Recent Videos posted to Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) on MIT Video

Two Lips Performance

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 20:30:45 GMT

The live performance of "Two Lips," a piece written by Niblock and recorded in 2011 by three different guitar quartets, was played at MIT by students from the Berklee Interdisciplinary Arts Institute under the direction of Neil Leonard.

Knut Åsdam: The Long Gaze, The Short Gaze

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 07:06:30 GMT

How, amidst continual changes in society and media and the shifting relationship between psychology and film spectatorship, can we deal with notions of site, space, society, and subjectivity within cinema today?

John Akomfrah & Lina Gopaul: Considering The Stuart Hall Project

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 20:30:48 GMT

The Stuart Hall Project (2012) is a film on the cultural theorist and sociologist Stuart Hall. Directed by John Akomfrah and produced by Lina Gopaul, the film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in Jan. 2013. Through archival footage, television excerpts, family photographs and music, Akomfrah’s portrayal of Hall's life, work and cultural impact explores issues of identity, cultural acceptance, immigration and assimilation. In this lecture, the filmmakers reflected on the film’s cultural and technological context.

Arthur Jafa: APEX_TNEG

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 08:06:05 GMT

Arthur Jafa is the director of Slowly This (1995), Tree (1999), and Deshotten 1.0 (2009). His cinematographic work includes Daughters of the Dust (1991), for which he won the cinematography award at Sundance Film Festival in 1992; John Akomfrah’s Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993); and Crooklyn (1994), directed by Spike Lee. His writing on black cultural politics has appeared in various publications such as Black Popular Culture and Everything But the Burden.

This event took place on Feb. 25, 2013.

On the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 08:04:35 GMT

Tadej Pogačar has examined indeterminacy and transformation within social systems since 1993 when he established the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Museum of Contemporary Art. In his art practice, he engages in interventionist logic, institutional critique and critical research on social and political issues as well as participatory and collaborative projects.

The “parasitism” of his work is a subtle deconstruction of the horizon of everyday and ruthless challenges to the systems that are used to establish the center, domination and power.

Pogačar recently edited a book, "CODE:RED," on self-organization of urban minorities, informal economies and global sex work. He is the founding and managing director of the P.A.R.A.S.I.T.E. Institute (established in 1998), a non-profit cultural institution that operates the P74 Centre and Gallery and the KAPSULA bookshop/project space in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Tadej Pogačar is the György Kepes research fellow at ACT for fall 2012.

ACT Lecture | Michael Eng: Sound and Semiocapitalism: Affective Labor and the Metaphysics of the Real

Thu, 10 May 2012 07:03:28 GMT

Sound and Semiocapitalism: Affective Labor and the Metaphysics of the Real

This talk will analyse the sonic and affective turns that have appeared relatively recently in both contemporary art practice and current critical thought from the standpoint of what Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi has termed “semiocapitalism.” Though the attention to sound and affect is typically held to be a remedy to the excesses of the past few decades (occularcentrism, the preoccupation with discursivity, and the persistence of form, to name but a few), affect is precisely that which contemporary capitalism in its financialized form exploits as a productive force. Are the sonic and affective turns, then, actually extensions of semiocapitalism? Michael Eng’s areas of research include sound, philosophy of the image, philosophy and architecture, and post-Heideggerian aesthetic theory.

Speaker: Michael Eng, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, John Carroll University, University Heights, Ohio.

ACT Lecture | Gloria Sutton: Playback

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 07:02:48 GMT

Playback: Broadcast Experiments 1970 and Now

In the 1970s, broadcast television, cable, and even satellite transmissions were considered viable outlets for visual artists to experiment, tamper, and often times, spectacularly fail with, all the while engaging in a generative model of art production. This talk focuses on the institutionalization of media art with a particular emphasis on the Long Beach Museum of Art’s prescient move to set up a media art center and commission artists to create a broadcast channel to distribute their works in the early 1970s. The museum was one of the first to consider video as a collecting category, managed a thriving residency program, operated a public editing facility, and launched the “museum channel.” Gloria Sutton is a contemporary art historian and a curator. She received the Emily Hall Tremaine Award as a co-curator of How Many Billboards in 2008.

Speaker: Gloria Sutton, Assistant Professor, Northeastern University, Boston.

ACT Lecture | Muntadas: Projects and Protocols: Conventions on Art and Technology

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 07:02:48 GMT

Projects and Protocols: Conventions on Art and Technology

Muntadas’ work addresses social, political and communications issues such as the relationship between public and private space within social frameworks, and investigates channels of information and the ways these may be used to censor or promulgate ideas. His projects are presented in different media such as photography, video, publications, the Internet, installations, and urban interventions. Muntadas has received numerous awards and grants, and his work has been exhibited extensively at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musée d’Art Contemporaine, Montreal; Berkeley Art Museum; the Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires; the Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil; the VI and X editions of documenta, Kassel; the Whitney Biennial of American Art, New York; and the 51st Venice Biennial. Most recently, he exhibited at NCCA in Moscow, Russia, The Bronx Museum, and his show Muntadas: Entre/Between, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, runs through March 2012.

Speaker: Antoni Muntadas, Professor of the Practice, MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology.

