'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 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

CAPITALISM HITS THE FAN

english//38,54 Min//04.12.2008
- A Marxian View - Professor Rick Wolff, Department of Economics, UMass Amherst, October 7, 2008

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http://kanalb.org/clip.php?clipId=2188&Vlang=eng

ROUGH GUIDE TO AMSTERDAM | BORDER INQUIRIES

http://roughguideamsterdam.wordpress.com/
Border Inquiries is a live-connected public discussion between Belgrade and Amsterdam about the new and ever-changing borders on the Balkans, as part of the "Rough Guide to Amsterdam" festival, at Dom Omladine in Belgrade, November 28 - 30, 2008.
The discussion will take place simultaneously in the spaces of De Balie and Dom Omladine, connected live via internet. The event brings together researchers, activists and engaged citizens in both cities around issues of border control, border management and migration, to discuss how these issues reflect the precarious relationship of the Balkan region to the European Union.
Borders act as filters, not simply as inclusion and exclusion mechanisms. What the border filters out or lets through is dependent on who operates the border.
A peculiarity of the Balkan condition however, is that there are so many overlapping spheres of interest and power that is deeply unclear who actually operates the border? What are the mechanisms deployed in the region to maintain and manage the borders (technological, policing, regulatory, legal, etc.)?
The aim of this gathering in two cities is to create an open forum where a first attempt is made to map the complex transnational presence of the multitude of agencies (OSCE, NATO, UNMIK, KFOR, SFOR, and various missions from the EU, USA and Russian Federation) involved in consolidating the volatile Balkan borders. The discussion could lead to a larger visualisation and mapping project.
With: writer and new media developer Florian Schneider (Kein.org), filmmaker Želimir Žilnik (tbc), artist and author of "Schengen without effort" Vahida Ramujkić, artist and researcher Zoran Pantelić (new media center Kuda.org), art and media explorer Kristian Lukić (new media center Kuda.org), Milenko Srećković (FreedomFight - Zrenjanin), artist Željko Blaće (Mi2 / Jan van Eijk Academy) (tbc), artist Darko Fritz (tbc) and researcher Paul Keller (Kein.org / Knowledgeland).

De Balie produces a programme with video diaries, debates, music, films, photography, theatre, video art and graphic design in co- operation with several partners. Through art and discussion, De Balie wants to attack the existing clichés. Not the differences, but the similarities between Serbia and the Netherlands are the main focus. Both countries show cracks in their national self-image and in both countries, ‘national identity’ is currently a hotly discussed topic, as is the question of how to relate to one’s country’s past.

Crisis in the Credit System

www.crisisinthecreditsystem.org.uk
Crisis in the Credit System is a four-part drama dealing with the credit crisis, written and directed by artist Melanie Gilligan.
A major investment bank runs a brainstorming and role-playing session for its employees, asking them to come up with strategies for coping with today's dangerous financial climate. While diligently pursuing this task, five individuals inadvertently role-play their way into bizarre make-believe scenarios forming disturbing conclusions about the deeper significance of the credit crisis and its effects beyond the world of finance.
Using fiction to communicate what is left out of documentary accounts of the crisis, the short, TV-style episodes reflect the strangeness of life today in which the financial abstractions which govern our lives appear to be collapsing.
http://www.artangel.org.uk/pages/present/present0908_crisis.htm

Slavoj Zizek's "Ecology: A New Opium for the Masses"

speech in NYC. You can watch it here
http://www.lacan.com/blog/index.html
ot read it here
http://www.lacan.com/zizecology1.htm
more articles and relevant themes on: http://www.lacan.com/lacan1.htm

"Charity is a humanitarian mask hiding the face of economic exploitation."

a line from Slavoj Zizek's book "Violence".
Read more in a piece entitled "Clash of the Titans" at the Haaretz.com blog, Shlomzion Kenan writes about the recent debate between two "superstar philosophers," Bertrand-Henri Levy and Slavoj Zizek, at the New York Public Library in late September.

