YOUR CULTURETV BLOG ON GLOBAL ART NEWS, VIDEOS, MUSEUM, GALLERY, PICKS & TIPS

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Word of Fire by Santiago Sierra

"Word of Fire" is the new project by artist Santiago Sierra. It will be made in a space of around 1500 cubic meters in a field located in ANAPRA, at the western end of the city, and only a few meters away from the U.S. border. This is the area considered in the plans for building a wall which will definitely isolate the First World from the Third. This territory is the point where the states of Chihuahua, New Mexico, and Texas meet, and therefore, the plans for this area also contemplate building an international crossing to New Mexico.

The port of ANAPRA was one of the first and largest irregular settlements in the outskirts of Juarez. It was created back in 1974, when a group of persons guided by teachers invaded an area of around 50 acres. Ever since, the neighbors have struggled to get public services such as electricity, water and paved streets. Nowadays, they don't have a sewer system and families still have to be allocated. Life in this worker's neighborhood has been marked by disintegrating families and very low incomes. A big part of its population consists of immigrants from several parts of Mexico that go there in order to work at the maquilas (assembly plants) or as street vendors. This area is also famous because of the forced interventions by American police forces in Mexican soil, which cross the border to arrest alleged criminals and for the cases of blood poisoning of children with the lead produced by the smelting procedures of the American company ASARCO. According to the health authorities from Cd. Juarez, the population of this zone presents the highest rates of malformations, of anencephaly, and of respiratory diseases in the city's population.

The work "Word of Fire" will take place in this representative area of the city, in front of the Sporting Center which is being built by the State Government and next to a ditch which was broken during the heavy rains of the summer, which left many people homeless and proved the lack of urban infrastructure in the West End of the city.

"Word of Fire" will have a duration of 30 minutes and will be transmitted live from the artist's website (www.santiago-sierra.com) and from www.proyectojuarez.org.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Opening LABoral Centre 30.03 Gyon, Spain


LABoral Centre for Art and Creative Industries is specifically focused on the production and exhibition of art, science, technology and creative industries. This interdisciplinary space pays special attention to workshops for vocational and professional training, and to research into the intersection between creativity and new technologies. FEEDBACK Focuses on art responsive to instructions, input, or its environment and creates one possible narrative of the history of ‘new media art’. Featuring historical and current art works that are all based on technology and systems of response, the exhibition traces the history of contemporary artistic practice involving digital technologies. Curators: Christiane Paul, Curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Jemima Rellie, Director of Digital Programmes, Tate Modern, London Curatorial Advisor: Charlie Gere, Research Professor in New Media, University of Lancaster Exhibition Design: Leeser Architecture GAMEWORLD Curator: Carl Goodman, Deputy Director, Museum of the Moving Image, Astoria (New York) Associate Curator: Daphne Dragona Curatorial Advisor: Helen Stuckey Exhibition Design: Leeser Architecture Gameworld refers to the designed world within a video game; the emerging artistic, industrial and academic ecology surrounding video games; and the extent to which lived experience is being coloured by video games, their forms of representation and their techniques of machine-mediated interaction. LABcyberspaces Following an open invitation to artists all over the world to present works with a major component of digital creation and net art. The 10 selected works will be put on show as a snapshot or overview of artistic creation associated with technology and cyberspace as new challenges and new frontiers. Jury: Alex Adriaansens, Director, V2 and DEAF, Rotterdam; Rosina Gómez-Baeza, Director of laboral Centre for Art and Creative Industries, Gijón (Asturias); Christiane Paul, Curator of New Media Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Gerfried Stocker, Art Director, Ars Electronica, Linz Development of presentation: Manuela Pfaffenberger Exhibition Design: Quero-Kawamura-Ganjavian EXTENSIONS-ANCHORS This project is an open coordinated network of exhibitions and/or interventions conceived to connect the new Centre for Art and Creative Industries with its surrounding environs and artists, with a goal of recovering the tradition of dialogue between arts and industry. The project will feature work by young artists or those particularly engaged with non-commercial and minority idioms, with a total of fourteen exhibitions or interventions in two phases. Curator: Francisco Crabiffosse, independent curator, Oviedo Artists: Pablo Armesto, Paco Cao, Maite Centol, , Soledad Córdoba, Carlos Coronas, Juan Fernández and Chechu Álava, Dionisio González, Adolfo Manzano, Juan Carlos Martínez, Natalia Pastor, Fernando Redruello, Avelino Sala, Cuco Suárez and Aurora Suárez. THE E-IMAGE ERA International essayists and thinkers ponder the reach of the electronic image in art today. Pencilled in are François Bucher, Jordan Crandall, Pedro A. Cruz, Alexander Galloway, Anna María Guasch, Lev Manovich, Juan Martín Prada and Siegfried Zielinsky

Friday, March 16, 2007

EMAF 25.-29.04 Osnaebruck


20 Years of the European Media Art Festival - the forum for Expanded Media in Europe The meeting point for audiences and guests from home and abroad. Around 250 new works of media art, including world premieres, will be presented. The festival shows film as a contemporary work of art in cinemas and exhibitions, both performed and using multimedia. //Exhibition The exhibition "Final Cut" directs our view to the relationship between media art and cinema. From 25 April to 20 May an artistic look at the dream machine "cinema" will be given at the Kunsthalle Dominikanerkirche. International artists will demonstrate their fascination with cinema, but will also question the values, codes and patterns behind the films. Works will be presented by artists such as Paul McCarthy, Alex McQuilkin, Mischa Kuball, Klaus vom Bruch, Candice Breitz, Mark Lewis, Christoph Girardet, Bjorn Melhus, Peter Tscherkassky, Christoph Draeger, Clemens von Wedemeyer and Pierre Huyghe. There will also be plenty of opportunity to participate in talks with the artists and attend lectures on the subject. The exhibition is funded by the Federal Cultural Foundation. // Anniversary A review of media art will be given by our special guests, the director of the ZKM, Peter Weibel, Lynn Hershman, Birgit Hein of the fur Bildende Kunste Braunschweig and Malcolm LeGrice, who will be showing their personal selection of films. // Cinema Around 180 current experimental shorts, feature-length films and videos have been selected from a total of roughly 2000 works submitted from around the world. They range from narrative approaches to documentary/analytical views of war events and environmental problems. Visually walking the borderline between real and virtual areas of communication is also selected as a central theme. We are focussing this year on the countries of Mexico and Cuba. // Awards Three awards will be presented at the festival: the "EMAF Award" for a trend-setting work in media art, the "Dialogpreis" of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the promotion of intercultural exchange and the "Preis der deutschen Filmkritik" for the best German experimental film. // Expanded Cinema The new edition of SHOOT SHOOT SHOOT curated by Mark Webber (LUX London) provides an insight into Expanded Cinema from the 1960s and 70s. Two historic works will be screened live. // Performance The performance LATITUDE presents a new work by the English group D-Fuse, known for their international DJ/VJ acts. Another highlight will be the YouTube Party by and with the artist Bjorn Melhus. // Congress Besides taking stock and giving an outlook, the current determination of the position of media art is also the focus of lectures and panel discussions. How has digitisation changed artistic production? Which interrelationships exist between artistic and commercial media production? How have these interrelationships affected aesthetics, form and content? // International Student Forum The contact and exchange point for projects and offerings in higher education: the Hochschule fur Gestaltung from Karlsruhe, the Dutch Minerva Academy from Groningen, the Hochschule fur bildende Kunste Braunschweig and the Hochschule der K�¼nste Bern. For further information: www.emaf.de