ACT Lecture | Taru Elfving: Archipelago Logic: Towards Sustainable Futures

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 20:30:07 GMT

Taru Elfving, curator and director of Contemporary Art Archipelago (CAA), calls into play the curatorial notion of the “dysfunctional” exhibition and its role within the larger concept of sustainability. CAA, a trans-disciplinary, cross-cultural exhibition spread across the isles of the Turku Archipelago (Baltic Sea), included over 23 international artists who researched the area’s environment and ways of life, and worked with the local community and institutions. Elfving will elaborate on the modes of collaboration between artists and curators, the ecological system as a potential generator of thinking and cultural production, and as a site of pilgrimage, as well as the potential of contemporary art as a force in cross-disciplinary research and action. Her presentation will be followed by a conversation with CAA artists Renée Green, and Gediminas & Nomeda Urbonas.

Speaker: Taru Elfving, Artistic Director, Contemporary Art Archipelago (CAA), Finland

In conversation with:
Renée Green, Associate Professor, MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology
Gediminas Urbonas, Associate Professor, MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology
Nomeda Urbonas, ACT Fellow, MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology.

ACT Lecture | Bruce Yonemoto: Re-representations and Simulations

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 07:03:18 GMT

Bruce Yonemoto works within the overlapping intersections of art and commerce, and the gallery world and cinema screen. Yonemoto juxtaposes cultural material from different international communities, such as those of the Japanese Americans, Nipo-Brasiliero, Peruvian Quechua and Hollywood communities. The photographic series North South East West focuses on the erased history of American Civil War soldiers of Asian descent. Yonemoto’s collaboration with Dr. Juli Carson deals with the discovery of the real and poetic convergence between two distinct phenomena in Argentina: the site of one of the few growing glaciers in the world and one of the last regions where Lacanian psychoanalysis is practiced. Most recently, Yonemoto’s work was exhibited at the ICC in Tokyo, the Kemper Museum in Kansas City, and the St. Louis Museum of Art.

Speaker: Bruce Yonemoto, Professor of Studio Art in Video, Experimental Media, and Film Theory, University of California, Irvine.

In conversation with Stephen Prina, Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge.

Shun Kanda & Jim Wescoat: MIT Japan 3/11 Initiative

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:30:06 GMT

Keynote:

Shun Kanda, Senior Lecturer, MIT (USA)

James Wescoat, Aga Khan Professor, MIT (USA)

Respondent:

Jegan Vincent de Paul, ACT Lecturer, MIT (USA)

In the aftermath of the disaster suffered in Japan, MIT launched the MIT Japan 3/11 Initiative, a multi-year collaborative project focused on disaster-resilient planning, design and reconstruction. Back from the first MIT Japan 3/11 workshop which took place this summer, Shun Kanda and Jim Wescoat will discuss the process and challenges in planning and implementing alternative strategies for disaster-preparedness. Shun Kanda is a Tokyo native and the Director of Architectural Studies for the MIT-Japan Program. James L. Wescoat, Jr. is Aga Khan Professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT. MIT Japan 3/11 Initiative: http://web.mit.edu/japan3-11/home.html

ACT Lecture | Michael Corris: What Do Artists Know?

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 08:03:05 GMT

Michael Corris, Professor/Chair of Studio Art, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, discusses how some contemporary art is profoundly engaged with the world in ways that go beyond interpretation.

Elizabeth Anne Watkins, Video Artist

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:30:20 GMT

Excerpt from an interview with Elizabeth Anne Watkins, MS Candidate in Art, Culture and Technology. In this video Elizabeth talks about her research into time-based media.

Stella McGregor: Ploughshares from Swords - Social Sculpture and Cultural Agency

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 17:57:11 GMT

11/07/2011 Stella McGregor, Director, Urbano Project (USA) Ploughshares from Swords - Social Sculpture and Cultural Agency Respondent: Gediminas Urbonas, ACT Associate Professor, MIT (USA) How does creative activism contribute to society? How do we moderate crises through individual and collective art practice? How do we reconcile the arts, activism, and pedagogy? Stella McGregor, Founder and Director of Urbano Project, will share her experience of working with inner city youth and introduce projects such as Violence Transformed, and Pedro Reyes'Palas por Pistolas. Stella McGregor has been an artist and a cultural worker for over 25 years, working on projects in Boston, New Orleans, Macedonia, and Taiwan. Urbano Project: http://urbanoproject.org

Lucy Walker: 99 is not 100 - Documenting the Transformative Power of Art, or the Art of Transformative Documentary

Mon, 14 Nov 2011 21:37:16 GMT

10/31/2011 Lucy Walker, filmmaker (UK) 99 is not 100 - Documenting the Transformative Power of Art, or the Art of Transformative Documentary Respondent: Claude Grunitzky, Chairman, TRUE, Sloan Fellow, MIT (USA) How do we observe or quantify the impact of an artistic intervention or the impact of a documentary film? Lucy Walker will be reflecting on the experience of making and showing the film Waste Land, a documentary about artist Vik Muniz's collaboration with the self-designated recyclables materials pickers of Jardim Gramacho, the largest landfill in the world. The film has won over thirty international awards and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Lucy Walker has directed four award-winning feature documentaries: Devil's Playground, Blindsight, Waste Land and Countdown To Zero.