ABLE DANGER THE MOVIE

POSTING ABLE DANGER

To conclude our series of blog posts from Paul Krik, writer/director of Able Danger, currently in theaters, here is his breakdown of how he posted his movie.

Able Danger was shot on an Panasonic AG-HVX200 by accomplished Brooklyn-based cinematographer Charlie Libin. We shot HD using no tape. It was shot to P2 cards, basically RAM and then copied to a hard drive. It was edited on Avid mostly on a laptop in a basement and then on an Avid at Jump Editorial. It was edited in HD but at the Panasonic "native" file size of 1280 x 720. This is not true HD, but after testing the camera's 1920 x 1080 record modes, I found the difference negligible and the 1080 mode had problems with motion. And the file sizes made shooting 1080 inefficient.

After much research about the absolute best methodology for finishing, I decided on the following; 123,840 uncompressed TIFF frames (86 mins x 24 frames per second) were exported to a hard drive and brought over to one of my favorite post production facilities, NICE SHOES, and colorist Chris Ryan imported the TIFF sequence into the specter (German color correct box) and bumped up to true HD 1920 x 1080. It was color corrected there and laid down to D5.

No special pro lenses were used. We used a wide angle adapter on occasion and a long lens adapter for daytime surveillance. For surveillance night scenes, we used military grade night vision.

I did all of the sound editing and sound designing and editing and music editing in the Avid. The final was mixed in Protools. Shots that needed effects were exported as uncompressed TIFFs out of Spectre and went to one of two places:

1. AFTER EFFECTS was used for the surveillance graphics. It took months to develop the surveillance look. We (Roberto Serrini and I) experimented with a lot more graphics on screen and a lot more text. But that took away from the beauty of the imagery and became too noisy and less "filmic" also getting the right interaction of the onscreen text, the surveillance chatter (which I recorded through a kids' toy voice distorter) and the onscreen action took a lot of fine tuning. I worked intimately with my assistant and After Effects artist refining ad infinitum. After I color corrected the night vision in Specter, TIFF frames were exported and we laid the After Effects back on top and then exported TIFF frames.

2. THE FLAME was used for some "gun flashes" and "electricity" in the stun baton were added after the color correct and bump up to 1080 HD from the Specter. The color TVs were composited and tweaked in the flame by Nick Sasso at Manic. Final finishing took the After Effects TIFF frames and conformed in the flame and laid down to D5 at NICE SHOES.

The film basically only existed on hard drives until we were done and laid down to D5. I think it was pretty innovative. The dream sequences on top of the World Trade Towers were shot on green screen, and uncompressed TIFFs were exported out of Avid and into FLAME and matte paintings and comps were done in flame. The intro animation was done in After Effects.

www.abledangerthemovie.com

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

"NO END IN SIGHT" by Charles Ferguson

http://www.mcnblogs.com/mcindie/archives/2008/08/pr_no_end_in_si.html

No End in Sight is being made available free to the public to reveal the facts about the Bush Administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq to voters concerned with the issues of national security and the adverse economic impact of the war when making decisions in this crucial election. NO END IN SIGHT condenses and clarifies the murky decisions made before and after the invasion and is invaluable to the public’s understanding of what went wrong. The film is both an analysis of an ill-conceived war and a plea to consider the impact of future military actions. According to the film's director, Charles Ferguson, he underwrote the exhibition of the film on YouTube because, "I wanted to make the film, and the facts about the occupation of Iraq, accessible to a larger group of people. My hope is that this will contribute to the process of making better foreign policy decisions moving forward in Iraq and elsewhere. During this election year, it’s important to examine the leadership mentality and policies that caused Iraq to descend into such a horrific state that after 4,000 American deaths, at least a quarter million Iraqis killed, 4 million refugees, and over $2 trillion spent, Iraq remains in a state of near collapse."

