Image: Vittore Baroni, "Real Corrispondence 6", 1981 (part of a series of homonym flyers). The diagram was later re-edited in the postcard "The Evolution of Art", published by Ragged Edge Press in 1990.

The transmediale (Festival for Art and Digital Culture of Berlin, Germany) website has been updated, with information about the new festival structure, the new transmediale direction and team, dates of the festival, call for works and description of ongoing projects. The next festival will take place from January 31st until February 5th, and the theme for the 2012 edition is: In/Compatible.

Since September 1st, 2011, I will be taking part of the transmediale team in Berlin running a new experimental project named Resource for Transmedial Culture, a networking and curating initiative that extends into ongoing, year-round activity with touchdowns at each festival. The resource works towards the creation of a project of distributed networks and a knowledge production laboratory of art and research within transmediale.

As a combination of networking, research and curating, the resource is a new framework for festival related projects that happen throughout the year. Through the resource Transmediale aims at giving something back to local and translocal community as well to create a dynamic feedback to the festival content. Through a separate call later in the year, a number of projects will be selected to be co-hosted by the resource, with events during 2012 and a presence at the 2013 festival.

The launch of the resource will take place in Febraury 2012 and will in itself be an important feature of the Transmediale 25th anniversary, looking into the future while acknowledging the importance of the festival as an accessible and dynamic forum for the translocal media art scene as well as for interdisciplinary cultural producers and researchers.

More info will follow!

http://www.transmediale.de/beyond/tm-resource

Press release: Researchers proudly present fake academic publishing!

»A fake is a fake. Anyway« Les Liens Invisibles

»We can only guess that fake publishing will mark the dawning of a new information era« The Financial Times

NYHEDSAVISEN: PUBLIC-INTERFACES is a fake newspaper presenting cutting edge research in an accessible FREE tabloid format. The newspaper is a 100% genuine copy of the famous Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

The increasing demand for publication of academic peer-reviewed journal articles must be met. Unfortunate examples demonstrate that this may lead to plagiarism. This is not a viable solution. Research must be original and academia is not lacking original content.
But perhaps researchers need new visions of how to produce research? Perhaps the readers need new ways of consuming research? Why not imagine academic research as something that can be consumed on a daily basis, in the train or at the breakfast table?

On April 1, at 13 am, NYHEDSAVISEN: PUBLIC-INTERFACES was handed out to the public at the metro station ‘DR Byen/Universitetet’ in Copenhagen as well as at the central railway station in Aarhus and the State Library. Also, issues will be tactically placed in selected free newspaper stands and at University lunchrooms worldwide.

Emerging from the Digital Aesthetics Research Center and the Center for Digital Urban Living (Aarhus University), the aim of NYHEDSAVISEN: PUBLIC-INTERFACES is to encompass the changing concept of the ‘public’. This is the result of an ongoing research in the computer interface.

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Seminar on the Arts and Politics of Participation, April 2, 15.00h @ AHAcktitude 2011, Italy, Academy of Fine Art of Carrara, organised by Tatiana Bazzichelli, Loretta Borrelli, Simona Lodi & Vera Martini.

The next AHAcktitude 2011, the national meeting of the AHA mailing list, is taking place in the city of Carrara, on April 1-3 hosted by the Fine Art Academy of Carrara.

The program is very rich and participated. Conferences, debates, workshops and performances will involve students, artists, activists and professors.

On Saturday from 15.00-18.00, Loretta Borrelli, Simona Lodi, Vera Martini and I are organizing a collaborative seminar on the topic: Arts and Politics of Participation. All the members of the AHA: Activism-Hacking-Artivism network and new participants are welcome. During this seminar, we are investigation the meaning of participation in the context of capitalistic strategies in the field of networking practices and exchange.

Below is the text of my intervention, a critique of the concept of participation and artivism in the time of social media (language: Italian).

