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From the series Midway: Message from the Gyre

“These photographs of albatross chicks were made on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.” Courtesy of Chris Jordan.



http://www.chrisjordan.com/
http://flavorwire.com/45351/pic-of-the-day-2-4-million-pounds-of-plastic-pollution
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=8

Sarah Maple

Interviewed in Flavorwire.


A post in Bitch Magazine.


Her official site

'SCHENGEN Control Observation Point' by Schauplatz International

taken from Laura Palmer Foundation project's description

Schauplatz International, one of the most interesting Swiss independent theatre groups of the moment, employs journalistic methods in its work. The artists always begin by conducting thorough research: interviewing people, searching for information on the Web, inspecting the site, and comparing various viewpoints. The result is a theatre that is community-oriented, political, and documentary. Schauplatz has, for instance, recreated onstage the interviews immigrants have to go through when applying for asylum in Switzerland, re-enacted live the movie Free Willy, and exposed tax fraud in the Swiss town of Zug through the active participation of tax experts and corporate managers. Poland’s admission to the Schengen zone and the fact that Frontex, the European Union’s external-border security agency, is located in Warsaw, were the reasons for Schauplatz’s interest in Warsaw and the 10th-Anniversary Stadium. In the middle of the field of grass that had overgrown the pitch the artists recreated a portion of Poland’s eastern border, which is also the EU’s Eastern border, on a scale of 1:1. A control observation point was constructed on the crown of the stadium, from which viewers were able to monitor the EU’s Eastern frontier. During the eight hour-long live installation, the artists picnicked on the pitch, held discussions about the abstractness of borders, the construction of national identity, and the meaning of the EU flag. Their voices were relayed to the crown of the stadium, and binoculars and telescopes were provided for the viewers to view the action.

The starting point for the performance was the reflection that stadiums and borders are meant to build national identity. While stadiums are concrete architectural objects whose construction takes several years to complete, borders are products of our imagination, involving contracts, symbols, and potential violence. Both borders and stadiums are supposed to tell us who we are. Until recently, Frontex had its offices near the Stadium. The agency, in collaboration with the police, the military, and the secret services operates rapid-intervention teams and organises people-hunts and charter deportations. As a result, illegal immigrants resort to ever more dangerous ways of crossing borders. On their way to work every day, Frontex employees passed the Stadium, a place that, like national borders, used to divide people between legals and illegals. Schauplatz’s one-day live installation required close observation. When the artists saw the 10th-Anniversary Stadium for the first time, they immediately realised that their performance had to dialogue with scale, with dimension — ‘large’ vs. ‘small’, the hugeness of the stadium vs. the littleness of the individual within it. They wanted to give the viewer the possibility of different views. One of those was looking through binoculars at an ordinary piece of grass, where nothing happens. The artists did not force themselves on the stadium; instead they created a situation of live exhibition, turning themselves into objects of display. They also invited special guests.

One of those was software expert Hubert Kowalski, who in a matter-of-fact manner described the functioning of software that makes it possible for border guards to tell whether it is a human or animal crossing the border. He described robots that can recognise movement, objects, or the presence of living organisms, and explained the functioning of heat-sensitive cameras installed along borders. He also added that his hobby was re-enactments of historical battles. A little earlier a refugee from Chechnya, Aslan Dekaev, had appeared on the pitch, followed by someone who re-enacts events from World Wars I and II. The artists then wondered out loud whether fifty years from now military-history enthusiasts will be re-enacting the events in Grozny. The situation of obliqueness, uncertainty, and non-action created by Schauplatz was intentional, as the artists consciously renounce control of the situations they set in motion. With their subdued inaction, they provoked viewers to stroll about the Stadium, to enter the field of action — as if the artists’ presence were not important, and they were the reason the viewers were there. ‘We had the impression we had become a sonic background for the audience. It may be somewhat disappointing for an actor, because it means he has failed to attract viewers’ attention. But the Stadium seems to have simply been more important than us.’

http://www.schauplatzinternational.net/

Alternative Economic Cultures in Pixelache

The alt.econ.cult Seminar of Pixelache’s morning KEYNOTE session chaired by Perpetuum Mobilε:


Alternative Economy Cultures part 1 from pixelACHE festival on Vimeo.


