The Marcel Duchamp Studies Online Journal

http://www.toutfait.com
more on Art Science Research Laboratory
http://www.asrlab.org/

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.

The Birth of Primary Cinema from the Spirit of Sound - Feature Article by Frank Rothkamm

on Furthernoise http://www.furthernoise.org/index.php?url=page.php&ID=273&iss=71
It is about eleven o'clock in the morning in my studio in Los Angeles. I look out the window and stare at the Hollywood sign in the distance. The phone almost never rings. If it does, I pick up and nobody is on the line. After a while my mind drifts and a single thought forms in my head like a mantra:
As the rate of information is increasing, so is its comprehensibility decreasing.
I realize that this is especially true for motion pictures, arguably the first digital art form because they're made of single images floating by at the rate of twenty four frames per second. At this rate however, the perception is one of continuous motion. Because of the high rate of images per second, or, of information given per second, the brain (or let me use a Kantian term: the understanding) can no longer understand or process the single image. The development of the modern cinema in Hollywood has only increased the misunderstanding of the single image by constantly increasing the rate of events per second. When I turn on the TV, a SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon is interrupted by a commercial. The longer the show continues, the more often the commercials are shown. The scenes in these commercials are cut so fast and there are so many images per second that I have no idea of what I'm actually watching and thus, no idea what it is that I'm supposed to buy. I do not try to understand anything anymore, I just sit here and let the events pass by.
My eyes drift back to the Hollywood sign: Motion pictures are based on an illusion.

Disability and Poetics

Read this wonderfull conversation on "Disability and Poetics" in Amber DiPietra 's Blog
http://www.nonsitecollective.org/node/397
http://www.nonsitecollective.org/blog/78

YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES

PRESENTS: http://www.yhchang.com/

#***one of the most beautiful, strange, conceptual net art sites***#!

thanks to: http://www.visualcorrespondents.com/

Rainbow Platform - An initiative under the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008

Your Europe - contribute to the diversity consultation.
From now until 16 May you can rewrite how Europe should tackle cultural diversity. Help shape the future by going online and responding to a paper produced by the 'Rainbow Platform' - Civil Society Platform for Intercultural Dialogue, an initiative of the ECF and Culture Action Europe (EFAH) - facilitated by LabforCulture.
You can comment on the recommendations in the paper and even add your own submissions! Just log on to the site http://rainbowplatform.labforculture.org> quickly register, read Rainbow Paper II and contribute your comments/changes. This paper brings many issues of intercultural dialogue to the fore. Should there be a system of monitoring and reporting on the practice of intercultural dialogue, and if so, who should do this? Is it right that the EU should 'mainstream' diversity policies in its various programmes? Can there be an agreed 'European standard' for supporting culture?
The set of recommendations is very much a work-in-progress. Your constructive feedback is absolutely vital. The results will be discussed at a plenary meeting of the Rainbow Platform in Brussels on June 4th 2008 - the same date on which the Platform becomes an officially recognised discussion partner with the EU institutions.

Since October 2006 the Rainbow Platform (Civil Society Platform for Intercultural Dialogue) has brought together over 200 organisations from many sectors to share intercultural dialogue practices and discuss links to policy. The results were made public in January 2008 ( Rainbow Paper I ) and have been built upon since: Rainbow Paper II is now ready for on-line consultation.

The Platform was initiated by EFAH and ECF and is supported by a grouping of European foundations: an attempt to strike links between the thinking on cultural diversity in the arts and culture with that of organisations in the fields of life-long-learning, youth, social affairs, anti-racism, minority rights and inter-religious dialogue. The Platform engages with the political process under the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008 and beyond.

For details go to
ECF:Advocacy Actions
EFAH:Civil Society Platform for Intercultural Dialogue

Encounters with Civilization: From Alexander the Great to Mother Teresa By GEZIM ALPION

BOOK REVIEW
http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?clid=30&id=228850&usrsess=1
Spotlight: Strangers with human faces?