TR Nov/Dec Letter from the Editor

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 04:00:00 GMT

Our November/December 2011 issue features new technology for eavesdropping on the hive mind, an essay on the evolution of privacy, and much more.

Joichi Ito: Enabling Emergent Voices and Expression through Technology

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 19:03:10 GMT

October 17, 2011

Joichi Ito, Director, MIT Media Lab (USA)

Enabling Emergent Voices And Expression Through Technology

Respondent: Brendan Mcgetrick, Independent Writer & Designer (China)

Moore's law and the Internet have dramatically reduced the cost of producing and distributing information. This has greatly lowered the cost of collaboration and has empowered a qualitatively different "public" to think, express, and act without, or in spite of, central authority. These changes and advances in technology enabled interventions such as low-cost video cameras in the case of WITNESS; blogs (Global Voices); or open hardware and software used to build, distribute, collect and visualize data from geiger counters (Safecast). Ito will discuss how these trends relate to media, citizenship, academics, and conflicts. Joichi Ito was named Director of the MIT Media Lab in April 2011.

Jack Persekian: In the Meantime

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 18:51:06 GMT

In 1992, Jack Persekian founded Anadiel Gallery, the first and only independent gallery for Palestinian artists in Jerusalem.

A Social-Media Decoder

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 04:00:00 GMT

New technology deciphers-- and empowers--the millions who talk back to their televisions through the Web.

Florian Dombois: Luginsland (On Art as Research)

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 14:43:13 GMT

02/14/11

Luginsland (On Art as Research)

Florian Dombois, founder of the Y - Institute of Interdisciplinarity at the Bern University of the Arts, Bern, Switzerland?

Respondent: Ute Meta Bauer, ACT Director and Associate Professor

Luginsland (Belvedere) is an installation and sound piece by Florian Dombois, winner of the 2010 German Sound Art Award. Dombois' work focuses on landforms, labilities, seismic and tectonic activity, scientific and technical fictions, as well as their various representational and media formats. In his dissertation What is an Earthquake? Dombois undertook a comparison of historical, contemporary, artistic and scientific representations of earthquakes and developed the art-as-Research method. In his talk, Dombois will also introduce the international Journal for Artistic Research, (JAR), and give a short overview of activities and research projects going on at the Institute Y - Institute for Interdisciplinarity at the Bern University of the Arts. Florian Dombois founded the Y - Institute of Interdisciplinarity at the Bern University of the Arts, Bern, Switzerland where he teaches and acts as the Head of Y - Research.

Attila Csorgo: Turning Out the Space

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 19:46:52 GMT

04/04/11

Turning Out the Space

Attila Csorgo, artist, Budapest, Hungary

Respondent: Thomas D. Trummer, Siemens Stiftung Curator of Visual Arts?

Attila Csörgö uses fruit peels to demonstrate problems of space and plane geometry in his work Peeled Spaces. Another piece, Distorted Spaces, is focusing on the photographic representation of our surroundings; by using hand-made cameras the images have unusual properties and become spatial entities. The Platonic Geometry is a series of kinetic sculptures dealing with the metamorphosis of a regular polyhedron. Csörgö applies the language of geometry and physics to traditional, pre-digital-age materials like sticks, strings and small electric motors to describe and reconfigure spatial relationships between objects. Csörgö's work has been exhibited in Europe and the United States. Attila Csörgö received the Nam June Paik Award in 2008.

Ricardo Dominguez - Transborder Disturbances: Aesthetics, Interventions and Technology?

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:46:07 GMT

03/28/11

Transborder Disturbances: Aesthetics, Interventions and Technology?

Ricardo Dominguez, artist, activist and Associate Professor of Visual Arts, UCSD

Respondent: Christopher Csikszentmihalyi, Director, MIT Center for Future Civic Media

Ricardo Dominguez is co-founder of The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), a group who developed virtual-sit-in technologies in 1998. His collaborative project, the Transborder Immigrant Tool - a GPS cell phone safety tool for crossing the Mexico/U.S border - is being exhibited at the 2010-11 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art (La Jolla), and Un marco modular at Centro Cultural De España, El Salvador (2010). Dominguez teaches in the Visual Arts Department at UCSD, where he runs the b.a.n.g. lab.

Laurent Grasso: Science & Fictions

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:33:35 GMT

Science & Fictions

Laurent Grasso, artist, Paris, France?

Respondent: Stefan Helmreich, MIT Professor of Anthropology

Laurent Grasso will discuss the ideas and processes behind his HAARP project (High Frequency Active Auroral research) eponymous of a research base in Gakona, Alaska. One side of this project was to display a scale reconstitution of the antenna arrays in the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, in 2009. He will also present, the Studies into the Past series, and the exhibition The Horn Perspective that took place at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in 2009. This exhibition partly deals with Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson's discoveries on cosmic microwaves (remains of the big bang) through The Horn Antenna. In 2008, Laurent Grasso was awarded the prestigious Marcel Duchamp Prize and in 2010 he was featured at The European Biennial of Contemporary Art: Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain.

Jae Rhim Lee: Parallel/Peripheral: Working at the Intersection of Art and Other

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:29:41 GMT

03/14/11

Parallel/Peripheral: Working at the Intersection of Art and Other

Jae Rhim Lee, artist and ACT research fellow, MIT, Cambridge MA

Respondent: Nicholas A. Ashford, Professor of Technology and Policy; Director, MIT Technology and Law Program

?Jae Rhim Lee's current work, the Infinity Burial Project, proposes alternatives for the post-mortem body and features the training of a unique strain of edible mushroom to decompose and remediate toxins in human tissue. Jae Rhim Lee's work challenges the boundaries prescribed by society and culture between self and other by proposing unorthodox relationships for the mind/body/self, and the built and natural environment. Lee has exhibited both nationally and internationally and is a recipient of a Creative Capital Foundation Grant (2009), Institut für Raumexperimente/Universität der Künste Berlin Grant (2010), and the renowned MAK Schindler Center Scholarship, Los Angeles. Lee is currently an ACT fellow.

Guillermo Faivovich & Nicolás Goldberg: A Guide to Campo del Cielo

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 16:25:01 GMT

A Guide to Campo del Cielo

Guillermo Faivovich & Nicolás Goldberg, artists, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Respondent: Richard P. Binzel, MIT Professor of Planetary Science

In 2006, Guillermo Faivovich and Nicolás Goldberg began working on A Guide to Campo del Cielo, a project that revolves around researching the cultural impact of the Campo del Cielo meteorites by studying, reconstructing, and reinterpreting their visual, oral, and written history, aiming to identify their historical and contemporary impact. In 2010, their exhibition Meteorit El Taco, held at Portikus, Frankfurt, brought together the two halves of the El Taco meteorite after almost 45 years of being apart. Their project is documented in The Campo del Cielo Meteorites - Vol 1: El Taco published by dOCUMENTA (13) and will also be featured at the 2012 dOCUMENTA (13) exhibition.Their artistic research methods involve bibliographical inquiry, archival research, oral history and scientific investigations.

10/04/10 - Tierra Brillante: Omar Foglio and Jose Luis Figueroa

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 18:40:12 GMT

Bulbo, a Tijuana- and Los Angeles-based media collective, explores cultural, artistic and everyday themes often overlooked or under-represented in mass media. Their documentary, Tierra Brilliante ("the brightest glaze") spotlights lead poisoning suffered by practitioners of traditional ceramics in Mexico. Omar Foglio has taught research methodology, communications theory and courses on music and culture at the School of Humanities of Universidad Autónoma de Baja California and at Universidad Iberoamericana Plantel Noroeste. Jose Luis Figueroa has been a trial lawyer and art instructor. He co-directed Tierra Brillante, and Omar Folgio was in charge of production for the same film. Tierra Brillante is a co-production between Galatea and the Mexican Institute of Cinema (IMCINE).

Laura Anderson Barbata, " 21st Century Living in the Amazon: In the Order of Chaos" 10/27/2010

Tue, 05 Oct 2010 21:34:05 GMT

Laura Anderson Barbata worked with the Yanomami people of the Venezuelan Amazon Rainforest, teaching them to make paper and books so they could write their own history. Their first book Shapono tells the story of the gods Omawe and Yoawe who taught the Yanomami how to build their home as a communal dwelling. Contact with outsiders has brought with it industrialized materials and solutions integrated by the Yanomami into their building techniques, homes and lifestyle, posing new challenges and problems for traditional tight-knit communities. Barbata will also discuss her project, Moko Jumbies, which has engaged at-risk youth in in Trinidad and Tobago in the practice of an ancient tradition in community-driven cultural activities to support a strong sense of identity. Barbata is a professor at the Escuela Nacional de Escultura, Pintura y Grabado La Esmeralda of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, México.

Elke Gaugele, "Climate Changes in Science Fashion," Sept. 13, 2010

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:37:25 GMT

9/13/10 - Climate Changes in Science Fashion ?Elke Gaugele As future technologies of the modern augmented self and its geopolitical extensions, proactive clothing was first anticipated at the turn of the century in popular culture, science fiction and art. Since the 1960s, this question has become a fixed part of the cyborg discourse while "science fashions" were shifting from astronautics and military research to wearable computing and smart clothes. The political climate also changed since the Cold War. Artists, architects and fashion designers started to create climate capsules, green wearables and interactive research and communication tools for climate activists. Gaugele will reflect upon these climate changes in "science fashion" and discusses different points of departure for its contemporary artistic research. Elke Gaugele is a cultural anthropologist and professor of Fashions and Styles at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, Austria.

Yvonne Rainer

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 17:26:33 GMT

Lecture given at Bartos Theater on April 12, 2010
Discussion moderated by Joan Jonas

"Where's the Passion" is a lecture in which notions of self-expression, impersonation, and the politics of looking and being looked at are examined, accompanied by documentations of two recent performances choreographed by Yvonne Rainer.

