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[nettime-lat] Gita Hashemi curates "RealPlay" |
[R][R][F] 2004 --->XP ~ E-Journal - Vol.2 //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ~ E-Journal, an extension of the global networking project, R][R][F] 2004 --->XP www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/ will be edited periodically in order to feature projects, curators, artists and other networking instances on a textual information basis //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ~E-Journal Vol.2 - Features . 1. Gita Hashemi curates "RealPlay 2. [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP - News!! //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 1. Gita Hashemi curates "RealPlay" . "RealPlay" is the title of Gita Hashemi's curatorial contribution to [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/ or direct access also via www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/rrfv2.htm . Participating artists: 1. Jaromil 2. Hard Pressed Collective 3. Mireille Astore 4. Project Threadbare Coalition 5. Haleh Niazmand . RealPlay Essay by Gita Hashemi. RealPlay has little to do with play, really. It is about playing for real. Topically positioned in specific times and/or places, the works in RealPlay contest, counter and/or subvert dominant geopolitical and/or cultural notions with reference to the colonial constructs of the "Middle East" and the "West." This selection works as a broad political commentary as well as responses to certain trends in "new media" discourse that explicitly or implicitly (sometimes inadvertently) postulate and promote fundamental distinctions and discontinuities between the "virtual" and the "real." Such distinctions inevitably idealize the illusionary (utopic or distopic) space where code is entirely capable of masterminding experience, or where code becomes experience. The projects in RealPlay reject such Western-oriented techno-centric and techno-determinist tendencies by privileging urgent socio-political issues over media formalism and by insisting on the priority of social interaction over, as well as through, cyberspace interactivity. Using diverse practices of documenting and archiving, these projects capitalize on the function of the internet as a repository of retrievable data and, more importantly, as a communication channel that can be advantageously put to use towards inciting counter-hegemonic thought and action. Subverting stereotypical representations of Palestinians as fanatic terrorists or people solely occupied and pre-occupied by war, in <a href= "http://farah.dyne.org/">Farah: In Search for Joy </a>, an account from a trip to Palestine following the brutal Israeli re-occupation campaign of the West Bank in 2002, software pioneer and artist Jaromil (Italy) gives an account of the everlasting human search and capacity for joy in towns and refugee camps under siege (again). Farah: In Search for Joy is a brief and unpretentious traveler's search for and documentation of those aspects of the Palestinian popular culture that continue to create, offer and celebrate joy in spite of the prolonged conditions of colonial occupation and war. As an archive (in progress), the website is incubated in and reflective of the artist's interactions with his environment as it is a virtual space for our encounter with a dimension of Palestinian reality categorically forgotten or ignored in dominant representations in the West. An initiative of Hard Pressed Collective (Canada), a group of media artists with a penchant for politically-engaged art-making, <a href=" http://www.charlesstreetvideo.com/project.php?id=1">The Olive Project</a> is, on the surface, a programmed compilation of short videos by diverse international artists. Thematically grounded in the historically rich and culturally diverse symbolism of the olive, the videos exhibit a range of artist responses to the ruthless practice of uprooting olive trees in Palestine by Israeli forces- a favourite occupation strategy aiming to force Palestinians off their land by effectively undermining the economic survival of the growers and their local production. Collectively, the videos construct a time-based memorial to "peace and justice" made of 2-minute blocks. Before, through and beyond the remediated compilation and its dissemination in cyberspace, however, this project functions as a tool for consciousness-raising, mobilizing and networking around an issue of real world significance. <a href="http://www.crixa.com/mireille/Migrant/Tampa.htm">Migrant</a> is the web component of Mireille Astore's (Australia) larger sculpture and performance project that takes as its starting point the infamous Tampa ship incident in August 2001. The incident brought local and international public attention to the plight of the "boat people"- refugees primarily from the "Middle East"-who, upon arrival in Australian waters, were first refused landing and then recast as prisoners by a xenophobic "Western" state. Astore 's obsessive photographic documentation (from the