The reader has a vast repertoire of narrative styles to engage with... A review by Bonita Aleaz

Encounters with Civilization: From Alexander the Great to Mother Teresa (A collection of essays on Albania, Egypt, the United Kingdom and India written between 1993 and 2006)

By GEZIM ALPION
EDITED BY GASTON ROBERGE
Meteor Books in association with St. Xavier's College, 2008
Price: $19.95

The last paragraph of the foreword by Gaston Roberge perhaps foregrounds and becomes the running theme of the book under review. Gezim Alpion is a foreigner 'encountering' diverse life styles, ideologies and processes. He is positioned in Britain but typifies the deep-seated pathos of the foreigner, experienced universally down the ages. He remains the perpetual onlooker, desirous of inclusion, but is subject to 'social closure'. However, the work does not end on a pessimistic note, rather it foregrounds the essentiality of definitive faith in the human person, and it is this that ultimately underlines continuity of civilizations. Encounters with Civilizations from Alexander the Great to Mother Teresa spans centuries and cultures, but despite the apparent impossibility of encapsulating within a slim volume the extreme diversity of cultures chronologically quite distinct from each other, there is a running theme that provides the link. It is a work on Albanians as the 'other' in different locales encountering different cultures, and Gezim is the distant Albanian onlooker recounting the varieties of 'social closure' encountered /negotiated or even pulverized by his compatriots in different time periods. The locales visited are Albania, Egypt, Britain, and India and the styles of narration adopted are equally varied. They range from the dialogue style of drama, imaginary conversations with a ghost, to the mournful cry narrated by a native on seeing his land being vilified in the name of progress. The reader has a vast repertoire of narrative styles to engage with. Two important behavioural traits appear throughout the book and the author has taken considerable pains to weave the manifestations of these traits in each of the locales presented in the book. These are 'foreigner complex' and 'social closure'. The saga of Muhammad Ali is not very well known. Generally referred to as the founder of modern Egypt, Ali was an Albanian and had been registered with the Sultan of Turkey's army. He was deputed to Egypt, then under the Turkish Sultanate to restore the authority of the Porte to a chaotic Egypt. The country had been reeling under waves of alien rule since centuries, the Polemic Pharaohs who originated from Greece, the subsequent Roman suzerainty; the Mamluk overlordship; the Ottoman, the French and finally British rule. So there were ample historical records to almost institutionalize Egypt's 'foreigner complex'. It was Mohammed Ali who set in motion the reverse process, initiating the military, economic and cultural rebirth of the country. The Albanian veneration for cultural antiquity was used to re-impose the concept of worth for one's own culture and national pride. Foreigner complex is actually a double-edged behavioural trait. It may develop both within the foreign ruler towards the subject 'other', or among the subjects towards the alien ruler. Ruth Phillips Martinez believes that an average human being's inner reaction to 'foreigners' is the same as that of canines, both bare their teeth at each other. This is primitive instinct borne of distrust and animosity. Foreigners in different lands to a large extent carry their "national" gods with them. To what extent blind adherence of the same is resorted to by the foreign ruler or to what extent such influences are sought to be curbed, depends on the motivation of the ruler. On the other hand, the perception of inferiority, in lifestyles and speech may inbreed rebelliousness among the subject people, which eventually can have different outlets, revivals of ancient cultural traits being one form. The north-eastern tribal communities of India effected a backlash against monolithic christianizing processes and near total denigration of their past. There has been a tremendous surge towards rewriting their history through indigenous lenses today; this is coupled with even state sponsored 'revivals' of ritualistic cultural practices. The Kosovars of Albania on the other hand are unfortunate indeed in not having experienced the largesse of a ruler such as Muhammad Ali. They remain under foreign occupation denuded totally of any hopes for total autonomy or even of peace. The treatment meted to Albania by the European occupation is in keeping with, as Gezim explains in a different section altogether, the imagery of the 'backward' and 'strangest' state in Europe, in the British media. Racial prejudice towards the Balkans is not new but goes back to the period of Octavius Caesar, who crowned himself King of Egypt in 32 BC, since then the West has relentlessly pursued the looting and plundering of 'inferior' cultures and civilizations. In order to retain its political and subsequent economic dominance over the eastern parts of Europe, the continuous maligning of the 'infidel' became a routine exercise. Gezim notes with some emotion, the maligning enters fiction, particularly children's fiction. JK Rowling the creator of the famous Harry Potter series, in at least three of her novels posits Albania as the hapless area, housing the evil 'darklord' Voldemort; Agatha Christie, and Herge, the creator of the Tintin series have equally typified the Balkans as harbouring evil, mystery, ignorance, set apart from the civilized sophistication achieved by the West. There have also been instances where the Balkans have appeared in writings of authors who have never visited the area, setting the trend for what is referred to by K.E.Fleming as "fictional Balkan woods". A content analysis of British newspapers published between 2001 and 2006 shows a spate of articles showing Albania's skewed presence, all of them at a time when " Albania had experienced political stability, law and order… (was) maintained across the country, and many Albanians (had) seen an increase in their savings and a significant improvement in their living standards."(p109) The implication here is that there is a deliberateness manifested in, and through the media to retain the imagery of Eastern Europe's confused chaotic state vis-a-vis the progress and sophistication of Western Europe. Social closure is the other significant issue dealt with, in the book. Even though British Home Office statistics reveal that asylum seekers constitute 2-3 per cent of the population, recent polls have shown a vastly inflated figure: such people constitute 23 per cent of the country's population. It can be argued according to the author that the tabloid press is largely responsible for the reported and unreported racial tensions in recent years. The almost paranoid reaction to such reporting can well be imagined, since the tabloid readers often read " anything else". A report in The Guardian perhaps best sums up the extent of 'social closure ' in vogue in Britain against immigrant skilled/ unskilled labour: "More than half of university staff is employed on short-term contracts. Those requiring work permits have no right to stay in the country once the contract expires…It is hard to imagine a more effective way of keeping your workforce passive and afraid". (The Guardian, 23/7/2003). Gezim does not disclose personal experiences of immigrant university professors, perhaps it is an extremely delicate issue. However, his slim volume contains a remarkable play that he authored. If only the dead could listen has been staged across Europe to packed audiences. This perhaps brings out most significantly the piteous state of the outsider, when confronting another similarly positioned on foreign soil. The Indian component in the book has portions on Mother Teresa, the Albanian in Indian soil. Most of it refers to passages from his earlier work Mother Teresa: Saint or Celebrity? with some additional information provided by the editor. The book has important messages for those wishing to seek their futures on foreign soil, though Indians' wishing to relocate in their pursuit of the elusive 'better futures' do not officially categorize as asylum seekers, yet, they become equally subject to behavioural traits such as foreigner complex and social closure in the areas supposed to furbish such futures. (The reviewer teaches in the Department of Political Science, Calcutta University)

