 2001, the first draft of the document to be negociated appeared, the General Secretary presented it to the WB, IMF and WTO for feedback. This is a unique experience due to its different negociation process. Starting from the inicial participation of the main stakeholders a paper was written, later on it was again subject to consultation and finally new proposals for change were made in the last PrepCom held in January, 2002 in New York. A panel integrated by important leaders from the political and economy arena was created for the FfD, its main task being to render the UN General Secretary substantive and realistic proposals for financing development. Ernesto Zedillo, former president of México coordinated the panel, the participants were Abdulatif Al-Hammad, president of the Economic Development of Kwait, David Bryer, Great Britain's Oxfam Director; Mary Chinery Hess, General Director of the International Work Organization; Jacques Delors, finances ex minister in France and President of the European Commission; Rebeca Gryspan, ex vice President of Costa Rica; Majid Osama, ex minister of financial affairs of Mozambique; Robert Rubin, ex secretary of the Treasure Department of the United States and Manmohan Singh, India's ex minister of financial. The United Nations is organizing the Conference along with the International Monetary Fund, the World Band and the World Trade Organization. Heads of State and Government along with ministers of financial and trade affairs will attend the Conference. February 20, 2002 MEDIA ADVISORY Location: The state of Nuevo Leon is neighbour to the states of San Luis Potosi, Tamaulipas, Coahuila and Zacatecas in Mexico and to the state of Texas in the United States of America. Monterrey is located two hours away from the Texan boarder by road and 75 minutes away from the capital Mexico City by plane. It has a population of 3.9 million inhabitants and covers an area of 64,654 Km2. Climate: The average temperatures vary according to the time of year: Spring: 30°C Summer: 36 °C Autumn: 20°C Winter: 20°C The local time of Monterrey is GMT -6 (Center Time of the United States) Accommodation: The Mexican Committee for the Global Forum of Financing the Right to Sustentable and Equitable Development, has designed the Technical Secretary in order to find alternative accommodation. To contact the Secretary of Monterrey by e-mail please use the following address: equipohospedajeffd@terra.com.mx State the facilities that you would like to obtain: <sum> The price, how much would you be prepared to pay? Or, would you prefer free lodging with a Mexican family? <sum> How many days would you want to stay in Monterrey? <sum> What could you do? (Nothing, you would like full- board, or you could help with certain domestic chores such as bed making and laundry) The United Nations, along with the Mexican Federal Government, have designed a specific organization to make accommodation reservations for this Conference: PCM (Professionals in Conventions Monterrey, S. A of C. V) Tel.: (52) (81) 8369- 6585 Fax: (52) (81) 8369- 6727 Website: www.ffd-monterrey.org.mx e-mail: info@ffd-monterrey.org.mx Public Timetable: 8:00 - 20:00 Greenwich Medium Time - -6 Transportation: The city of Monterrey has one international airport (Mariano Escobedo), located 30 minutes away from downtown. The airport also has services such as taxis and car rental. Comercial and private flights: 351 daily Airlines with direct flights to Monterrey Aeromexico Mexicana Aerolitoral Aerolineas Internacionales International airlines Aviacsa Aeromar Aerocalifornia Aerocaribe American Airlines Continental Airlines Delta Airlines Northwest Airlines VARIOUS WEBSITES WHERE FURTHER IMFORMATION ABOUT THE CONFERENCE ON FINANANCE FOR DEVELOPMENT CAN BE FOUND: Financing for Development United nations http://www.un.org/ The International Conference on Financing for Development http://www.un.org/esa/ffd/ The International Conference on Financing for Development (Mexico) http://cinu.un.org.mx/ffd/ The World Summit on Sustainable Development Rio 10 http://www.johannesburgsummit.org/ Organisations: The Heinrich Böell Foundation http://www.worldsummit2002.org/issues/ffd.htm WEDO http://www.wedo.org/ffd/ffd.htm WEED World Economy, Ecology & Development http://www.weedbonn.org/ffd/index_e.htm Homepage with documents on Finance for Development. The Danish United Nations Association http://www.una.dk/ffd/ CONGO A Conference of Non-Governmental Organisations http://www.congo.org/ngomeet/findev.htm Vivat International http://www.vivatinternational.org./financing_for_development.htm Bretton Woods Project http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/topic/reform/r27ffddebate.html SODEPAZ Solidarity for Development and Peace http://www.sodepaz.org/monterrey/index.htm Jubilee Debt Campaign http://jdc-web.org.uk/un-ffd.htm New Internationalist Reports on Finance for Development http://www.newint.org/streets/ffd/ The Worldwide Social Forum http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/ Debtchannel (OneWorld) http://www.debtchannel.org/ MPO Macroeconomics for Sustainability Programme Office http://www.panda.org/resources/programmes/mpo/ Tebtebba Foundation http://www.tebtebba.org/ Norwegan Forum for Enviroment and Development http://english.forumfor.no/ Intermon Oxfam http://www.intermon.org/ Multilateral Organisations: The World Bank http://www.worldbank.org/ The International Monetary Fund http://www.imf.org/ The International Organisation of Commerce http://www.wto.org/ MEDIA ACREDITATION: To cover the Global Forum: Financing the Right to Sustainable and equitable Development. The media representatives will have to preregister to get the authorisation. Contact the following e-mail address: ciudadana35@hotmail.com. Please include: name, media, e-mail, telephone number and address. You will be able to collect your press pass from the 12 of March onwards in the press room located in the Forum Headquarters, where there will be provided along with all the press facilities and information, to help with the development of your work. You can obtain information on the participants of the Global Forum in the city of Monterrey from the Press Coordinators: Sonia del Valle y Juana María Nava Castillo The press room will be located in the Auditorium of the Fundidora Park. It will be open from the 13 untill the 16 of March, with opening hours 8:30 till 22:00. Furthermore, CIMAC has an office in the city of Monterrey Coordinator: Juan Maria Nava Castillo Vicente Riva Palacio N. 368, Center Tel: 818+ 340 9274 Juanynava@infosel.net.mx In Mexico City Press Contact: Cindy Flores ciberfeminista@yahoo.com.mx Sonia del Valle ciudadana35@hotmail.com Balderas N. 86 Centro The official acreditation to cover the International Conference on Financing for Development, 18 –22 march, will be carried out directly from UN headquarters in New York. http://www.un.org/esa/ffd/0302Media-Accred-form.pdf The authorization will be made by: Sra. Sonia Lecca Head of Dependence and Authorisation and link to the media Department of Public Information United Nations New York Teléfono: 1-212-963-2392 y 963 25 87 lecca@un.org ===== Comité Organizador México Foro Global: Financiación para el Derecho al Desarrollo Sustentable con Equidad www.ffdforoglobal.org Enlace con medios: Comunicación e Información de la Mujer, Asociación Civil (CIMAC). + 52 (55) 5510-0085/5510-0023/5512-5796 www.cimacnoticias.com Cindy Gabriela Flores, Coordinación de Prensa, ciberfeminista@yahoo.com.mx _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Encuentra el coche de tus sueños en Yahoo! Autos http://autos.yahoo.com.mx ------------------------------ # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold