<nettime> more info on workspace (002)

[berlin.biennale@kunst.b.shuttle.de (Berlin Biennale) (by way of Pit Schultz <pit@contrib.de>)]

[please forget the last version, slot 9 was missing! more info soon.. /p]

Hybrid WorkSpace
a temporary laboratory in the Orangerie

[...]

The Orangerie will be transformed into an open media studio to collect,
select, connect, record, and distribute information and content. It will
deal with current social, political and cultural issues. Hybrid WorkSpace
will provide possibilities to comment, interview, discuss and present the
resulting data objects and will forge connections with material brought in
from outside. Distribution beyond the Orangerie will be realised via
selected zones on the Internet as well as through print media and radio
broadcasting. A subsequent publication will allow the content flow produced
throughout the documenta X to be widely accessible.

Hybrid WorkSpace can best be described as a temporary laboratory that
produces its own type of content. It also condenses the viewpoints and
positions brought to Kassel by the '100 days - 100 guests' program into
streams of subjective approaches, represented in digital data. Most
importantly, it allows remote participants to directly access the
developments and debates in the Orangerie. This includes input from
external areas into the physical setting of the Orangerie.

The architecture itself reflects a non-hierarchical perception of different
functions, zones, images and situations. Similar to icons on a screen, the
different elements of the set can be decomposed and rearranged. Projection
columns, pedestals, and tables create an interface between the real and the
virtual. The polymorphous and movable architectural elements precipitate a
playful dialogue among themselves, including the hosts and guests.
Furthermore the chosen interior appears useful as a laboratory and workshop
for programmed and spontaneous interactions and presentations.
Multifunctional video and audio facilities are included into the movable
projection columns that structure and serve the space. The visitor can
expect Hybrid WorkSpace to appear dark or light, full or empty, full of
images or sound, noisy or completely silent.

Hybrid WorkSpace is an ambient space and document store; it is a pin-board
and a global newspaper; and it is both a local and a world wide radio
channel. Out of this heterogeneity, the project constitutes itself
professionally improvised as a media laboratory involving both transparent
and opaque fields of activities. In this way, it becomes simultaneously a
dynamic system - open and closed, private and public.

Hybrid WorkSpace mixes old and new media, connecting data streams of
different sources. The polymorphous structure allows spontaneous
rearrangements to suit the demands imposed on the space by discourse,
presentations, events, and guests working in the Orangerie. This could be
interviews, dialogues, group discussions and informal gatherings.

It is a zone of critical thought and productive conflict, a social space to
manufacture consent, initialise dissent, a place where distribution,
reception and production compress and expand. Within the social context the
relation between senders and receivers make things happen. Meanwhile
traditional broadcasting media like radio, video or journals become
technical metaphors to put information onto the Internet. The organisation
of time, the scheduling, and the architecture of a collaborative archive as
an arena of memory will be modeled in space as in software. We strongly
encourage collaborations with radio producers, virtual communities, video
makers, magazines, etc. to provide the technical facilities to easily
produce vivid net content.

In addition to the co-ordinators of the space there will be temporary teams
of 2 to 4 editors who will be in Kassel for a 10-14 days period. After the
preparation and realisation in Kassel, the WorkSpace will be realised
Berlin as a part of the first Berlin Biennial scheduled for summer 1998 in
various locations throughout the city.

location:       An der Karlsaue 20c
                34117 Kassel

phone:  0561 - 108 88 90

Fax:            0561 - 108 88 91
WWW:            http://www.documenta.de/workspace
e-mail:         workspace@documenta.de



slot 1
Wed, 18. 6. - Fri, 27. 6.
Social Spaces - Berlin

During the first week, Hybrid WorkSpace presents different activities from
Berlin, which put their focus on the changing situation in the city.

SCHEINSCHLAG - a group of young Berlin journalists, editing a non-profit,
independent magazine for the "Mitte" of Berlin with a critical view on
architectural and social development in Mitte as well as a view on cultural
events. The June issue is focussing on "INNENSTADT-AKTIONSTAGE", several
events organized by a network of groups from 2 - 8 June in Berlin as well
as in Kassel, Vienna, Zürich and other cities, questioning the concept of
the "New InnerCity" with its image campaigns like "Berlin stays clean".
Among other events, a discussion on "What is Urbanism" will be organized in
the Hybrid WorkSpace.

FAKTOR ARBEIT - a project of the NGBK Berlin, discussing the changing
meaning of "labour", with focus on unemployment in Berlin and Brandenburg
and a short view on the history and future of labour.

PAVILLON der Volksbühne, Berlin - a free space vor interdisciplinary
projects in which young artists and culturally productive individuals and
groups create a social communicational forum beyond the established art
world. Visiting the Pavillon one will encounter openness and transparency
which adds to setting the space alive. The connection of event and
experience of the visitor is central. The every-day, public life, and
social discourse are being transformed and opened up by art events.

(Berlin)       Salon - a project of young architects organises discussion
evenings. The topics ar meant to expand the conventional architecture
discussion. It emphasises on the dialogue between 'experts' and audience.
The salons are semi public events, with their guests getting informed by
invitation or by word of mouth.

MAK-MAO-STORY-PRODUCTION-BERLIN will make a video-documentation on the
first days of the project in Kassel.

In the further programme of the Hybrid WorkSpace the BARACKE AM DEUTSCHEN
THEATER and the VOLKSBÜHNE AM ROSA-LUXEMBURG-PLATZ with a Schlingensief
production are invited to work in the Orangerie.

slot 2

Sat, 28.6. - Mon, 7.7.

[cross the border]

contributions to flight and migration beyond the state's control


telephones are cellular, computers are portable and the quickly moving
bytes are invisible. the easier money and goods flow across the territories
of nations, the more western europe and north america close their doors to
migration. "we don't want you, we only want to take everything you've
got!". this could be a description of the interrelations of postcolonial
exploitation. people who try to enter the so called first world - as
refugees in order to escape prosecution or simply looking for some luck -
are forced into illegality. One of the central  political struggles is to
combat the hegemony of borders and migration, to support migrants and
refugees, documented or undocumented, in their fights for the right to
live, where they like and how they like.

n.s.i.a.m.p.

in cooperation with antiracial groups from germany and other european states

f.i.:
office for antiracial initiatives (bari) / kassel
bundestreffen der antirassistischen gruppen / brd
coordination nationale des sans papiers / frankreich
and many international artists, filmmakers and photographers

slot 3
Tue 8.7. - Thu, 17.7.
We want bandwidth!
De Waag / Society for Old and New Media, Amsterdam

The Society for More and More Media demands bandwidth:

In the networked society the kind of bandwidth of your connection will
determine whether you're in the game or out. It's not just about being
flushed by the data-pipes, it's about setting your own trash against the
data-stream. It's about the vision of wired citizens as passive consumers
of virtual corporate waste, versus the active prosumer, the critical
consumer and producer of digitised content.

There are still a lot of questions to be resolved. First of all, who will
own the backbones of the digital freeways of the mind, and will we have
enough space to cast our own content on its tracks? What effect will the
virtual monopolies have on the equal share in the data drive for everyone
who cares enough to bother about it.

On the other hand we might be just a reactionary phantom from a
technologically outdated past, and soon we might be flooded by bit bearing
media. So what are we going to do with unlimited bandwidth? Is the fetish
phantasy of full feed, full speed communication just another screen on
which to project the utopia of an universal understanding between people?
If everybody is a broadcaster, who will shut up and listen ?

Keywords:

Bandwidth / Equal Access Rights / Broadcast for All


slot 4
Fri, 18.7. - Sun, 27. 7.

Recycling the Future

KUNSTRADIO (Vienna)

On Air- On Line - On Site


RECYCLING THE FUTURE
Technology is evolving so rapidly in these last years of the 20th Century
that it has become necessary to continually update - or recycle - our
notions and images of the future: which means, of course, that the "future"
has been robbed of its utopian fascination.
But, ironically, it was precisely an enthusiastic belief in "the future"
that inspired the early artists of the avantgarde to develop the methods
(collage, the readymade etc.) that have now become the basis for the
"recombinant culture" that dominates our era. What was once the "future" of
the early avantgarde is now merely material for recycling by contemporary
artists - especially artists who are working at the interface of the new
and old media and technologies.

KUNSTRADIO
In the 10 years since KUNSTRADIO began producing and broadcasting artworks
for radio the notions of both "radio" and "art" have been completely
changed by the speed and energy of the new digital communication
technologies.
In response to these changes KUNSTRADIO became a platform for the
development of a wide range of telematic-simultaneous projects by artists
of all disciplines. These projects connected the spaces of public radio,
independent (free) radio and electronic networks with other sites and nodes
to form dispersed interactive environments that transformed audiences into
participants.

HYBRID WORK SPACE
KUNSTRADIO's continual confrontation with the - largely unresearched -
production, communication and distribution context resulting from the
combination of different virtual and real spaces provides the basis for the
contribution of the KUNSTRADIO team to Hybrid Workspace:
- ON AIR: live radio broadcasts including 'processed' material from the
Orangerie, the lecture series "100 days - 100 guests" etc.as well as
material/impulses from the internet.
- ON LINE: live webcasts including both improvised and programmed network
projects, e.g. with remote locations in Berlin, Vienna, Linz, Graz, Rimini,
Arles, and Quebec City.
- ON SITE: partially improvised interventions and appearances by various
groups and performers (musicians, artists, radio makers etc.). These
appearances/performances will also take place in the communication space of
radio, internet and telephone which permits remote influences from the
communication space.

slot 5

Mon, 28.7. - Wed, 6.8.

deep europe

V2_East/Syndicate workshop

Take the title 'Deep Europe' with a pinch of salt. The V2_East/Syndicate is
a network of people and institutions who are involved in media culture and
media art in Europe and who want to create contacts and an infrastructure
for projects and cooperations. The network started out as an 'East-West
initiative' almost two years ago, but has since reached a stage where those
symbolically laden terms mean less and less. With its mailing list, website
<http://www.v2.nl/east> and regular meetings, the Syndicate is becoming an
important tool for fostering ties within the media art community and a
platform for discussing the changing role of media culture in the 'new
Europe'.

Kassel is both a former outpost of the pseudo-Western world and a hallmark
of a post-war modernism. Even eight years after the fall of the Berlin
wall, the cultural maps of Europe are shifting heavily. There are still
many things to be seen, learnt and donne, and conversations to be held,
before we will be able to make sense of the new distances between Berlin
and Warsaw, Paris and Moscow, Vienna and Belgrade, Kassel and Eisenach.

The new lines that run through Europe are historical, political, cultural,
artistic, technological, military. The role of the EU and its institutions,
the notion of Mitteleuropa, old and new ideologies, messianic NGOs and
late-capitalist profiteers contribute to a cultural environment in which we
have to define new strategies and new tools, whether as artists, activists,
writers or organisers.

'Deep Europe' will offer an opportunity to further develop ideas which have
emerged around the V2_East/Syndicate initiative over the last 18 months, to
discuss them among the Syndicalists and with the dX public. There will be
ample opportunitys to represent in video, slide and WWW presentations of
what we have in mind when we say 'European media art and culture', and to
concentrate on some of these issues in texts and audio-visual productions.


slot 6

Thu, 7.8. - Sat, 16.8.

tactical media

Media Filter, New York and Tactical Media Network, Amsterdam


The Tactical Media Network will use the documenta platform to present the
works of various media activists. This project arises out of a number of
conferences like <The Next 5 Minutes> and initiatives like <name.space>.

This will be programmed in the context of a series of discussions which
will among other things examine the viability of The People's Communication
Charter, a project seeking to give the rights of media access and literacy
the same status as other human or civil rights. Over the ten days in Hybrid
WorkSpace these and related topics will be explored in depth through a
series of screenings, presentations and public and private discussions with
specially invited guests.

Taken together this project provides a survey of those who use electronic
media to resist the abuse of state or corporate power and the ravages of
un-restrained global capital. These tactical media are characterized by
mobility and a willingness to cross boarders, connecting and re-wiring a
variety of disciplines and technologies. Their defining aesthetic is 'quick
and dirty' and is often based on the cheap 'do it yourself' media, made
available through the revolution in consumer electronics and new forms of
distribution.

slot 7
Sun, 17.8. - Tue, 26.8.

Technoscience. Vocabulary, Politics, Practice

mute, London

During its stay in the Hybrid WorkSpace, mute will discuss the notion of
technoscience. Technoscience is constituted by the fundamentally
interrelated worlds of medical and biological research (often financed by
private corporations but housed in academic institutions), corporate
property or patenting law, technologised work, networked finance and global
communication, as well as the international physical and agricultural
resources that help to keep these systems (or realities) afloat.

Technoscience, as historian of science Donna Haraway has defined it, holds
both promises and omens. In her eyes, the dependence of human health on
that of non-human life forms (e.g. breast cancer sufferers' relationships
to the patented OncoMouse, which automatically forms breast cancer cells)
creates fundamentally new relationships critical to technoscientific
societies. In addition, she theorises how hybrid life-forms and non-human
agency challenge the Western, Judaeo-Christian belief systems that have
been oppressive to all those Other than the white male.

mute will focus on both the promises and the omens, but aims to place
special emphasis on contingent political issues. The increasing
commodification of gene technology (manifest most clearly in the huge
industry surrounding IVF treatment and sperm bank maintenance) is but one
of many problematic issues central to technoscience. Others mute will look
at are the labour market, agriculture and the hallowed status of biology in
the academy/research institutes.

mute is a quarterly journal begun in the winter of 1994. The publication
deals with the impact of digital technologies on culture and society. It
participates with a community of artists, programmers and theorists who
contribute essays, reviews, polemical shorts and fiction.


slot 8
Wed, 27.8. - Mon, 1.9.
'theme follows function'
luxus cont.

luxus cont. was formed in 1995 in Berlin by theorists, artists, writers,
and filmmakers from mainly European countries. Since then invited groups
and artists engaging in different fields of analogue and digital art, music
and theory have produced talks, performances and small art-shows. Such
events take place in consciously semi-public spaces but with conceptually
wide open doors. Since February 1997 luxus cont. has been editing an
electronic magazine named 'contd' [www.b.shuttle.de/art-bag/contd]. Issue 1
focused on 'contemporary cartographies' and includes contributions in three
languages from four continents, attempting to embrace global matter as well
as local meaning.