Greenvertise!

If we’re going to re-forest clearcut areas, why not fund it by selling advertising?

http://www.ecotronica.net/

Thoughts on Curating - How to Bring About a Shift in Perception

This ability to create new meanings and connections between things is especially important for promoting a relatively obscure genre like screendance. In order to educate viewers and attract new audiences we need to give them a window for entry and help them connect with the form. We are a media savvy culture, in which the average viewer can identify the genre and conventional structures of any given media clip in a matter of seconds. Screendance is just different enough to feel strange and foreign to the typical viewer, but only a slight shift of perception is necessary to make it seem familiar and identifiable.
http://greatdance.com/movetheframe/2008/03/thoughts-on-curating-how-to-br.php
More videos: http://www.youtube.com/profile_favorites?user=malindarayallen

Critique of V.S. Ramachandran’s ideas

From: hplambert@hotmail.com

Subject: Re: Synesthesia

Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:12:51 +0200

Bonjour, dear Y.........

Bonjour!

- I observe that a lot of messages in the section Synesthesia have no direct relations with the phenomenon of synesthesia but generally speaking with the relations between arts and the new field of neurosciences. I consider that to be very meaningful. The term synesthesia is used more as a metonymy for something much more extensive, which would include neuropsychology, neurobiology, cognitive psychology and what is called neuroesthetics.