antisocial notworking

'antisocial notworking' is a repository of projects that explore the pseudo-agency of online social platforms. It takes a number of recent software projects as its inspiration to reflect upon the fashion for 'participation' with the arts sector and culture in general. The concern is how the Internet is increasingly charactised as a 'platform' (or collective machine) for 'social' uses, but to question what is meant by the term social in such descriptions. Although social networking platforms rely on user-generated content, what is the nature of this participation? What alternatives (or antitheses) can be identified?
http://project.arnolfini.org.uk/antisocial/
By 'anti-social', I do not mean (to be) unfriendly but to highlight that social networking platforms are already anti-social in as much as they display contradictory tendencies (both connecting and disconnecting socialities). In this way, and undoubtedly part of a backlash to the popularity of social networking in general, I am not referring to 'antisocial web' sites such as Hatebook that enable you to create a list of people that you don't want to be friends with (as opposed to Facebook that allows you to collect friends).
http://project.arnolfini.org.uk/projects/2008/antisocial/notes.php
To submit a project, go to:
http://project.arnolfini.org.uk/projects/2008/antisocial/form.php
The projects and other online resources are available as part of the subdomain 'project.arnolfini' - an online experimental production and management system:
http://project.arnolfini.org.uk

MULTIVERSITY, or the Art of Subversion.

In fact, if we concentrate on contemporary art, this undoubted importance can be seen on at least three levels.
The first is the central role which immaterial assets and knowledge, creativity and affections, relational and communicational talents assume for contemporary forms of production: artistic production cannot get away from this centrality.
The second is the relationship between cultural production and the metropolis where the interlacing between town-planning and architecture, fashion and design, art and literature, in that productive social space par excellence – the urban basins – becomes on the one side a crucial element in the process of subjectification through which are built the multiplicity of forms of life which inhabit it, to the other decisive factor for defining the strategic positioning of each metropolitan area in the economic competition between global cities.
The third is the relationship between the art market and the financial capital: at a global level, banks and multinationals are the among the main investors in a sector which today seems to be the only one to have not been even slightly touched by the crisis which has overrun the world system of money circulation.
What we are now seeing is a complex capturing system, which capital has brought into play in the multiple flow of informal cultural production, from the appropriation of the ability to cooperate of individual intelligences and individual ways of life, to ensure the valorisation of what has been defined as the "symbolic collective capital".
The complexity of these dynamics depends on a double mechanism of exploitation, where the first aspect is made up of the barriers of intellectual property and from each further moment of private appropriation of general social knowledge, while the second is the parasitic rapport which is established towards the creative production by those speculative interventions occurring in the body of the metropolis, there where state and private institutions, large events and art fairs, and cultural zones and meta-zones are established.
Here the main question is to understand widespread behaviours and the methods of intervention which could change a social composition, already central in the forms of contemporary production, in a political composition. Examined also will be the core issues of the role of university training on the one side, and the communication network on the other side, played within the most complex organisation of the work of the "culture factory".
An indispensable requisite for this discussion is the comparison around contemporary art understood as a "wider social institution": from the historical-artistic events which drove art in the post-war period from the transcendental space of medial specificity to the social space with its relationships of strength, to the relationships established between art, social movements and cultural activism outside of any avant-garde rhetoric, to the methods of capture by the institutional artistic system and by the financial ciruits of a vast heritage of critical thought and conflicting ways of life.
1. Art and activism
2. Art and the market: between creative freedom and financial capture
3. Art and metropolis
4. Art and multitude: for the enquiry into social composition, conflicts and organisation of live work in the "culture factory"
All this to get to the key point: how to transform this social composition into a political composition?
All this to get to the key point: how to transform this social composition into a political composition?

JUDGE DISMISSES MAIL FRAUD CASE AGAINST BIO-ARTIST KURTZ

Buffalo, NY—A process that has taken nearly four years may be coming to an end. On Monday, April 21, Federal Judge Richard J. Arcara ruled to dismiss the indictment against University at Buffalo Professor of Visual Studies Dr. Steven Kurtz.In June 2004, Professor Kurtz was charged with two counts of mail fraud and two counts of wire fraud stemming from an exchange of $256 worth of harmless bacteria with Dr. Robert Ferrell, Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.
Dr. Kurtz planned to use the bacteria in an educational art exhibit about biotechnology with his award-winning art and theater collective, Critical Art Ensemble.Professor Kurtz’ lawyer, Paul Cambria, said that his client was “pleased and relieved that this ordeal may be coming to an end.
”The prosecution has the right to appeal this dismissal. How the prosecution will proceed is unknown at this time. If an appeal were undertaken the case would move to the New York Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City.Lucia Sommer, Coordinator of the CAE Defense Fund, which raises funds for Kurtz’ legal defense, said, “We are all grateful that after reviewing this case, Judge Arcara took appropriate action.” She added that “this decision is further testament to our original statements that Dr. Kurtz is completely innocent and never should have been charged in the first place.”
BACKGROUND ON DR. STEVEN KURTZ AND CRITICAL ART ENSEMBLE
Critical Art Ensemble (which Kurtz co-founded in 1987 with Steven Barnes) has won numerous awards for its bio-art, including the prestigious 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation Wynn Kramarsky Freedom of Artistic Expression Grant, honoring more than two decades of distinguished work. The group has been commissioned to exhibit and perform in many of the world's cultural institutions—including the London Museum of Natural History; The ICA, London; the Whitney Museum and the New Museum in NYC; the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington, DC; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; der Volksbüne, Berlin; ZKM, Karlsruhe; El Matadero, Madrid; Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Museo de Arte Carrilo Gil, Mexico City and many more.
For more information about the case, please visit: caedefensefund.org

Public Preparation

http://www.publicpreparation.org/
Public Preparation is an international platform for knowledge-production and network-based communication. First and foremost, it is a space for self-education focusing on current practices of critical thinking and production in the field of contemporary art. The practice of Public Preparation is mainly based on creating situations for experience, reflection and discussion in various formats. The project is a method for recognising, discussing and establishing intellectual and professional connections. In that sense, it is a collective exercise in order to get ready for the upcoming future – a continuous preparation process that can never be complete but is always ready to take action.
The main agenda of Public Preparation is to concentrate on the questions linked to the concept of artist as a citizen. If we think of the society as a democratic communal project, then everybody who participates in this project is responsible for it – when noticing that something is wrong, one needs to speak up immediately. Contemporary art is a crucial part of the public realm and artists have the power and responsibility to be actively engaged in the process of imagining and changing the social reality. The current phase of Public Preparation activities is dealing critically with the growing tendencies of nationalism in contemporary Europe, aiming to envision alternative ways to think about global community.
Public Preparation started in February 2007 as a sequence of informal encounters which at the same time constituted the publicly visible preparation process of the Biennale of Young Artists (Oct 2007, Tallinn) as well as the course of preparing and educating the public for the Biennale. After the Biennale of Young Artists is over, Public Preparation continues as an independent collaborative project between Rael Artel and Airi Triisberg.

"Passing Drama", by Angela Melitopoulos

"Passing Drama", by Angela Melitopoulos, 1999,
Experimental documentary on refugee history of refugees from Asia Minor (1923) who fled to Greece and became work slaves in Hitler's Germany in WWII. The film translates the sound-picture of my family's migration history that was passed by voice from one generation to the next
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=5023106219120789424&hl=de
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pAqy4U0xjg
Short text
Passing Drama a videoessay directed by Angela Melitopoulos 66 min, PAL, Digibeta, 1999, (German and Greek language, subtitled in English) contact: nc-melitoan@netcologne.de
„PassingDrama“ is based on different recollections told by refugees. This videoessay is the woven sound picture of the migration of Angela Melitopoulos’family. Drama is the name of a small city in Northern Greece. The city is inhabited by refugees who are survivors of deportations from Asia Minor to Greece in 1923. In World War II their children escaped the Bulgarian occupation and became workeslave in Hitler’s Germany. Interviews with those refugees connected to Melitopoulos father’s recite of his departure from Greece to Vienna are tracing a diagonal path through Europe crossing four different national states. The homeland of these refugees was changing continuously. Their storytelling relates to the local condition of integration. To choose recites from people who have experienced an exodus nearly forgotten in European history meant to consider ways of making the process of forgetting a part in the process of notation (montage). Telling a story, which has been transmitted, retold, re-memorised from one generation to the next meant to make a film on the subject of refugee narration itself. Fragments of recorded interviews formed the voice level in that the story appears as a texture made out of different densities of concret or superfluous „thought-flows“. In their narration the refugees connected their own words with generated word-constructions of others. The recalled words of others intensified through the melody of their voices.

