[Nettime-bold] Robert Atkins on AntiWar and AIDS Activism, Embodiment andElectronic Communication

[Robert Atkins <robert@robertatkins.net>]

Eye/I Witness:  AIDS and Digital Art Activism
Robert Atkins, Writer, NYC

The Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium
Mon, 3 Mar, 7:30-9:30pm: UC Berkeley,
Location: 160 Kroeber Hall
All ATC Lectures are free and open to the public.

As the global, anti-war demonstrations of mid-February remind us,
progressive political impulses are sometimes most effectively
expressed by taking to the streets. This, of course, taps into a
central, electronic-era issue; that is, the efficacy and desirability
of embodied versus remote action. When it comes to political activism,
where do artists fit in? New forms of electronic activism from
pioneering groups including RTMark and Electronic Disturbance Theatres
have proved both inspiring and problematic--and rarely contextualized
within the overlapping realms of mass media, art and activism.

This lecture will analalyze the remarkably effective role artists
played in ameliorating the AIDS crisis in the US, while advancing
innovative forms of art and strategies for distribution that included
culture jamming, agitprop and institutional infiltration. The author
asserts that a rare confluence of historical factors resulted in the
production of the most influential body of public and "private" art in
American history. What lessons might be learned from artists'
practices of just 10-15 years ago that might be applied today? Or has
the Internet so profoundly altered the nature of mass media that they
are already irrelevant? The author intends to raise crucial cultural
and artistic questions that have been ignored in the rift between
discourses separating electronic and non-electronic art, and in the
cultural responses to 9/11 at a moment when dissent has been demonized
and civil liberties threatened.
--

Robert Atkins <www.robertatkins.net> is a bi-coastal art art
historian, activist and writer. The initiator of 911--The September 11
Project: Cultural Intervention in Civic Society, he is also a
co-founder of Visual AIDS, the creators of Day Without Art and the Red
Ribbon. He has taught at numerous universities and art schools; mosty
recently at the Rhode Island School of Design and the University of
Michigan. The award-winning author of books including ArtSpeak: A
Guide to Contemporary Ideas, Movements and Buzzwords and From Media to
Metaphor: Art About AIDS, he is a former columnist for the Village
Voice, who has written for more than 100 publications throughout the
world.  An anthology of his work, Eye/I Witness: Art Writing as
Activism, Criticism & Reportage, is forthcoming.

Atkins is a Fellow at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie
Mellon University, former media-arts editor for The Media Channel
<www.mediachannel.org>, and editor/producer of Artery: The AIDS-Arts
Forum <www.artistswithaids.org/artery>. His interests in hybrid art,
technology and mass media long predate the web and resulted in
exhibitions at far-flung venues including Between Science and Fiction
(which he organized for the Sao Paulo Biennial),  Peter D'Agostino: Twenty
Years of Intervention and  Interactivity (for Lehman College Art Gallery in
New York), and Fusion!  Artists in a Research Setting (for Carnegie Mellon
University). A  pioneering chronicler of the online art world (his 1995
cover story for Art  in America, "The Art World (& I) Go On Line," was the
first of its kind),  he founded, in 1995, the City University of New
York-sponsored TalkBack! A Forum for Critical Discourse
<http://talkback.lehman.cuny.edu/tb>, among the first online journals
about online art and cyber-culture anywhere.  From 1996-98, he served as
vice president and editor-in-chief of the Arts Technology Entertainment
Network, a New York Times start-up company producing convergence
arts programming for the Internet and cable TV.


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The ATC Colloquium continues our partnership with the Berkeley Art
Museum and the Walker Art Center to present online video of ATC talks,
available both in QuickTime (highlights) or MP3 audio.  For links and
the full 2002-2003 series schedule, please see:

www.ieor.berkeley.edu/~goldberg/lecs/
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