Alternative Economy Cultures PART 2 from pixelACHE festival on Vimeo.


Alternative Economy Cultures PART 3 from pixelACHE festival on Vimeo.

The Zeitgeist Movement: Orientation Presentation

The Zeitgeist Movement is the activist arm of The Venus Project, which constitutes the life long work of industrial designer and social engineer, Jacque Fresco.

The book of the movement: THE ZEITGEIST MOVEMENT - OBSERVATIONS AND RESPONSES - Activist Orientation Guide

Mr. Fresco’s background includes industrial design and social engineering, as well as being a forerunner in the field of Human Factors.

A documentary, titled Future By Design, on the life, designs and philosophy of Jacque Fresco is now available.
The film Zeitgeist Addendum featuring Jacque Fresco and The Venus Project produced by Peter Joseph was recently released. It can be viewed at www.ZeitgeistMovie.com
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/dloads.htm

Is this a nightmare or a joke?
Is this a new-retro recovery of the ever-evolutionary/progressive positive-thinking of monternism or is this a blooming branch of the emerging hypermodernism?

Faceless-The film

FACELESS was produced under the rules of the 'Manifesto for CCTV Filmmakers'. The manifesto states, amongst other things, that additional cameras are not permitted at filming locations, as the omnipresent existing video surveillance (CCTV) is already in operation.
directed by Manu Luksch, voice over: Tilda Swinton, soundtrack: mukul, piano music: Rupert Huber, www.ambientTV.NET

The 4th Radiator festival. Going Underground - Surveillance and Sousveillance.

A very interesting exhibition regarding the city serveillance systems and its counterpart 'sousveillance' (Sousveillance - the counterpart to surveillance, where the ‘observed’ turns around, to face and watch the ‘observer’, recording the observers actions and movements.) of the 4th Radiator festival.
Read a review on Furtherfield

Superflex

“The work of Superflex is about
social-economic practice. Unlike many visual artists, we don’t offer
criticisms or critiques, we propose real solutions to real problems”
http://superflex.net/

Bjornstjerne Christiansen, Rasmus Nielsen, Jakob Fenger form the Copenhagen based art collective SUPERFLEX. They have worked together for fifteen years. The focus of SUPERFLEX’s exhibition at ARTSPACE, If Value, Then Copy is on copyright issues. Exploring concepts around branding, ownership of products, images and ideas, their ongoing practice in this area includes projects such as Guaraná Power. For this project SUPERFLEX worked with farmers in the Brazilian Amazon to create a drink called Guaraná Power, this involved the formation of a new brand that closely followed and yet subtly challenged the leading brand, whose monopoly on the market was impinging on the rights and conditions of the local farmers.

SUPERFLEX are committed to questioning dominant world power relationships and developing economically viable structures for specific communities. Their strategy includes what they describe as tools:

“The work of SUPERFLEX is about social-economic practice. Unlike many visual artists, we don’t offer criticisms or critiques, we propose real solutions to real problems.” Says Bjornstjerne, who is in Auckland till the end of October. “Our fundamental premise is that there is too much ownership in terms of intellectual property, trademark and copyright laws, and this excess of power needs to be challenged.”
http://www.artspace.org.nz/exhibitions/2008/superflex.asp

HOW STUFF IS MADE by Natalie Jeremijenko

https://wikis.nyu.edu/xdesign/menupage.html
HowStuffisMade (HSIM) is a visual encyclopedia that documents manufacturing processes, labor conditions and environmental impacts involved in the production of contemporary products. Entries are summative photo essays produced by students who are guided by faculty responsible for ensuring appropriate citations and standards of evidence. Students engage the cooperation of manufacturers when possible. As an independent, academic, wiki-based publication, HSIM reconsiders engineering and design education as fundamentally connected to the social and political constraints, organizational innovations and global context that inform manufacturing decisions.
more projects here: http://www.nyu.edu/projects/xdesign