Yvonne Rainer made a transition to filmmaking following a fifteen-year career as a choreographer/ dancer (1960-1975). After making seven experimental feature films -- Lives of Performers (1972), Privilege (1990), MURDER and murder (1996), among others -- she returned to dance in 2000 via a commission from the Baryshnikov Dance Foundation for the White Oak Dance Project. Her most recent dances are AG Indexical, with a little help from H.M., a re-vision of Balanchine's Agon, RoS Indexical, a re-vision of Nijinsky's Rite of Spring and a Performa07 commission, and Spiraling Down, a meditation on soccer, aging, and war. Her dances have been performed in New York, Los Angeles, Vienna, Helsinki, Kassel, Berlin, and Sao Paolo. A memoir -- Feelings Are Facts: a Life -- was published by MIT Press in 2006. Rainer is currently a Distinguished Professor of Studio Art at the University of California, Irvine.

Joan Jonas is an artist and professor in the MIT Program of Art, Culture and Technology. She recently received the first annual Lifetime Achievement Award from the Guggenheim.

Magda Fernandez

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:12:12 GMT

Lecture given at Bartos Theater on March 15, 2010
Discussion moderated by Amber Frid-Jiminez

Magda Fernandez creates synthetic video worlds that question our real lives in these contemporary times. She is drawn to the strengths and weaknesses that make us tick, how those characteristics spill into our social behavior, and how greater forces in turn shape us. Power and helplessness, reality and fantasy, memory and history are some of the themes in her art. Fernandez's videos rely liberally on composite technology and special effects to make sense out of the nonsensical. Fernandez will screen four of her videos and discuss their subjects and means of production. In Song of a Bordertown Artist, a clown in a junkyard leads us on a mystical tour of the artworld. Family ghosts respond to the Cuban Revolution in Cuba Diaries, Part One. A crone conjures a virtual landscape in Desert. In Softie, a middle-aged woman's face waltzes in and out of soft-focus before a high-definition camera.

Intro to Physical Computing/Arduino (4.332/3 Networked Sensorium) - Part 1

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:42:30 GMT

Alex Reben from the Media Lab joins the 4.332/4.333 Networked Cultures & Participatory Media: Networked Sensorium Class in the Program in Art, Culture and Technology (in Course IV) for an introduction to physical computing and Arduino. This is part 1 of 2.

Intro to Physical Computing/Arduino (4.332/3 Networked Sensorium) - Part 2

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:38:13 GMT

Peter Schumann (Bread & Puppet Theater)

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:15:41 GMT

Lecture given at Bartos Theater on March 8, 2010
Discussion moderated by John Bell

Bread and Puppet Theater director Peter Schumann will present a short fiddle lecture illustrated with cantastoria banners, after which moderator John Bell will lead a discussion with Schumann about Bread and Puppet's uses of public space, technology, the concept of progress, and the relations between puppet theater and modernism. A question-and-answer session will follow, and the evening will end with a drum and fiddle performance by Schumann and his grandson.

Peter Schumann (b. 1934 Silesia) founded Bread and Puppet Theater in New York City in 1963. From hand and rod puppet shows in the streets to giant puppet parades, Schumann addressed local injustices as well as the Vietnam War. In 1970 the company moved to Vermont where he continues to create shows and giant outdoor spectacles, performing locally and internationally while baking bread, growing garlic and splitting firewood. Schumann is married to Elka Leigh Scott where they live in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. They have five children and five grandchildren.

Constanza Macras

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:08:17 GMT

Lecture given at Bartos Theater on March 1, 2010
Discussion moderated by Jay Scheib

Constanza Macras was born in Buenos Aires Argentina, studied fashion design at the University of Buenos Aires and trained at the Margarita Bali School of Dance. She continued her training at the New York at the Merce Cunningham Studio, working later in Amsterdam. Since 1995, she has been living and working as a performer, director and choreographer in Berlin. She founded her own dance company Tamagotchi Y2K in 1997, now Dorky Park today. Dorky Park. has toured in Korea, Japan, India, Indonesia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, the United States and to various European festivals and venues. The company and its productions are supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds, the Mayor of Berlin - Senatskanzlei - Cultural Affairs and the German Federal Cultural Foundation and works regularly with Berlin venues such as Hebbel am Ufer, Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz.

Jay Scheib is Associate Professor for Music and Theater Arts at MIT and is a writer, director and designer.

Xavier Le Roy

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:10:46 GMT

Lecture given at Bartos Theater on February 22, 2010
Discussion moderated by Nell Breyer

Xavier Le Roy was born in Juvisy sur Orge, France in 1963 and studied biochemistry at the University of Montpellier. He began his dance career in 1988, performing for companies including Véronique Larcher, Compagnie de l' Alambic, and Detektor (Berlin). In 1993 he founded Le Kwatt, initiating his own collaborations and multi-media projects. He founded his current company, "in situ productions" with Petra Roggel in 1999. In 2007/08 he was an associate artist at the Centre Chorégraphique National de Montpellier (CCNM), and is a fellow at the MIT Program in Art Culture and Technology.

Nell Breyer is a research affiliate at MIT's Program in Art, Culture and Technology; her work focuses on the intersection of dance, new media, and visual art.