Award of the German Filmcritics for experimental video 2000 Award of the Council of Europe, VideoArt Festival Locarno Award of Internationale Mediafestival Medi@terra Athens
http://www.videophilosophy.de/
http://eipcp.net/transversal/0107/melitopoulos/en/#_ftn3
http://www.eipcp.net/bio/melitopoulos
http://www.videophilosophy.de/tc-geographies.net/workshops/istambul_03.html
http://www.projektmigration.de/
http://www.transitmigration.org/
http://dictionaryofwar.org/en-dict/v2v/Timescapes_Angela_Melitopolous
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr1201/rcfr13b.htm
http://www.republicart.net/disc/representations/melitopoulos01_en.pdf
http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/001760.php
http://freebitflows.t0.or.at/f/participants/angelamelitopoulos
http://www.fdk-berlin.de/en/arsenal-experimental/news-display/article/486/273.html?cHash=12ba233e05
Full Play is a Multimedia Installation performance that took place at the Villette Numerique, which means “Digital Village” at the Parc de la Villette located in Paris, France on September 24th thru September 29th, 2002. http://actioncamfilms.com/fullplay/fullplay.htm

Slobodnakultura.org

Slobodnakultura.org (freeculture.org) is a meta-organization, a collective for the enhancement of free culture, free software and free knowledge that was initiated by artists, theorists, activists, media and law experts and organizations: Kuda.org Novi Sad <http://kuda.org/?q=en>, Dez.org Belgrade <http://www.dez.org.yu/>, Wikimedia Serbia <http://rs.wikimedia.org/>, Biro Belgrade <http://birobeograd.info/about.html>, Žene na delu (Women at Work) Belgrade <http://zenergija.org/>, Act Woman Belgrade, Mreža kreativnih ljudi (Creative Network) Belgrade <http://www.creemaginet.com/>, Free Software Network FSN <http://ngo.fsn.org.yu/>, Linux User Group Novi Sad <http://www.ns-linux.org/> and Linux User Group Belgrade (LUG) <http://www.linux-beograd.org.yu/>, GNU Club Niš <http://gnu.elfak.ni.ac.yu/>, BG Wireless <http://www.bgwireless.net/en/>, Gradilište Niš.
Slobodnakultura org is member of Druga scena (drugascena.org) (Other Scene) a platform that brings together formal and informal organizations and groups from Belgrade that work on the field of contemporary art and culture, activism and theory.<http://drugascena.org/>

Telekommunisten

Welcome to Dialstation
Dialstation is a flexible and cheap calling service, independent of any cellphone provider. Dialstation is the ideal way to make international calls from your mobile telephone. Inexpensive and convenient, dialstation works with any normal telephone and does not require any special software to use. Dialstation is designed to be used worldwide, with a local simcard you can easily avoid high roaming fees.Remember when making a phone call was easy? Just pick up the phone, dial and talk. Simple! Well, that was good enough for a world where long distance calling was an uncommon thing. Those days are over. The long distance rates charged by the incumbent telecommunications corporations are simply far too expensive.
http://www.telekommunisten.net/

Book Review Ilan Pappé: "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine":

NotJust Collateral Damage

The Israeli historian Ilan Pappé takes a new look at the expulsionof the Palestinians in 1948. According to Pappé, the Palestinians'exodus was not an unfortunate side-effect of the war, but an act ofethnic cleansing planned long in advance. Martina Sabra reports on the book

http://qantara.de/webcom/show_article.php/_c-476/_nr-921/i.html