Female Icons by De Geuzen

Female Icons is a multifaceted project by the artist group known as De Geuzen.
On the project's website, each icon added to the site has her portrait added to the grid of oval images in the background of the page. When you click on an icon, you are taken to that page for that woman. There, the picture has a set of tags associated with it, and as you mouse-over the icon you have chosen, you can click on any of the tags, and see all the icons associated with that characteristic (i.e., 'writing' or 'radical'). There is a tag cloud on the project homepage, showing 'strength' as the most popular trait as of mid-September. If instead of clicking a tag you click directly on the icon, you are redirected to a Google image search of that person. The aesthetic of this project's archive reinforces the idea that an icon or representation is in itself a way of seeing. Seeing the symmetrical grid of images almost evoke a sense of uniformity - they are all of the same size but with radically different contents. De Geuzen does not shy away from the way in which we form collections and stories in the present in an attempt to understand the continuity of what it means to be female through acts of collection, homogenization, discussion, and disambiguation. This provides us with a collective means for seeing the female throughout history, and the resulting collection of hyperlinked media provides a way to draw comparisons and inferences that aren't always as available when we study a singular biography.
http://www.furtherfield.org/displayreview.php?review_id=324
http://www.geuzen.org/female_icons/
http://www.geuzen.org/
more projects by Geuzen:
Wearable Resistance: http://geuzen.org/resistance/index.html

Pascal Lievre

http://www.lievre.fr/fr/index.php
Watch the videos of Pascal Lievre... and the re-contextualization of famous songs.
A Jesus Christ singing Gérald De Palmas's "Marie" or
two women in love singing Liz MC Clarnon's "Woman in love"
and many more like this...
Some reviews:
Pascal Lièvre born in 1963 in Lisieux. Lives and works in Paris.
Specialising in the diversion of pop music, Pascal Lièvre proceeds an a surgical manner, re-injecting some sense into well-known tunes, always with the intention of provoking revealing collisions. With very limited means, like a whole branch of contemporary young video artists (static shots, hardly any editing, minimal lighting...), the Parisian artist gives his often virulent opinion on the evolution of our societies. This is exactly what we expect of a video-maker today, humour included.
Pascal LIèvre, born in 1963, lives in Paris. His work as a painter began there more than ten years ago and has developed into the "musée des ombres". This video allows one to follow his research and his recent works were widely shown in major film festivals. Since 2000, the videos are based on the principle of karaoké by Abba Mao where the artist sings a passage from "petit livre rouge" of Mao Tsé-Toung to the rhythem of "Money, Money, Money" by Abba mixing the cultural symbols. While singing, his picture is erased little by little until his complete disappearance under red make-up, drowning itself in a background of the same color. .

Implied Violence

http://www.impliedviolence.com/index.html

The Institute of Network Cultures

The Institute of Network Cultures is a media research centre that actively contributes to the field of network cultures through research, events, publications and online dialogue. The INC was founded in 2004 by media theorist Geert Lovink, following his appointment as professor within the Institute of Interactive Media at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Hogeschool van Amsterdam).
http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/portal/

The Imaginary Border Academy

http://borderacademy.org/
http://borderacademy.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Grease to Greece

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7581553.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7550602.stm
http://itn.co.uk/news/266cd864a39413cac84359457d78edd3.html
http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ned=uk&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1240372374
http://news.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ned=uk&nolr=1&q=andy+pag

Steve Ballmer Microsoft's CEO attacked with eggs

Just as soon as the Microsoft CEO started his speech at the Corvinus University, in Budapest, Hungary, a protesting student wearing a "Microsoft=Corruption" shirt stood up and threw eggs at the Microsoft CEO. Not exactly a sign of the famous "Hungarian hospitality". Ballmer showed great reflexes and dodged the attack, hiding behind the desk.

The video of the accident on youtube was introduced with the following words: Steve Ballmer attacked by Nagy Gyorgy, a hungarian idiot who can't even speak english:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUZNw7h96WU&feature=related

The explanation of the attacker:Why I raised my voice against the contract between Microsoft and Hungarian government: http://nagyorgy.uw.hu/

STEVE KURTZ : ARTIST CLEARED OF ALL CHARGES IN PRECEDENT-SETTING CASE

ARTIST CLEARED OF ALL CHARGES IN PRECEDENT-SETTING CASE

Department of Justice Fails to Appeal Dismissal
Kurtz Speaks about Four-Year Ordeal

Buffalo, NY—Dr. Steven Kurtz, a Professor of Visual Studies at SUNY at Buffalo and cofounder of the award-winning art and theater group Critical Art Ensemble, has been cleared of all charges of mail and wire fraud. On April 21, Federal Judge Richard J. Arcara dismissed the government’s entire indictment against Dr. Kurtz as “insufficient on its face.” This means that even if the actions alleged in the indictment (which the judge must accept as “fact”) were true, they would not constitute a crime. The US Department of Justice had thirty days from the date of the ruling to appeal. No action has been taken in this time period, thus stopping any appeal of the dismissal. According to Margaret McFarland, a spokeswoman for US Attorney Terrance P. Flynn, the DoJ will not appeal Arcara’s ruling and will not seek any new charges against Kurtz.