In Hybrid WorkSpace luxus cont. aims to intensify its excursions into the
organisation, mediation, and function of the technical and social construct
'sound'. Theme will be cultural economy and sound together with the
technical constitution of sounds as 'data objects'. How can sound be valued
following the possible distinction of digitally versus analogue mediated
interaction? More questions arise: How does sound constitute social spaces?
How does sound function as a strategy for acoustic
communication/production? How is sound technically and aesthetically
visualised? What does authentication imply? How do cultural agreements
correspond with gadget design?

Additionally producers from Berlin 'convex tv.' radio will be invited to
provide their in-depth devotion to culture and broadcasting, oscillating
between contemporary discourse, sounds, and theory to add memorable audio
content to the Hybrid WorkSpace.


slot 9
Di, 2.9. - Do, 11.9.

SOCIALIZING

Fünf skrupellose SelberdenkerInnen aus Berlin, Frankfurt und London
werden unter dem temporären Gruppennamen "Socializing" dem Mythos der
klassenlosen Gesellschaft in Kunst und Kulturproduktion nachforschen:
Läßt sich Sozialisation abschütteln? Welche Psychoklassen bevölkern die
Bars und Ausstellungshallen? Vom Pseudo-Redaktionsteam wird nach acht
Tagen intensivem Werkeln an laut Gedachtem und still Geschriebenem ein
Panel ausgerichtet. All das wird Grundlage einer Publikation sein, die
1998 erscheint.
Demnächst mehr in diesem Theater.

block 9
Tue, 2.9. - Thu, 11.9.

SOCIALIZING

Under the temporary group-name "Socializing", five unscrupulous
self-thinkers from Berlin, Frankfurt and London will explore the myth of
classless society in the realms of art und cultural production: can you
shake off socialization? Which psycho-classes populate the bars and
exhibition halls? After eight days of intensive handling of loud
thinking and silent scribbling, the pseudo-editorial board will convoke a
panel. All of this will be basis for a publication due to come out in
1998.
Stay tuned.





slot 10
Fri, 12.9. - Fri, 19.9.

off line publishing
the making of the nettime bible

nettime is a semi-public collaborative text filter for net criticism,
cultural politics of new media. It coordinates conferences, meetings and
publishing projects. Nettime started in june 1995 at the Venice Bienniale
and functions as an exchange channel between media activists, artists,
theorists, philosophers, journalists, technicians and researchers from this
planet.

inversive publishing: slowing down the electric overdrive on the databahn.
The nettime movement is not about speeding up
but about rematerialization of e-text. During its stay in WorkSpace, a
group of editors will put together a comprehensive anthology based on the
nettime archive and previous small publications. We named the project 'The
Nettime Bible' as a reference to the thick computer software manuals. It
will be published and distributed by a network of small media.

Besides this we will invite guests for round table discussions on the
current issues of net criticism and net.art: the new role of the NGOs, the
political economy of telecommunications, the need for free content, the
redefinition of the public sphere, social interfaces, non-propriatary
groupware standards and the theory of gift economy.

slot 11
Sat, 20.9. - Sun, 28.9.
cyberfeminism

Old Boys' Network
International Cyberfeminist Organisation

There are countries, where Cyberfeminism has had a long life and there are
countries where Cyberfeminism has never had a life. Germany belongs to the
latter...

Cyber and Feminism - two terms coined through recent history, ideology and
evangelism. What happens when these two words collide? Cyberfeminism is a
new and promising term. It suggests a fresh ideology, embracing the notions
of "cyber" and "feminism" and all they signify. It creates a space for
women to invent, dissect and alter the trajectories of the new
technological and information era.

Cyberfeminism...

Fresh ideology?
New code of behaviour?
Artistic playground?
Semiotic straightjacket?

The Old Boys' Network CONTENT strategy will be:
- collect material from literature, art and the media
- analyse and select the material
- connect people, ideas and machines
- connect the past and future
- produce new material in a variety of media
- distribute information utilising all available networks

For these purposes the Old Boys' Network will be temporarily expanded  to
include eXXperts from all over the world.





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