Syndicate: V2_East Newsletter 97/03

[abroeck@v2.nl (Andreas Broeckmann)]

V2_East / Syndicate Newsletter 97/03

- Introduction
- Dates of upcoming events
- Updates

- General info about the Syndicate list
- Subscription


* Introduction *

Dear Syndicalists,

it's only a few days now until the meeting in Liverpool where some of us
are going to get together. The LEAF meeting looks like it is going to be a
great get-together which will also include some of the latest Syndicate
members. The Ostranenie team from Dessau/D that took a trip all the way to
Moldova, to Ukraine and Romania, made some new contacts there and we are
very happy about the new arrivals (and are looking forward to the
travelogue of which Stephen Kovats will hopefully give us a foretaste in
Liverpool at the weekend.). Other subscriptions to the list arrived from
Belgrade, Skopje, Prague, and the US. Welcome to ye all.

In Liverpool we will, beside all the other opportunities for talking, get
together on Sunday evening at 19.00hrs. for a special, internal Syndicate
meeting in order to make announcements and discuss some of the more
practical issues and projects concerning the list and its members. Some of
the things that we could raise include:  a Syndicate publication series?;
European Student Fund proposal; future meetings; the growing Syndicate
membership.

This newsletter (which comes a week late, I know - my computer is at the
hospital ...) includes the announcement of the Nettime
<http://www.desk.nl/~nettime> meeting which is planned for 22 and 23 May in
Ljubljana. As there is a close tie between these two lists
(nettime/syndicate), it is not unlikely that this will turn into an
'unofficial' Syndicate meeting of some sort.

One of the themes in Ljubljana will be  'Virtual Europe, Ministate Thinking
and the Construction of the Data East', a topic that will recur more often
in one or the other form throughout this year: during LEAF in April, at
transmedia in Berlin at the end of May, and also at Ostranenie in November.
It seems that the rethinking of Europe and the East/West divide are well
under way, a process which will not remain without consequences for the
Syndicate which is both a result of this divide, and a tool of its undoing.

Please, continue using the list syndicate@aec.at for posting info that is
of interest to the media art community in East and West Europe. Once again,
I would like to ask you all to pass information that might be interesting
for people who don't have e-mail on to those people. Wealth in information
comes from exchanging it freely.

As always, the information about how to subscribe to the Syndicate list is
at the end of this newsletter.

Best wishes, and see you soon,
Andreas Broeckmann (V2_East)



* Dates of (some) upcoming events and exhibitions *
(info below or in Newsletter 96/..)

- 11 April - 18 May 1997: Video Positive 97, Liverpool & Manchester/UK (96/12)
- 12 - 13 April 1997: LEAF meeting, Liverpool/UK
- April 28-May 3, 1997 Mediawave festival in Gyor/HU
- 30 April-4 May 1997: WRO 97, Wroclaw/PL (96/10b)
- 7 - 11 May 1997: EMAF, Osnabrueck/D (97/01)
- 22 - 23 May 1997: Nettime Conference, Ljubljana/SI
- 23 May - 1 June 1997: transmedia/10th Videofest, Berlin/D (97/01)
- 3 June - (?) 1997: E-Mail Art 4, Bratislava/SK (97/01)
- 6 June - 6 July, 1997: ARTEC'97, 5th Internal Biennale in Nagoya/JP (96/12)
- 21 June - 29 September 1997: Documenta X, Kassel/D
- 8 - 10 August 1997: Hacking In Progress, HIP97, Almere/NL (97/01)
- 8 -13 September 1997: Ars Electronica Festival, Linz/A
- 12 - 18 September 1997: World Wide Video Festival, Amsterdam/NL
- 22 - 27 September 1997: ISEA 97, Chicago/USA (96/12)
- 4 - 11 October 1997: 3rd Festival of Computer Arts, Maribor/SI (97/02)
- 7 - 19 October 1997: Interstanding 2, Tallinn/EE
- 16 - 26 October 1997: VIPER 97, Lucerne/CH (97/01)
- 18 October 1997: opening ZKM, Karlsruhe/D
- 24 October 1997: opening Multimediale 5, Karlsruhe/D
- 5 - 9 November 1997: OSTranenie, Dessau/D
- 18 - 30 November 1997: DEAF 97, Rotterdam/NL
- 5 - 7 December 1997: VideoMedeja, Novi Sad/YU
- September 1998: Videonale 8 , Bonn/D
- September 1998: ISEA98, Liverpool&Manchester/UK