New York Times Performance Tour in Battery Park, NYC

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:22:25 GMT

Pia Lindman The New York Times Performances 2003-2006 __________________________________________________________________________________________________ In Battery Park City, Manhattan, NY, 09/09/05 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ I have collected images from the New York Times issues published between September 2002 and September 2003. Eliciting the bodily gestures out of the news context (be it mourners of the World Trade Center, a terrorist attack in Israel, a funeral of a Palestinian, a Chechnyan, or a Russian, etc.) I reenact them in a live situation without revealing their original context. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ After videotaping myself reenacting these gestures, I trace them from the video stills with pencil. By exhibiting both the tracings and the enactments, I try to illuminate some of the relationships between a photograph, its mediation, and the idea of original content, in this instance human emotional reaction to terrorism. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ I perform the re-enactments in public spaces such as squares, parks, museums, and malls. These public performances animate a relationship between personal emotions and public monuments. The locations have varied and range from a window display at a New York gallery to Foley Square in Lower Manhattan in front of the Freedom of Expression National Monument. In some cities, I took the audience on a guided tour and performed for approximately five minutes in front of each monument we visited. This video documents a guided tour performance in Battery Park City, Lower Manhattan, New York. The tour was commissioned by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council to be part of the International Summit "What Comes After, Cities, Art + Recovery". The summit discussed what questions pertain while rebuilding after disaster (referring to the destruction of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, NY). In my opinion monuments are deposits of collective memory and unprocessed trauma. My aim is to set this emotional potential of monuments in process by my temporal and particular gestures, animating what the monument cannot.

Fascia

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:26:21 GMT

Fascia, a commissioned work for Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York 2006_____________________________________________________________________________________________ An artist statement by Pia Lindman __________________________________________________________________________________________________ "[This façade is] a spacemaker; it is an instrument between the inside and the outside." Vito Acconci __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Let's assume there is only one space and no division. Instead of dividing space the wall is simply an embodiment in space. As it occupies and moves in space it makes space emerge. This embodiment can be a membrane, a human body, or architecture. They become social acts and gestures in space. Thus there are formations and negotiations of that space in various social configurations. If I think of the façade of Storefront for Art and Architecture, the pivoting doors make gestures that imply social relationships. I can ask a literal question: What do these openings want to do in life? What do they want us to do to them? We can imagine the façade as a continuously evolving series of social events in space. I can imagine gestures and social relationships in the pivoting, protruding, retracting, and intruding doors of the façade. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ "There is a face wherever something reaches the level of exposition and tries to grasp its own being exposed, wherever a being that appears sinks in that appearance and has to find a way out of it." Giorgio Agamben ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ I believe the experience of being a socially functional human could be described as existing between the core of a tree and its bark. Our consciousness is neither fully inside our 'core', i.e., our biological body, nor is it completely outside of the confines of the same body. We communicate with ourselves from the vantage point of looking at our exterior representation as much as we feel our internal body. When we feel sick, we look at our tormented face in a mirror, rather than at the bacterial growth inside our stomach. Perhaps Giorgio Agamben is speaking about face as if it was a bark that had melted together with the core. In Fascia, I physically exhaust my body and face in filming sessions that last up to 60 minutes. Parts of my face stay fixed while others may move. The physical exhaustion and the necessity on focusing on staying fixed despite experiences of pain, work towards my face reaching this condition of a bark melting with its core: a membrane that has turned porous, a façade that is no longer holding up and as it - not crumbles, but evaporates - voids a division of space. Ironically, as the façade evaporates, expression seems to be as meaningless as its opposite. It does not matter what grimace I am making: __________________________________________________________________________________________________ "As soon as the face realizes that communicability is all that it is and hence that it has nothing to express - thus withdrawing silently behind itself, inside its own mute identity - it turns into a grimace, which is what one calls character." Giorgio Agamben ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ I built a chair for the specific purpose of filming these facial configurations. These configurations are not facial expressions, although they may resemble some. Indeed I have been inspired by some typical facial expressions, such as a smile or raised eyebrows to express surprise, but also facial caricatures such as an overly droopy under lip or enlarged and protruding ears. I have also been inspired by architectural metaphors, such as the eyes as the windows to the soul, or the mouth as a metaphor for a door. I have had various metal devices constructed for me. These attach to the chair and serve to manipulate my face in order to make it assume a distinct 'expression', frozen for the duration of the 60-minute long filming. Due to the duration the face inevitably cannot sustain a sense of authenticity and meaning of its expression. For that, the face would have to assume it for merely a fleeting moment. Instead, these faces turn to constructed poses, or more precisely, grimaces. After filming one face, I make the video recording transparent. I then cut it into one-minute sections and layer these sections on top of each other. In this way, one sees a one-minute video showing 60 minutes of video recording simultaneously. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ TEN FACES OF FASCIA I have composed ten faces for Fascia. The first one serves as a sort of introduction to the series and I filmed it as follows: I sit in the chair with three metal arms extending from the headrest to fix my head. However, the features of my face, such as my eyes, mouth, and nose are free to move. I read out loud a poem by Apollinaire of the nine gates to his lover's body. The layering of the video recording has the visual effect of my facial features becoming blurred and multiplied, while the edges of my head remain fixed and focused. 1_________________________________________________________________________________________________ For filming the face following the introduction, I removed the metal arms fixing my head and instead fixed my face by wrapping my mouth around a metal dowel that extended from a metal arm rising from the seat. My head behaved like a pivoting object with the mouth as the center point. The effect of layering the video makes my head and face seem blurred except for the dowel and my lips, which are in clear focus. 2_________________________________________________________________________________________________ For filming the second face following the introduction, I placed a triangular tube in my mouth. It was so close to my head, that it nailed it to the headrest. My lips and teeth wrapped around the three edges of the tube, while my tongue stuck out towards the camera through the triangulated opening. I soon realized it is impossible to swallow. Instead, my saliva found an exit through the triangulated passage of the tube. 3_________________________________________________________________________________________________ For the third face I had frames made for my eyes from square steel tube. I wanted to suspend the frames around my eye sockets, so I pulled and rested my brows on edges shaped to fit my facial bone structure. I dipped these edges in a rubbery plastic material that covered the smooth hard steel and offered a grip to the skin. While filming the face, I strived to keep my eyes fixed on one single point. My face and head were pivoting around the axis of my eyes. 4_________________________________________________________________________________________________ For the fourth face, I used magnet buttons to nail my under lip. I unfolded and extended the lip as far down and out as I could, finally fixing it to a steel plate beneath my chin. I expected this face to be particularly difficult, because the exposed under lip would dry out during the 60 minutes I needed to film. However, I was able to breath through my nose, and keep saliva running down the lip. 5_________________________________________________________________________________________________ For the fifth face, I used rubberized hooks to horizontally expand my nostrils. The pulling of the nostrils had the effect of raising my upper lip and made me look like a rodent. 6_________________________________________________________________________________________________ For the sixth face, I used two metal rods of different lengths: one to push up my left eyebrow, and the other to push up the right corner of my mouth. I think of a pirate, when I see this face. Surprisingly, this funny face caused some trouble. I had difficulty keeping my saliva in my mouth, as it wanted to escape through the slit between my lips forced open by the rod. The rod pushing my eyebrow kept brushing against my eyelashes. I tried not to blink too much. 7_________________________________________________________________________________________________ For the seventh face, I had metal supports made for my ears to rest on. These supports pushed the ears outwards, perpendicular to the head. As I realized that during a 60-minute filming session, the ears might very well fall off their supports, I fixed them at the top and bottom with magnets. My face was free to move, except for the ears, and therefore I was able to even smile. 8_________________________________________________________________________________________________ For the eighth face I bolted two rubberized metal blocks to the steel frame fixing my head. Like sliding doors pushing in, these blocks pushed my cheeks towards the front of my face. This gesture reminds me of someone grabbing your face between their fingers, in order to pull your lips forward to kiss you or to intimidate you. 9_________________________________________________________________________________________________ For the ninth face, I closed my lips over a rectangular rubberized metal sheet. My teeth pushed against the sheet, so that it kept pushing out of my mouth, while my lips kept the sheet inside. The corners of the sheet pushed the flesh of my cheeks from the inside, forcing my lower face to assume a rectangular shape.