- The idea of” that artists and writers are able to explore specific functioning of the cognitive system through their works” has nothing new. It is largely used by Semir Seki in Inner Vision: An Exploration of Art and the Brain. Oxford University Press: Oxford. (1999).Zeki who coined the term neuro-aesthetics illustrated every specialized cortical era by a painter. Fauvism was supposed to have explored the V4 era, specialized in the colour processing, and kinetic art would correspond to the specialization of V5. In his conference on the “Beautiful”, Jean-Pierre Changeux gives the example of Matisse as a neurophysiologist artist. There is an excellent article called « Art and Neuroscience », written by John Hyman, on line (http://www.interdisciplines.org/artcognition/papers/15 ), from a conference on line about art and cognition organized by ENS/ CNRS/ Institut Jean Nicod in 2005. John Hyman reminds the idea that artists would be neurologists as studying the brain with their own techniques is just a modernized rewriting of Helmhotz’s theory of 1871. According to Helmholtz, artists were explorers of visual system. John Hyman quotes Helmholtz in a text of 1871:

"We must look upon artists as persons whose observation of sensuous impressions is particularly vivid and accurate, and whose memory for these images is particularly true. That which long tradition has handed down to the men most gifted in this respect, and that which they have found by innumerable experiments in the most varied directions, as regards means and methods of representation, forms a series of important and significant facts, which the physiologist, who has here to learn from the artist, cannot afford to neglect. The study of works of art will throw great light on the question as to which elements and relations of our visual impressions are most predominant in determining our conception of what is seen, and what others are of less importance. As far as lies within his power, the artist will seek to foster the former at the cost of the latter."

After this quotation, Hyman comments: “In this passage, Helmholtz combines the idea that artists test and explore the visual system Most visual scientists have abandoned Helmholtz’s theory of vision. They no longer talk about sensuous impressions, or about the unconscious mind interpreting sensuous impressions. Instead, it is generally held that different parts of the brain are simultaneously performing various highly specialized tasks, reacting to form, or to motion, or to colour; and that somehow or other the results of these processes are combined to form a unified visual perception, although nobody is sure yet how this synthesis occurs.”

The article is furthermore a devastating critique of V.S. Ramachandran’s ideas on neuroesthetics.

3 For relations between arts and neurosciences, and especaillya arts and neuropsychology, I would recommend some books or articles:

- Rose, F. C. (Ed.), (2004). Neurology and Arts: Painting, Music, Literature. London: Imperial College Press.

-Bogousslavsky, J., & Boller. F. (Eds.). (2005). Neurological disorders in Famous Artists.

-Basel: Karger AG. Chatterjee, A. (2004). “The neuropsychology of visual artistic production”, Neuropsychologia, (42) 1568-83.

4 Sorry for that, I would indicate some personal papers. But one was done in Leonardo Conference in Prague, called : « neuroaesthtics, neujrological disorders and creativity”, which begins by: « Neurology of the arts or neuroaesthetics is a new branch of neurology especially concerned by neuropsychology of visual artistic production and cerebral localisation of musical perception and musical memory (Seki, 1999; Rose, 2004; Chatterjee, 2004; Bogousslavky & Boller, 2005). Among the different activities the new field of research is gathering, such as study of pictorial representation of neurological symptoms in the art history, diagnosis of artists’neurological diseases, this article will focus on the study of relations between cognitive disabilities for neurological disorders and artistic production by visual artists. Neurological deficits can change the work in content or in style, but can be used also as sources of inspiration, especially in the case of epilepsy and migraine. But some final diagnosis remain controversial as regards for instance the nature of the disease of Ravel, Van Gogh, or Giorgio de Chirico, (Bogousslavky & Boller, 2005) or even De Kooning!. According to Anjan Chatterjee (2004) writing about the breakdown of the visual representations: “The work produced by artists who have suffered from brain damage can contribute to our understanding of these representations“(p.1568) and it is also the opinion of Bogousslavky and Boller (2005): »Among more personal writings:

- Article, « Art et cerveau : vers la neuro-esthétique ? », in « Rencontre », Recherches en esthétique, Revue du C.E.R.E.A.P, n°12, 2006.