* 'Beauty and the East'
 A Nettime Conference
 22nd and 23rd of May 1997

Ljudmila (Ljubljana Digital Media Lab, part of Open Society Institute -
Slovenia) is pleased to announce the Nettime May Conference entitled
'Beauty and the East' with the following co-ordinates:
dates: May 21arrivals
         22-23 conference
location: Ljudmila, Prusnikova 74, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Topics of afternoon panels are:

DAY ONE - May 22

 On-Line Publishing: Push Media Planets, Collaborative Archives and
Discourse Machines

  The generation of content is context sensitive, people produce
  information out of signals, groups define what people can produce,
  tools make possible what groups can define and vice versa. A
  critique of the net must include a critical analysis of its 'matter'
  as a social and cultural product. With the rise of the web, the well
  developed group structures around bbs, moo, mud, usenet became
  almost invisible. Now, we are told that the web will vanish and only
  media with broadcasting qualities will survive. I push therefore I
  am. Surprisingly, the mailinglist was always a push media, as
  sucessful and cost-effecitive as e-mail. The coming social
  information architectures will need a more hybrid, time-based and
  conceptual working/leisure environment which maps electronic
  intersubjectivity based on our needs and not the imaginative,
  inherent will of technique.

  It is time that intellectuals rethink the relevance of their tools
  in a wider radius than linguistics. The apperatus of discourse gets
  extended today by new networks of power/knowledge which are still,
  compared with the world of print, very unimportant. This makes place
  for all kinds of experiments and the renovation of historical
  concepts. In a mix of historical, empirical, and speculative
  analysis we will try to map a likely and liked future of
  'online-publishing,' beyond the static model of the web magazine (or
  the preformatted net-radio on demand). How will our social interface
  look like and how do we continue with our gift-economy?

chair persons: Geert Lovink, Pit Schultz


DAY TWO - May 23 Power Politics: Virtual Europe, Ministate Thinking and the
Construction of the Data East

 Within the development of aesthetics and politics of electronic media
 since the late 80's 'East Europe' played a minor but spectacular
 role. Today, driven by unified market forces the topology of cultures
 in the east and west has to relate to new maps of global corporations
 and media networks, down to the local resistance of bureaucracies,
 institutions, and cultural initiatives. But it is not only 'the east'
 that is forced to adapt, but 'the west' also having to face an inner
 crisis within its imaginary cartographies. The construction of a
 media map of Europe becomes indistinguishable from the image of a
 chaotic, dangerous, and underdeveloped 'hinterland'. The fear of
 heterogenity and change locates and produces the zones of conflict at
 its periphery. Under the sign of ethnic and national cleansing grew a
 the multiplicity of borders and microstates. 'Balkanization' becomes
 the preferred horror scenario for all kinds of disintegration, and
 economic, social, cultural, and political difference. The dream of
 entering the EU-NATO zone is fading away. Is this the freedom people
 dreamt of?

 Culture has yet no answer to this imminent crisis. The only thing
 institutions can come up with, is a weak and cheap remake of well
 known slogans, taken from yesterday's social movements and art groups
 (and their media). This includes the quasi-neutral, engaged but
 professional PC attitude of the NGOs that remained as political
 forces. The rest is popular revolt, armed despair or armchair
 criticism. Is an predefined 'open society' the best of all possible
 options? How long can we support minimal politics and the (justified)
 desire for conformity? What double role does 'The Net' plays within
 this configuration?

chair persons: Inke Arns, Oliver Marchart

Theory-performances of Critical Art Ensemble and Peter Lamborn Wilson.

Hosted by Ljudmila (Ljubljana Digital Media Lab, Open Society Institute)
Organizing Committee: Vuk Cosic <vuk@kud-fp.si>, Geert Lovink
<geert@xs4all.nl>, Diana McCarty <diana@dial.isys.hu>, Pit Schultz
<pit@contrib.de> and more soon.

For information on travel and participation, please check the website
http://www.ljudmila.org/~vuk/nettime/ (in few days) and look for the
application form. Or contact <vuk@kud-fp.si> or <diana@dial.isys.hu>



* transmedia/Videofest Berlin, 23 May - 1 June 1997
has a new webpage (only in German, at the moment)
http://www.mediopolis.de/videofest/



* Ars Electronica 97: September 8 - 13, 1997: FleshFactor

This year the Ars Electronica 97, with the title "FleshFactor -
Informationsmaschine Mensch", addresses the position of the Mensch, the
human being - in the crossfire of gene technology, neuroscience and
networked intelligence.

Prix Ars Electronica 97
Categories of the competition:
- computer animation is opening up in the direction of VR,
- the original web category has been expanded into the .net category,
- interactive art is being redefined by an emphasis on communication and
networking,
- the music category is oriented more and more to the multiplicity of new
and experimental sound worlds, which we want to include in this category.
 