inside looking out) of her 18-day self-inflicted virtual imprisonment-in a scaled recreation of Tampa on a public beach in Sydney-functions as a looking glass in which to observe the uneasy and disturbing reactions to the arrival of new migrants by a society that has repressed its own memory and burried its own racist and colonial settler history under the grounds on which Woomera and Nauru detention centres currently stand for real. <a href="http://www.threadbare.tyo.ca/">Project Threadbare</a> is animated by a coalition of activists in response to the detention in August 2003 of 21 South Asian (primarily Pakistani) students in Toronto, Canada under the guise of anti-terrorist and national security operations. Since its inception, Project Threadbare has been an immensely successful local expository and legal campaign against racial targeting, detention and deportation of immigrants and refugees by Canadian police, intelligence and immigration forces, who are hotly in the race for the third place prize of dishonour, after USA and Australia, for breaking their own nation's civil liberties codes as well as international human rights conventions. This website, an ongoing forum, newsboard and archive for Toronto activists, is one wiki that doesn't pretend to be the virtual world's better-than-original replica of "democracy." Although some of the active members of the coalition are artists and their website is pretty slick, Project Threadbare was not conceived as and does not make a claim to being new media art; rather, it is a real world experiment in social and creative participation and collaboration, with tangible impact in the lives of the original 21 detainees and now in the lives of many others in similar predicaments. <a href="http://surveyofcommonsense.net/">Survey of Common Sense</a> is a recreation of an earlier participatory painting installation project by the same title by Haleh Niazmand (USA). A parody of the polling industry that for the past 5 or 6 decades has been the engine of "democracy" in the United States, Niazmand's image-text intervention, in the form of survey questions with forced yes/no "choices," is not only an authorial comment on the practices of polling as determinant of "democratic outcome," but a strong challenge to notions of "pragmatism" and "common sense" preached from political pulpits in the present-day United States. Beyond this, Survey of Common Sense is an invitation, courtesy of an artist from the "Middle East" and a citizen of the "West," to the participants/viewers to recongnize, acknowledge and reflect upon the ways in which each and every one of us are intricately and deeply implicated, really and virtually, in the bloody absurdity of this political moment. As such and in the very impossibility of responding with any degree of ease and resolution to Niazmand's questions, this work is an incessant challenge issued so we will not slip into forgetting. The projects in this selection have taken shape independently of this curatorial effort. My thanks to all the participants for allowing me to include their work in RealPlay. . About the curator: Gita Hashemi engages in cultural practice as artist, writer, curator, organizer, worker and educator. Her most recent curatorial projects include RealPlay (2004, netart exhibit) Negotiations: From a Piece of Land to a Land of Peace (2003, art-driven multidisciplinary event, http://negotiations2003.net), WILL (2003, multidisciplinary transnational exhibition, http://negotiations2003.net/will), Afghanistan, 2002: No Refuge and Locating Afghanistan (2002-3, image-text exhibition and publication with photography by Babak Salari), and Trans/Planting: Contemporary Art by Women from/in Iran (2001, with Taraneh Hemami, http://strictlypersonal.net/transplanting). Her recent titles include Post-Coitus (2003, http://post-coitus.net), Olive Fair (2003, http://olivefair.net), Many Stones for Palestine (2002, http://strictlypersonal.net/stones), The Word Room (2001, with Post-Exile Collective, http://wordroom.net), A War Primer (2001, sound installation), and Of Shifting Shadows (2000, CD-R). Hashemi's work has been exhibited, reviewed and collected nationally and internationally. She is the founder of Iranian Artists in Dialogue, a co-founder of Post-Exile Collective and a founder of Creative Response. She resides in Toronto, Canada. Hashemi's labour as an intellectual has crystallized in simultaneous processes of de/re/construction; not in any specific class of objects or within any particular representational genres, but in the envisioning of the spaces and formulation of the critical practices that can be constitutive in transformative social and political movements. Informed by her direct engagement in liberatory political struggles before, during and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution as well as her experience of exile in North America, Hashemi's work takes shape in a continuous process of countering masculinist discourses of fundamentalism, fascism, colonialism, corporatism and militarism. Notions of