Cette revue reliée au Laboratoire d’Esthétique Théorique et Appliquée de l’Université de Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne est dirigée par Dominique Berthet, dans le comité de rédaction : Ernest Breleur et Marc Jimenez. - Colloque MutaMorphosis: Challenging Arts and Sciences, International Conference, Prague. A Leonardo 40th Anniversary celebration, Prague, novembre 2007.

Titre de l’intervention : “Neuroesthetics, Neurological Disorders and Creativity“ (La neuro-esthétique, désordres neurologiques et créativité)- Article en ligne : « Littérature, arts visuels, neuroesthétique », http://www.epistemocritique.org/spip.php?rubrique22

Épistémocritique, revue d’études et de recherches sur les littératures et les savoirs, Université du Québec - Intervention : « Dernières traces : l’ultime possibilité créatrice dans la maladie neurologique », Colloque Voyages Au Noir, organisé par le Centre des cultures et des arts de la Caraïbe et la délégation académique aux arts et à la culture, du vendredi 23 novembre au dimanche 25 novembre 2007, Martinique ( on line in the next months)

5 I am preparing an article for a conference on Besançon on memory at he ed of mars and one of my theme is on what Jonah Lehrer wrote on “Proust as an neuroscientist”.The theme is nothing new as we saw with Zeki and even Lemholtz. And furthermore a lot of authentic scientists have wrotten on relations between Proust and neurosociences. . As early as the 9th of november 1998, a specialist of Proust, Yves Tadié had presented in front of the Académie des Sciences morals et politiques, pusblished in the Revue of the Académie an article about “Proust neurologue”. In his recension for books and articles on it, there were, D.Shacter, Searching for memory, I. Rosenfield, Invention of memory, G. Edelman, Bright air, Bright fire, without speacking of Changeux and Vigouroux. What would be original in what he wrote on the theme should be on the speculative explanation of involuntary memory by prions, - whitout entering in easy commentaries of bizarre errors on Proust’s work. It is why in the article I compare this kind of new scientific fantasies with Narby’s explanation of memories in the nature. The well-know Jeremy Narby’s «hypothesis » in The cosmic snake: DNA and the origins of Knowledge postulates a link between the genetic code and shamanic knowledge, refering to a speculative hypothesis, that of Popp, Gu and Li. about biophotons like cellular language. In both texts, Narby’s and Lehrer’s you have the same importation of highly speculative theories connected to the genetic code to explain memory mechanisms. Of cause, my point of view is not to judge or condemn, but from an anthropological point of view, to describe phenomena of the contemporary imaginary.

Hervé-Pierre Lambert

Institut Nicod. EHESS

Aaron Katz’s Quiet City

The following essay by Ray Carney on Aaron Katz’s Quiet City accompanies a 2-disc DVD release from Benten Films out this week of Quiet City and Katz's first film, Dance Party, USA.

Mainstream film is so much an art of the maximum – the biggest, the flashiest, the fastest, the most exaggerated – that it is easy to forget that the great films all go in the opposite direction. They are, almost without exception, triumphs of minimalism. They rely on subtlety, understatement, indirection, and simplification. In Stranger than Paradise, Down by Law, and Mystery Train, Jim Jarmusch sets long sections of each work in almost empty rooms. In Femme Douce and L’Argent, Robert Bresson silences his characters to such an extent that room tone and traffic noises become more important than what the characters say to each other. In Joan of Arc and Gertrud, Carl Dreyer immobilizes his actors and actually prevents them from “acting” by insisting that they talk in conversational tones even at moments of high drama. But the effect of these acts of reduction is the opposite of a feeling of emptiness or depletion. As is so often the case in art, less is more. Read more

Ray Carney is professor of film and American studies at Boston University. He is the author of more than ten books on film and other art, and manages the largest non–commercial web site in the world devoted to independent film at: http://www.cassavetes.com.