Further information on the different categories and entry forms:
http://prixars.orf.at/prixe.htm

TOTAL PRIZE MONEY US$ 102,880

DEADLINE: 30 April 1997

For additional information please contact:
ORF - Prix Ars Electronica
Christine Schoepf
Telephone: ++43(0)732-6900-267
Fax: ++43(0)732-6900-270 or 200
E-mail: ia.info@prixars.orf.at


* Interstanding 2, Tallinn/Estonia
October 7-19, 1997

The organisers of the Interstading conference on Computer Mediated
Communication and Interactivity, which took place in the National Library
of Tallinn in November 1995, have decided to organise a follow-up event.
Interstanding 2 will build upon and develop the results of the first
conference. Interstanding 2 will shift the focus towards the possible
strategies and opportunities of the arts in the 'expanded field' of
interconnected electronic and digital media. Interstanding 2 will address
the opportunities and threats for free personal and cultural expression
within this 'expanded field'. Interstanding 2 will encourage a fundamental
discussion on the social responsibility of the artist in the emerging
information society.

Interstanding will consist of three separate layers of interrelated events:

1 - The 5th annual exhibition of the Soros Center for Contemporary Arts
Estonia; 4 to 5 artists' projects in the field of digital media will be
realised specifically for this occasion. The organisers have abandoned the
wide-spread illusion of a deftly expressed subject justifying the artwork,
and have given the artists total freedom to interpret such notions as
media, media space, media technology and everything connected with them. At
the same time the organisers expect the participants to get absorbed in the
subject and hope that all the problems will not be reduced to
videoprojection.

2 - The organisers wish to involve individuals and organisations from other
countries of Central and Eastern Europe within the framework of
Interstanding 2, more specifically in:
a) A retrospective exhibition of video art produced in Central and Eastern
Europe from the pre-Gorbatschov era, i.e. from the 1970s up to the middle
of the 1980s. The selection criterion for the exhibition will be the
conscious oppostion to "official art"; so called "resistance art".
Countries invited to submit works include: Czech Republic, Poland, Croatia,
Slovenia, Hungary, Russia, Latvia.
b) Presentations of contemporary artistic activities in the media space.
Invited countries include: Ukraine, Croatia, Slovakia, Czech Republic,
Hungary. The SCCA Estonia welcomes proposals and information related to
media art in all other countries of the Central and Eastern European
region.

3 - A series of satellite events, aiming to stimulate the active
participation and engagement of artists in social processes.

- The most important of these satellite events will be a concentrated one
day conference, which will continue the debate on the questions raised
during the first Interstanding conference. The topic of this one day
conference will be 'freedom'. The transformations in the post-socialist
societies of Central and Eastern Europe have been heavily implicated by the
rhetorics of freedom. The ambiguous nature of the concept of freedom is
addressed in relation to the local concerns of these societies. The
attention will focus on the specific role digital networking can play in
the new social, economic and political constellations of Central and
Eastern Europe.

- A special participation from the V2_East/Syndicate network will be organised.

- Invited presentations of artists and other individuals whose personal
contribution to the creation of artistic discourse in media art has been
considerable.

- A selection of outstanding works in the field of media art, will be
presented in collaboration with a.o. the Finnish Museum of Contemporary
Art, MUU RyhmÅ  and other partners.

- Net projects - Art spreading across the world wide interconnected
computer networks.

Place: Galleries in Tallinn, Estonian Art Museum, Estonian Academy of Arts
Cyber Gallery.

For further information, please, contact: Eric Kluitenberg
<eric@scan.media-gn.nl>



* OSTranenie '97, 5 - 9 November 1997, Dessau/D

OSTranenie '97,  the International Electronic Media Forum, applies the cultural
estrangement reflected in Sklovskij's 1916 call for a new vision through art as
an examination of the current state of societal transformation in the countries
of Central and Eastern Europe. In societies whose fundamental structure is ever
more influenced by the power of the broadcast image, the function of electronic
media and information in defining cultural and political identities becomes
ever
more significant.

As an international platform of exchange and debate, OSTranenie examines
electronic media as a borderless guarantor of cultural diversification and
national expression between East and West. The Forum aims at contributing
to the
structure of information and level of perception concerning electronic media
arts as a function of the process of democratisation and cultural
orientation in
this region.

We call on artists, theorists, journalists, and critics to submit relevant
works
reflecting the state and direction of electronic media arts which support the
development of, or illustrate the immanent tensions and conflicts within, a
technologically turbulent pan-European society.

OSTranenie's presentation of  video works, multi-media installations, network
based projects, performances, and discussion fora reflects the historical
Bauhaus' fusion of art and technology as a means of redefining the structure of
a society in transition. By examining the current transformation of cultural
identities within the perceived stateless realm of electronic
telecommunications, OSTranenie invites an active debate into the role these
media play in defining and establishing a basis upon which to create a socially
and politically unified environment for the future.