Soapbox Event at Federal Hall (some explicit language used)

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 00:10:05 GMT

Warning, this video contains some explicit language
PIA LINDMAN: SOAPBOX EVENT Reinventing Forms of Free Speech __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Location of first event: Federal Hall National Memorial 26 Wall Street, New York City Date: April 5, 2008 Time: 2:00-5:00 PM __________________________________________________________________________________________________ SOAPBOX; Used for traditional `soapbox style' posts, where people stand up and give their opinions on a topic, sometimes in quite emphatic terms. Such talk frequently leads to other people getting on their own soapboxes to engage in discussion and debate. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ In Soapbox Event, Lindman pares down the structure of democracy to the elemental forms of free speech: human bodies, live voices, and space. This performance investigates the construction and breakdown of collective structures, and how they influence individual expression in democratic decision-making. The event highlights the relationship of embodied speech to the bare life of an individual, in the context of increasingly mediated communication. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Soapbox Event is a participatory performance created by Pia Lindman. Participants are given one soapbox each, which entitles them to one minute of free speech. They may form coalitions and stack their boxes together to obtain greater spatial presence and talk time. The spokesperson of a coalition may speak for as many minutes as there are stacked boxes. As the event evolves, boxes begin to express changing rhetorical configurations in sculptural forms. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ The site -- formerly New York City Hall and Customs House, currently Federal Hall National Memorial -- epitomizes freedom of speech in America. In this place, newspaperman John Peter Zenger was tried for seditious libel against the Royal Governor; with his 1735 acquittal winning a major victory for the free press in America; George Washington delivered his inaugural presidential speech from the balcony in 1790; and Yayoi Kusama held her Naked Event on the steps in 1969. We are pleased to present Soapbox Event amid this splendid tradition of speech acts. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ GROUND RULES FOR THE SOAPBOX EVENT - each participant will be given one soapbox - with the soapbox, each participant is also given one minute of free speech - participants may form coalitions - the soapboxes of the members of a coalition can be stacked together to create a higher speech podium - a representative of a coalition may speak as many minutes as there are stacked boxes (members in the coalition) We will not be using microphones or any amplifiers. Obtaining greater height serves to elevate a speaker and have their voice project better into the space. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ LECTURES AND WORKSHOPS In preparatory lectures and workshops Pia Lindman discusses ideas embedded in the Soapbox Event, such as public space, political performance, democracy and freedom of speech. Her focus is on how democracy and free speech are embodied and performed in contemporary cultures. Workshops are the playground for future Soapbox Events. The workshops are improvisational and their structure depends on the mixture of people attending. The main objective is to learn useful strategies and invent rules for the coming events - and to have fun. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ CREDITS Soapbox Event at Federal Hall National Memorial was curated by Sandra Skurvida and was made possible, in part, by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council with the generous support of the September 11th Fund.