"Creative Class" and critique of creative industries

Out now: MyCreativity reader
Download a low-res pdf from the website.
http://www.networkcultures.org/weblog/archives/2008/01/

About the book: The MyCreativity Reader is a collection of critical research into the creative industries. The material develops out of the MyCreativity Convention on International Creative Industries Research held in Amsterdam, November 2006. This two-day conference sought to bring the trends and tendencies around the creative industries into critical question.

The 'creative industries' concept was initiated by the UK Blair government in 1997 to revitalise de-industrialised urban zones. Gathering momentum after being celebrated in Richard Florida's best-seller The Creative Class (2002), the concept mobilised around the world as the zeitgeist of creative entrepreneurs and policy-makers.

Despite the euphoria surrounding the creative industries, there has been very little critical research that pays attention to local and national and variations, working conditions, the impact of restrictive intellectual property regimes and questions of economic sustainability. The reader presents academic research alongside activist reports that aim to dismantle the buzz-machine.

http://www.networkcultures.org/mycreativity/

The Crisis of Value and the Ethical Economy. By Adam Arvidsson.

It is becoming ever more obvious, as even the mainstream business press is acknowledging this, that the information economy is split in two; we have two economies rather than one (or three, if we include the growing criminal or informal economy which we will not treat in this paper). On the one hand, there is the traditional capitalist economy that works with monetary incentives. This economy still handles the main part of material production: the production of cars, shoes, computer chips, and the transportation and maintenance of these goods. But immaterial production- the production of the ideas, innovations, experiences and other intangibles that virtually everybody agrees to be the most important source of value and development- is increasingly performed by another economy that does not primarily move according to monetary incentives. Most people who participate in creating the enormous wealth of content that give MySpace or YouTube their market values are not in it for the money.

More critique:

Back to the Future of the Creative City: An Archaeological Approach to Amsterdam's Creative Redevelopment

"The dominance of entrepreneurial approaches to city politics is the feature of a new urban regime, labelled the 'Entrepreneurial City'. With origins in the reality of neoliberal state withdrawal from urban plight ... the claims of the new creative city as being a 'great equalizer' actually appear as the opposite; it is based on functional inequality. Now let's take a closer look at the city..."

text : http://www.variant.org.uk/31texts/31FutureCity.html

pdf :http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue31/31CreativeCity.pdf

http://www.makeworlds.org/

http://www.makeworlds.org/

"Towards a synergistic understanding of synaesthesia."

Smilek, Daniel, and Mike J. Dixon. (2002). "Towards a synergistic understanding of synaesthesia." Psyche, volume 8.
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v8/psyche-8-01-smilek.html
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/psyche-index-v1.html
PSYCHE an interdisciplinary journal of research on consciousness
http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/index.html

Cognitive Science

NATURAL BORN CYBORGS? By Andy Clark
http://cedar.humanities.curtin.edu.au/conferences/cade/pdf/CADE_STILLNESS.pdf

The one that "represents" and the one that "interprets"

I think there is always a distance, and this distance is - the difference between how we perceive the world and the way our instrumens do- the fact that we embed a cultural frame on top of our strict perception, in other words there is no perception that is not frame by an interpretation.

I have been working on Art in Extreme Environments for a while now, and recently focusing on art at the Poles with a huge emphasis on art in Antartica. Antactica creates conflict between perception and cognition, what William Fox calls cognitive dissonance (same as in weightlessness actually).

He writes at lengh in his book "Terra Antarctica" (by the way : a big thank you to Lisa Roberts who has mentioned this book on her blog and made me discover it) about the different systems of representation of Antartica : from the maps, to the cartography, to scientific imaging, to art of various kind (the one that "represents" and the one that "interprets" in his wording). He stresses upon the fact that in order to look "true", representational art has/had to "cheat" = what we feel being a bit different of how a true drawing would be. He also emphasizes how our scientific imagery is datas transformed into pictures that are heavily reworked (by illustrators and artists and not the scientists themselves) in order for us to be understandable and to match our understandings (like having red for hot spots for instance). This is well known, and has been the core of Semi-Conductor "Brilliant Noise" film (absolutely a great work of art).