community, co-labouring, public space and active participation are integral to her creative engagement. So is the understanding that artistic practice, as a fundamentally social process, is inherently political and must, therefore, be subject to conscious (re-visionary) feminist re-articulation: The political is personal, the personal is poetic, the poetic is political, the political must become ethical. The selected artists: ****************************************************** 1. Artist: Jaromil ---->The Farah project About artist/work Rami a.k.a. Jaromil (http://korova.dyne.org) is a free software programmer and streaming media pioneer, media artist and activist, performer and emigrant. Jaromil co-founded (1994) the non-profit organization Metro Olografix for the diffusion of information technology, and in 2000 founded the free software lab dyne.org; sub-root for the autistici.org / inventati.org community. Jaromil is active in the Italy Indymedia Collective, and is currently the software analyst and developer for PUBLIC VOICE Lab (Vienna). The Farah project documents Jaromils three-week trip, in August, 2002, through the occupied territories of Palestine. During this time he crossed East Jerusalem, Gaza, Bethlehem, Hebron and Ramallah. This was while Bethlehem and Gaza were still under siege and Ramallah was experiencing another full-time curfew after the assassination of Ahmad Saadat. Farah is an effort to document the life and culture of the Palestinian population in zones of war, without actually mentioning the war itself. It is a net-art project in the way that it tries to use the net as a privileged medium to unveil a beauty usually made far by war. ****************************************************** 2 Artists group: Hardpressed Collective --->The Olive Tree Project About the group/work The Hard Pressed Collective is a group of video artists working in support of a just peace in Israel/Palestine. This project was inspired by the solidarity efforts around the olive harvest in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Members include: Riad Bahhur, Richard Fung, Rebecca Garrett, John Greyson, Jayce Salloum, and b.h. Yael. The Olive Project coordinator at Charles Street Video is Greg Woodbury. The olive tree has been a long standing source of nourishment and livelihood for many peoples around the Mediterranean Sea. Images of olive branches and leaves have been used to symbolize peace for millennia. Olive oil is also a potent food, a rich salve,a currency, an energy source, and a site of struggle. Since the second Intifada in Palestine and Israel, the olive harvest in the Occupied Palestinian Territories has been disrupted by violence, with Israeli military forces and settlers preventing Palestinian farmers from bringing in the crop. Since 1967, more than 200,000 olive trees have been uprooted by Israeli forces from Palestinian land. This has prompted a campaign by hundreds of international and Israeli volunteers to provide protection for Palestinian olive farmers and help them harvest their crop and prevent their theft and destruction by Israeli settlers. The Olive Project is an artistic contribution to this solidarity effort. ****************************************************** 3. Artist: Mireile Astore ---> Tampa Project About artist/work Mireille Astore was born in Beirut and came to Australia in 1975 following the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon. Although at the time Astore was classified as a migrant by the Australian Government, her status bears a strong resemblance to that of past and current refugees in the world. She has two children and lives in Sydney. A multi disciplinary artist, Astore also has a solid background in the visual and literary Arts, the Sciences, art administration as well as policy development. "Tampa" was a site-specific performance, sculpture, photography and web-based art about the plight of recent refugees in Australia. It took place between 30 October 2003 and 16 November 2003 as part of the "Sculpture by the Sea" exhibition in Sydney. The sculpture and performance acted as a dichotomy between the sense of freedom and grandeur the individual experiences at the seashore and the imprisonment refugees faced as a result of their trust in the most basic form of human rights. The Tampa incident was of particular interest because of the definite schism it created in Australia's perception of itself. The terms asylum seekers and refugees entered the everyday vocabulary and with them, the unease about nationhood and a crisis about who the Other really is. In Tampa, the fusion of two spatial and temporal processes created a tension, which has at its core a conflict of identity. The relationship initiated and executed as I photographed onlookers then boldly circulated their images through the Internet stands in sharp contrast to the assumed refugee status I employed. Consequently, photographing from within was an attempt at illustrating that the watched and the caged are in indeed watching. ****************************************************** 