For over a decade, cultural institutions worldwide have hosted Kurtz and Critical Art Ensemble’s educational art projects, which use common science materials to examine issues surrounding the new biotechnologies. In 2004 the Department of Justice alleged that Dr. Kurtz had schemed with colleague Dr. Robert Ferrell of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health to illegally acquire two harmless bacteria cultures for use in one of those projects. The Justice Department further alleged that the transfer of the material from Ferrell to Kurtz broke a material transfer agreement, thus constituting mail fraud.

Under the USA PATRIOT Act, the maximum sentence for these charges was increased from five years to twenty years in prison.

Dr. Kurtz has been fighting the charges ever since. In October 2007, Dr. Ferrell pleaded to a lesser misdemeanor charge after recurring bouts of cancer and three strokes suffered since his indictment prevented him from continuing the struggle.

KURTZ SUMS UP END OF FOUR-YEAR NIGHTMARE
Finally vindicated after four years of struggle, Kurtz, asked for a statement, responded stoically: “I don’t have a statement, but I do have questions. As an innocent man, where do I go to get back the four years the Department of Justice stole from me? As a taxpayer, where do I go to get back the millions of dollars the FBI and Justice Department wasted persecuting me? And as a citizen, what must I do to have a Justice Department free of partisan corruption so profound it has turned on those it is sworn to protect?”

Said Kurtz’s attorney, Paul Cambria, “I am glad an innocent man has been vindicated. Steve Kurtz stared in the face of the federal government and a twenty-year prison term and never flinched, because he believes in his work and his actions were those of a completely innocent man. Clients like him are a blessing, and although I have had many important victories, this one stands at the top of the list.”
As coordinator of the CAE Defense Fund, a group organized to support Kurtz from the beginning of the case, Lucia Sommer sees the end of the prosecution as bittersweet, and like Kurtz, is thoughtful about the broader significance of the case: “This ruling is the best possible ending to a horrible ordeal—but we are mindful of numerous cases still pending, and the grave injustices perpetrated by the Bush administration following 9/11. This case was part of a larger picture, in which law enforcement was given expanded powers. In this instance, the Bush administration was unsuccessful in its attempt to erode Americans’ constitutional rights.”

Referring to the international outcry the case provoked, involving fundraisers and protests held on four continents, Sommer said, “ The government has unlimited resources to bring and prosecute these kinds of charges, but the accused often don’t have any resources to defend themselves. This victory could never have happened without the activism of thousands of people. Supporters protested, vocally opposed the prosecution, and refused to let it go on in silence. And without their efforts at fundraising, Kurtz and Ferrell would not have been able to defend themselves from these false accusations.”

Sommer added that the next step for the defense will be to get back all of the materials taken by the FBI during its 2004 raid on the Kurtz home, including several completed art projects, as well as Dr. Kurtz’s lab equipment, computers, books, manuscripts, notes, research materials, and personal belongings. The four confiscated art projects are the subject of an exhibition entitled SEIZED on view at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, NY, through July 18:http://www.hallwalls.org/visual_shows/2008/show_seized.html.

BACKGROUND TO THE CASE
The case originated in May 2004, when Kurtz’s wife Hope died of heart failure as the couple was preparing a project about genetically modified agriculture for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Police who responded to Steve Kurtz’s 911 call deemed the Kurtzes’ art materials suspicious and alerted the FBI. Kurtz explained that the materials (legally and easily obtained basic life science equipment and two harmless bacteria samples) had already been displayed at museums throughout Europe and North America with absolutely no risk to the public. However, the following day, Kurtz was illegally detained for 22 hours on suspicion of bioterrorism, as dozens of agents from the FBI, Joint Terrorism Task Force, Homeland Security, Department of Defense, ATF, and numerous other law enforcement agencies raided his home, seizing his personal and professional belongings. After a federal grand jury refused to charge Kurtz with bioterrorism, Kurtz and Ferrell were indicted on two counts of mail fraud and two counts of wire fraud concerning the acquisition of $256 of harmless bacteria for one of Critical Art Ensemble’s educational art projects. (Critical Art Ensemble is the recipient of numerous awards for its projects, including the prestigious 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation Wynn Kramarsky Freedom of Artistic Expression Grant, in recognition of twenty years of distinguished work: http://www.creative-capital.org/index2.html.)