Fox writes (about the comparisons between paintings from the "naked eye", photographies and data imaging from various instruments including satellite images) : What "is" is not exactly what we see, while what we see is not exactly what we represent, and neither of these two images, one a piece of "representational art" and the other a "scientific graphic", is necessarily more accurate or complete a view than the other. Aesthetic choices have been made in both cases; indeed, they are as rampant in scientific imagery as in fine art".

Annick

QANTARA-Dialogue with the Islamic World (1)

Jesus in Islam
Rasul Allah – The Messenger of God
There are many differences between Islam and Christianity, but also similarities; Jesus has a significant role for Muslims too. Aiman Mazyek on the Islamic prophet known as Isa in the Koran...
The Pomaks
Caught in a Three-way Tug-of-War
The Pomaks are Bulgarians who converted to Islam during the Ottoman occupation of the country. In the course of the 20th century, they have been used as pawns in the conflicts between Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey. According to political scientist Emil Mintchev, the solution to their problem lies in the EU...
Muslim Superheroes
The Arab Hulks
In the comic book The 99, Muslim superheroes fight for a better world – and offend conservatives...

[Nictoglobe] Drowning man with cell-phon

Creative insurgency opposes established cultural domination

Contrary to creative resistance, creative insurgency, aims to overthrown and re-establish a new kind of creative order, in which the might and prowess of the mainstream art world is definitively pushed aside to make place for a more profound and human based faculty of sharing and re-distributing objects of art and devotion.Creative insurgency re-claims art’s own, autonomous right to resist and subvert society’s (mis) use of its idiomatic resources. Claims currently made by designers, merchants, industrialists and the like.One of the key debates among art officials, (inter)national cultural experts and scholars concerns changes underway in the nature of insurgency. "Classic" insurgencies sought to seize power and evolved from underground and guerrilla forces. Contemporary insurgencies...

The Other Docs

http://www.tribecafilmfestival.org/news-features-theotherdocs.html
Opinion: The Other Docs
Does the recently announced shortlist for Best Documentary Oscar nominations really include the best titles of the last year? Documentary director AJ Schnack says no, and calls for a new engagement with the art of nonfiction filmmaking. By AJ Schnack
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its shortlist for Best Documentary Feature Oscar on November 19th, many in the documentary community were shocked. Despite a year of debate over new eligibility rules which were supposed to ensure that Oscar nominees were theatrical documentaries, and not television docs in disguise, the Academy's screening committee nonetheless selected just six films which had pursued a true national theatrical release (complete with advertising, screenings for critics, and reporting of box office figures). Some were clearly never more than television pieces and were rushed through their required theatrical release in order to get to their scheduled date with cable TV. At least three of the films have already aired on television in the US.
But it was much more than the TV-versus-theatrical issue which prompted emails and text messages and phone conversations containing words like "sad," "disgusted," "appalled," and "abomination." It was the films themselves—both the ones named, and the ones overlooked. This year, the feeling of anger and despair wasn't prompted by a single missing film—like Hoop Dreams or Crumb in years past—but by the exclusion of a whole group of films, many of which pushed creative and stylistic boundaries or marked the arrival of a major new talent.
Instead of recognizing even a few of these films, the Academy—following the lead of the International Documentary Association, which had announced its finalists just days before—ignored them all, including such widely acclaimed films as Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, Billy the Kid, Protagonist, Manufactured Landscapes, In the Shadow of the Moon, The Devil Came on Horseback, We Are Together, Deep Water, and My Kid Could Paint That, among others.
That's not to say that every film on the shortlist is an outrage. At least a handful are completely deserving, led by Alex Gibney's Taxi to the Dark Side, which won Best Documentary at Tribeca this year and is the only one of the year's major festival juried winners to appear on the shortlist. But none of the dozen or so documentaries I personally believe are truly the cream of 2007 made it to the shortlist. Not one. Full disclosure: My own film, Kurt Cobain About a Son, qualified this year under the Academy's rules. We were not shortlisted. You’d be excused for viewing this commentary as a reaction to personal rejection, though I will say that I always thought the odds ran against us, considering the Academy's historical reluctance to recognize documentaries about popular music figures—or biographical films in general. But if you still think this is a case of sour grapes, I can accept that.
However, my reaction to the Academy's choices stemmed not from my feelings about my own film, but from what the list revealed about how the Academy sees this particular moment in documentary history. We find ourselves at a crossroads, in the midst of a new wave of nonfiction filmmaking in which filmmakers are utilizing craft and filmmaking tools in new, exciting, and sometimes experimental ways. The old rulebook, which treats nonfiction as some specialized offshoot of journalism, has been thrown out. It's an incredibly exciting time to be working within the genre.