3 Artists group: Threadbare Coalition ---> Project Threadbare About group/work Project Threadbare is a city-wide coalition in Toronto, Ontario, made up of members of the Pakistani and south Asian communities, cultural organisations, immigrant and refugee groups, anti-poverty organisations, political groups, faith groups, trade unionists, students, and concerned activists and individuals who came together in response to the arrest and detention of twenty Pakistani men and one south Indian man in August 2003. None of the men have committed a crime and none have been charged. Project Threadbare alludes to the RCMP investigation called "Project Thread. " Although the investigation produced no hard evidence of any wrongdoing by any of the men who were arrested, it was the basis on which they were all held. Our aim is to win exoneration for all the men by building a mass campaign in communities across the country. We also seek to raise awareness about the government's attacks on civil liberties in general and on immigrants, refugees, and non-status persons in particular. ****************************************************** 4 Artist: Haleh Niazmand ---> Survey of Common Sense About artist/work Haleh Niazmand's art has been exhibited widely in many galleries and museums including the San Diego Museum of Art, the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, The Des Moines Art Center, the University of Arizona Museum of Art, The Worth Rider Gallery at the University of California, Berkeley, the Macy Gallery at Columbia University and A Space Gallery, Toronto. The internet-adapted version of her participatory projects The Survey of Common Sense and the Post Exile collective's Word Room are included in the Rhizome's Artbase archive. In addition, Niazmand's art has been discussed in numerous scholarly essays, journals, and professional magazines including the Middle East Women Studies Review, Radical History Review, Mix Magazine and Artweek. Polls and surveys are amongst the most commonly utilized methods of social control. In addition to their use in scientific research, surveys aid the media and interest groups in the creation of public opinion, which often directly affects the democratic processes of policy-making. Consequently, over time, the influence of surveys will manifest in many aspects of public opinion including the evolution of common sense. The Survey of Common Sense is an art project that uses the methodology of polls to address an array of contemporary social issues. The structure of this work involves the audience's participation as an integral part of the art, making it not merely observational or interpretive, but it is during this participation that its purpose is revealed. The work's general strategy calls for a re-evaluation of our judgmental rights, focusing on the uneasy and the paradoxical worldview. ****************************************************** The texts copyright © by Gita Hashemi and the participatings artists //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////// 2. News a) 7 April [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP - is participating in NowMusic Streaming Festival Berlin (Germany) 7 April - 24 hours between 0:00 and 0:00 CET (Central European Time/Berlin) http://www.reboot.fm/stream/reboot.ogg.m3u with BEK_dns curated by Eva Sjuve/BEK Bergen/Norway . b) During the coming weeks [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP will develop a program of sound art in collaboration with numerous Internet radio stations around the globe. . c) 8-16 May 2004 [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP will participate in May in Basic Festival Salzburg/Austria http://www.basics-festival.net/exhibition/index.php . d) [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP will soon be part of Rhizome Art Base - the exact URL will be announced soon. . e) In case, you missed one of the email ~E-Journals, all volumes of ~E-Journal can be found on www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/ in the section -->Reviews, Articles..... ******************************************* [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP global networking project by Agricola de Cologne, media artist and New Media curator from Cologne/Germany www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004/ rrf2004@newmediafest.org . As a corporate part of [NewMediaArtProjectNetwork]:||Cologne, the project will develop and operate until deep in the year 2005. //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////// As an extension of the global networking project, [R][R][F] 2004 --->XP ~ E-Journal will be edited periodically in order to feature projects, curators, artists and other networking instances on a textual information basis. . copyright © 2004 by Agricola de Cologne. All rights reserved. //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////// _______________________________________________ Nettime-lat mailing list Nettime-lat@nettime.org http://amsterdam.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-lat