The Department of Justice brought the charges in spite of the fact that the alleged “victims of fraud”—American Type Culture Collection and the University of Pittsburgh—never filed any charges or complained of any wrongdoing, and the fact that in bringing the charges the Department of Justice was acting completely outside its own Prosecution Policy Relating to Mail Fraud and Wire Fraud (http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/43mcrm.htm).

For more information and extensive documentation, including the Judge’s dismissal, please visit:http://caedefensefund.org***

"La palabra de los mudos"

on the 15th of May, in front of a huge audience the action "La palabra de los mudos" was staged in Redondo Beach, in the district of Miraflores, Lima, as the first artistic project of the French-Peruvian artist Jota Castro in Peru after three decades away from his homeland. During the development of the V Summit of Heads of State and Government of Latin America, the Caribbean and the European Union, Jota Castro carried out this performance, which addressed the limits of communication and the problems concerning inclusion.
Before the event, there was a concentration in Bajada Balta, Miraflores, at 10.00 a.m., where participants (including a contingent of deaf people) from different points of the city gathered. From this meeting point, the participants started their way down to the shore towards Redondo Beach.
From a stage at the beach, Peruvian actor Sergio Galliani prepared the audience for the performance, which started when an interpreter delivered a speech in sign language. This speech was "echoed" at different moments of the performance by the participants, who had been previously taught slogans in sign language by Galliani. In a strongly symbolic and esthetically powerful scene, the responses of the audience were both in sign and oral languages. After the sign language speech, Jota Castro disclosed the content of the sign language message, which dealt with the exclusion suffered by the artist because of his race, establishing a parallel with the pain that three quarters of the world have to bear. "They don't listen to us", Castro repeated, talking about miscommunication, lack of justice, indifference and poverty. "We are all dumbŠ we are only a long silence in history". Then he encouraged the audience to "dream with a better world, a common future", as the Summit was taking place.
The French-Peruvian artist's performance transformed autobiographical and political issues into a historic and emotional experience that joined the audience for the first time with one of the most celebrated contemporary artists in the international scene today.
You can read and watch more information on the project, including press info at: www.lapalabradelosmudos.org.
There is also a video of the action available at: http://www.youtube.com/lapalabradelosmudos

borderLands hackLab

The borderLands hackLab is based in San Diego, California. Our goals are to:
* provide technology for radical groups in san diego
* work towards technical self-sufficiency within our radical community
* challenge the tradition of racism, sexism and homophobia in technical education
* educate people about free software ideals and the usage of free software
* utilize our privilege as people in the U.S. to share technology with people who don't have the same level of access
Generally, their goals are to create more radical technology in san diego and provide tech solidarity abroad, specifically to the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico.
The borderlands hacklab is a network of hackers, artists and activists in the San Diego/Tijuana border region. They are creating a space for autonomous technology, that is, technology within autonomous social movements, operating outside of the State or the traditional forms of the left such as political parties or unions. When they say radical above, they generally mean anti-capitalist, anti-war and anti-authoritarian, or pro-decentralization of power.
From the Jargon File: "hacker: n. [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. RFC1392, the Internet Users' Glossary, usefully amplifies this as: A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular...
6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example.
7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations."

wiki - docs, updates, events and announcements

Victims’ Symptom

commissioned by LabforCulture and curated by *Ana Peraica* (Croatia/The Netherlands)
<http://victims.labforculture.org/>.
Is the cultural production of victims preventing us from seeing the actual victims? Why does the mass media prefer to talk in terms of numbers? Are we losing our capacity for empathy? These are just some of the questions explored in the Victims’ Symptom project through critical texts, commissioned artworks, interviews and reflections by the curator and a number of renowned theorists and artists.