Yet, here in this remarkably fertile period in nonfiction filmmaking, these are the choices the Academy and the IDA have made on the two important questions currently facing the documentary community at large: Should we prefer a competent, conventionally styled film to one that swings for the fences, one whose highs hit us in unexpected ways, even if it occasionally falters in its risk-taking? The Academy and the IDA have chosen to stand on the side of conventional and competent. Even more importantly, should we favor a film's message over its craft? Here again, both the Academy and the IDA have answered resoundingly. Craft always comes in last. And this is perhaps the key to what's wrong with documentary filmmaking today. Topic trumps filmmaking. That's why there isn’t a single craft award at the decade-old Full Frame Film Festival. Nor is there a single craft award given annually by the IDA. Nothing for editing, cinematography, composing, or direction. Yet Full Frame does offer an award to the film "that best portrays women in leadership," and another to the film "that best exemplifies the values and relevance of world religions and spirituality," and still another honoring filmmakers who "lay bare the seeds and mechanisms that create war." On Friday, the IDA will present its annual award for "best use of television news footage." No award for creating your own, however.
Why worry, you might ask. Indeed, why should any serious artist be concerned with the whims of organizations which have proven over time to be more interested in recognizing the best cause than the best filmmaking? An email I received recently from a top commissioning editor offers an answer: "The Academy provides about the only benchmark by which the public can judge documentary film." The editor went on to note how difficult it is to explain to non-documentary friends that the genre encompasses more than just the "cut-and-paste archive film"—that it can also mean stories told in creative, inventive ways.
And high-profile organizations like the Academy and the IDA aren’t the only ones taking such a narrow view of nonfiction filmmaking. At a seminar on criticism of nonfiction films last week at the International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam, longtime critic John Anderson asked, "If there were a documentary that cured cancer, would you as a critic turn round and say, 'Well, it may cure cancer, but I don't like the cinematography, it's too long, and it has no theatrical potential?' Are you then doing a good job?" Leaving aside the improbability of such a scenario, what resulted was a group of international film critics all pondering whether one should criticize filmmaking skill if it meant the risk of "damaging the worthy message you agree with." Once again, topic trumps filmmaking. We need critics to dig deep within themselves and write about films from the perspective of their filmmaking, without such singleminded focus on the worthiness of their subjects. We need critics who can describe the art of creating nonfiction instead of just writing summaries of the events that transpire in the documentaries they review. We need a movement of filmmakers, producers, commissioners, and others from within the documentary community to take a stand for craft, to launch a campaign for craft, to set aside tired notions of righteous causes. While the social justice tradition always has, always will, and always should exist in documentary, many of us view nonfiction filmmaking as more than a teaching tool—we see it as something that can be entertaining, something that can be artistic, something that can push stylistic boundaries, something that can reveal the human condition in unexpected ways, and something that can rival narrative as a filmgoing experience. The future of nonfiction is to stand on the side of artists. And that future is now.
AJ Schnack is a filmmaker and writer living in Los Angeles. His nonfiction work includes Kurt Cobain About A Son and Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns), and he writes All These Wonderful Things, a blog primarily devoted to news and issues in the nonfiction community.