OSTranenie '97 is presented by the Studio Electronic Media Interpretation
of the
Bauhaus Dessau Foundation together with the K.I.E.Z. e.V. and the Werkleitz
Gesellschaft as a project of the Media Initiative Saxony-Anhalt.

For further information please contact the OSTranenie Team at:

Studio Electronic Media Interpretation          tel: **49 340 6508 313
Bauhaus Dessau Foundation                       fax: **49 340 6508 326
Gropiusallee 38
email:<<emi@stiftung-bauhaus.de>>
or <<100662.2476@compuserve.com>>
D - 06846 Dessau, Germany
http://www.misa.uni-magdeburg.de/ostranenie



* Updates *

Anca Oroveanu <oroveanu@starnets.ro> writes:

I am an art historian and an art critic and I have been teaching  for years
(and
still am) at the Department of Art History and Art Theory of the Art
Academy in
Bucharest. I am not a 'specialist' in media art (I don't think there really
are
such specialist for the time being in Romania), but i'm interested in the
field,
all the more as a number of (mostly young) Romanian artists are beginning to
work in this direction. I am also involved, with other people, in an
attempt to
set up a journal of contemporary art (the only one in existence in Romania had
to discontinue its appearance for lack of finance) where place will be made
(if
we are successfull) for media art.


* Centre for Computer Arts, Sofia/BG

At the end of last year Soros Centre for the Arts - Sofia and the
Student Computer Arts Society joined resources and efforts to
establish a Centre for Computer Arts. The Centre aims to support the
development of non-commercial computer art projects - graphics,
computer animation, electronic and computer music, multimedia and
videoart. The Student Computer Arts Society for provided the premises
and part of the equipment required while Soros Centre for the Arts
provided the grant for project development as well as the rest of the
technical equipment. The Centre for Computer Arts acts as a grant
giving body as well as an information resource centre.  The centre
also aims to facilitate the international presentation of Bulgarian
computer art projects.

In November 1996 the Centre for Computer Arts (CCA) began active
consultations with artists willing to submit projects for financing
during 1997. For four months CCA consultants met with more than 80
people to discuss their ideas and to assess their abilities to
complete the projects. We did not aim to censor the artistic ideas but
to be assured that artists could realise their ideas with minor help
>from a computer specialist. We were really interested in providing
financial support for projects that were sure to be completed.

[...]

We also plan to organise a number of seminars and workshops to train
Bulgarian artists to work in and with the new media.

For more information on the project contact Krassimira Teneva, project
coordinator at Soros Centre for the Arts at kteneva@sca.osf.acad.bg

or Rossen Petkov, Student Computer Arts Society at rkp@vmei.acad.bg

Soros Centre for the Arts
16 A, Patriarch Evtimii Blvd.
Sofia 1000
tel/fax: 00359 2 898994 or 00359 2 9802861



* General Info *

V2_East is an initiative of V2_Organisation Rotterdam, which is aimed at
creating a network of people and institutions who are involved with or
interested in media art in Eastern Europe and which wants to create an
infrastructure that facilitates cooperations between partners in East and
West. With its 'Syndicate' mailing list, website <http://www.v2.nl/east>
and regular meetings, V2_East is becoming an important tool for fostering
ties within the media art community in Europe which makes it increasingly
obsolete to think in term of 'East' and 'West', and which will eventually
make the V2_East initiative itself redundant.

The V2_East/Syndicate is a no-budget network initiative rather than an
institution. <syndicate@AEC.at> is the address of a mailing list which is
dedicated to an exchange of information and ideas relating to the situation
and future development of electronic and media art in Eastern Europe. The
list members include more than 80 artists, curators, networkers, writers,
festival organisers, etc., from East as well as West European countries and
beyond, who, through the 'Syndicate', are trying to improve the
communication and cooperation between artists and organisations in East and
West. The list was first installed following the initial meeting of the
V2_East initiative at V2_Organisation in Rotterdam on January 21, 1996, at
the end of the second Next 5 Minutes conference. During the DEAF96 festival
in September, we held a V2_East Meeting in which around 30 people from 12
different countries participated.


* Subscription *

To subscribe to the syndicate list, please, send a message to
<syndicate-request@aec.at> with the following text in the body of the
message: 'subscribe [email-address]'
For more information about the Syndicate, please, contact <abroeck@v2.nl>
(Andreas Broeckmann).


*Please, send information that you feel should appear in the next edition
of this newsletter (deadline: 30 March 97) to: abroeck@v2.nl.