Racconto di un’esperienza: verso una critica dell’artivismo?
di Tatiana Bazzichelli

Il concetto di partecipazione è centrale per sciogliere alcuni nodi che riguardano l’evoluzione e le trasformazioni del concetto di “fare rete” nell’era dei social media. Le mie riflessioni sono la conseguenza di un percorso che sto portando avanti a livello universitario durante la scrittura del mio dottorato in Danimarca e sono anche la conseguenza di un percorso di diretto coinvolgimento nell’ambito della scena attivista (o meglio artivista) in Italia sin dalla metà degli anni 90. Quindi, il mio contributo va pensato come soggettivo, e di base si tratta di un racconto di un’esperienza, che citando Chiara Zamboni, “è allo stesso tempo dono ai presenti e desiderio di essere aiutati nel decifrarla” (Zamboni, 2009: 34).

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A series of initiatives on Post Porn organized by the students of the Brera Academy of Fine Art in Milan: Sapessi com’è strano il Postoporno a Milano!

Together with Gaia Novati, I will held a seminar on Indie Porn & Net Porn – Pornography as a subjective and collaborative experience, on April 5 (10.00-18.00) at the Brera Art Academy – and in the night of the same day, after long time The Traveling Porno Karaoke Show (Italian version) will come back at the Social Center Torchiera in Milan (starting: 19.30)!

Janez Janša
Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art Ljubljana

Friday Lectures 2011. Dep. Information and Media Studies, Aarhus University
February 18, 14.00-16.00. Det lille Auditorium, IT-huset, Åbogade, Aarhus, DK

Janez Jansa, Janez Jansa, Janez Jansa 002199616 (Identity Card), Ljubljana, 2007. Courtesy: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana

Janez Janša, Janez Janša, Janez Janša

NAME Readymade

NAME Readymade is a project developed by three Slovenian artists – who all changed their names to Janez Janša in the summer of 2007. It is focused on the acts of changing one’s personal name and the effects of such gesture, opening up a series of questions, from what is real and what is mediated to the questions of identity and political in art. Janša, Janša and Janša turned around the relational scheme between art and life as it was developed in the 20th century, so that their art methods cut deeply into their material lives and the lives of their immediate surrounding.

Produced by: Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana
Hosted by: Tatiana Bazzichelli

Supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana
Supported by: DARC, Digital Aesthetics Research Centre, Aarhus Univerity

Conference and PhD workshops

Image by Les Liens Invisibles

12-14 January 2011
Aarhus University, Denmark
Kasernen, building 1584, rooms 124 & 120

Public Interfaces Conference brings together researchers from Aarhus University, University of Plymouth, and guests to address the broad theme of Public Interfaces as part of ongoing research in Digital Urban Living. It is organized by Center for Digital Urban Living and DARC (Digital Aesthetics Research Centre), Aarhus University  in collaboration with Dept. of Aesthetic Studies.

Emerging from DARC’s ongoing research around interface criticism, the aim is to broaden issues to encompass the development of urban interfaces, and the changing concept of the ‘public’. What do we mean by public interface now?

Research questions
Whilst experimentation and developments in the culture of free software reflects emergent and self-organizing public actions, how does this modify our understanding of public interfaces? Can the public interface be used as a useful concept for understanding changing relations between public and private realms within other fields? Does the public interface offer a way of further examining relational aesthetics, the cultural regeneration agenda and public art? Does the public interface provide new understandings of the relationship between creative production and the free market sphere? How does the possible dissolution of the public and private spheres relate to bio politics and contemporary forms of power? Does the public interface suggest new borders or even the dissolution of borders between the public and private, humans and machines, the centre and periphery?

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In the recent article I wrote for the Italian IT portal Punto Informatico, “NetStArt/ I retroscena delle geografie digitali”, I presented the new project of the Italian duo Les Liens Invisibles: R.I.O.T. – Reality Is Out There.

Created for the Share Festival in Turin and presented during an outdoor workshop for the first time, the work “R.I.O.T. / Reality Is Out There” (here the website) is based on the concept of “augmented reality”. Through the use of smart phones in the urban landscape it is possible to access a parallel infosphere, and as Les Liens Invisibles point out, re-appropriate the public space. The various virtual data and geo-coded levels visible using smart phones become a geography to discover and reveal, but also an opportunity to invade and decompose consciously – and ironically – the everyday life. As stated in the website of the Share Festival, “the inspiration of the new Les Liens Invisibles project is the theme of Share Festival 2010: the error / smart mistakes, which the team plays creating an alteration of reality with the help of these technologies“. The workshop developed through a collective walk in the city of Turin, discovering the installations hidden in the virtual landscape (see the map).

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