Ana Miljacki & Nomeda Urbonas - Protest City

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 17:15:40 GMT

November 2, 2009. Architect and architecture theorist Ana Miljacki speaks about her project Classes, Masses, Crowds. Representing The Collective Body and The Myth of Direct Knowledge. Miljacki is an Assistant Professor in MIT's Department of Architecture. Nomeda Urbonas, member of the Lithuanian artist collective Gediminas and Nomeda Urbonas, talks about the concept, process, and outcome of their project Pro-test Lab, a multi-dimensional project to save a historical cinema in Vilnius.

Mike Bonanno - Propaganda City

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:00:14 GMT

October 26, 2009. The activist collective The Yes Men transformed New York city for a day through a tactical media intervention. A hoax print of the New York Times was massively distributed throughout the city during the US presidential election campaign in 2008. The Yes Men have an unusual hobby: posing as top executives of corporations they hate. Armed with nothing but thrift-store suits, they lie their way into business conferences and parody their corporate targets in ever more extreme ways.

Krzysztof Wodiczko - Porous City

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:13:24 GMT

November 16, 2009. Artist Krzysztof Wodiczko introduces his critical design proposals including Poliscar and Homeless Vehicles. Wodiczko's work points toward the search for the city to come, one which provides a space that allows for disagreement, a prerequisite for democracy. This lecture coincides with his solo show at the ICA Boston, which will be open November 4, 2009 to March 28, 2010. Wodiczko is a professor in the MIT Visual Arts Program and Director of the Interrogative Design Workshop and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT.

Angus Boulton - Fractured City

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:54:47 GMT

November 9, 2009. Berlin-based English photographer Angus Boulton talks about his photo series Richtung Berlin currently on view at the Wolk Gallery in MIT's Department of Architecture. This 'Becoming Berlin' event is collaboration between the MIT Museum and the MIT Visual Arts Program on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall.

Antoni Muntadas - Public City

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:30:26 GMT

October 19, 2009. Artist Muntadas investigates notions of 'City' and 'public.' Is there still a public space? Is the city a place for interventions? City authorities and the private sector provide surveillance and control. Yet it is the city dwellers who should make critical decisions over the city. Can they? What contribution can artists, architects, designers, city planners make today to this discussion? Antoni Muntadas is a visiting Professor of the Practice in the MIT Visual Arts Program. In his teaching, Muntadas focuses on the shift of public art to the production of public spheres through artistic intervention.

Christoph Schaefer - Factory City

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:48:41 GMT

September 28, 2009. The City is our Factory: Politics of desire and the production of urban spaces between Grande Latte and Park Fiction. In the new urban fabric, subcultures, cultural workers, musicians and artists play a significant role as producers of collective spaces, places shaped by desires; as inventors of new perspectives and lifestyles. Christoph Schaefer will introduce Park Fiction, a collective self-organised project that managed to break from the grip of real estate developers an expensive piece of land on the prestigeous riverbank of Hamburg St. Pauli. In a joint effort, a group of residents together with artists organized for the right to the city and against gentrification, winning a public park with a harbor view. The struggle for urban spaces is the struggle for the means of production: the city is our factory. What role can cultural workers play in this scenario?

Joan Jonas - Performative City

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:25:58 GMT

October 5, 2009. Performance and video pioneer Joan Jonas screens and discusses her outdoor performance pieces Jones Beach Piece, Nova Scotia Beach Piece, and Delay, Delay that she developed into a video piece titled Song Delay (1973). First performed in lower Manhattan in 1972, the footage was shot from the roof of a loft building. From there, the audience overlooked the performance taking place in empty lots below with a view to the distant docks of the Lower West Side. Performing with a cast that included Gordon Matta-Clark, Jonas choreographed a theater of space, movement and sound with the urban landscape of New York in a featured role. She performed this piece a second time in Rome, where the audience watched the performance from the other side of the Tiber riverbank. Joan Jonas is a professor in the MIT Visual Arts Program, teaching performance and related media.

Gediminas Urbonas-Ruta Remake

Sun, 31 May 2009 22:08:24 GMT

Gediminas Urbonas is a newly-appointed Associate Professor in the MIT Visual Arts Program who began his artistic practice in Vilnius, Lithuania. There he shares an artistic collaboration with Nomeda Urbonas. Together they founded the JUTEMPUS interdisciplinary art program, a model for social and artistic collaboration. Their approach embraces a flexible array of disciplines, utilizing old and new media practices.

Sebastian Seung

Sun, 31 May 2009 22:02:14 GMT

A revolution is happening in neuroanatomy, the study of the brain?s structure. Modern neuroanatomists are generating images that reveal the full complexity of the brain?s neural network using machines that slice brains into thin sections, and microscopes that see at the nanoscale. Seung?s lab is developing artificial intelligence that will analyze the images automatically to extract connectomes, maps of all connections between neurons in a brain. Seung is Professor of Computational Neuroscience, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Department of Physics at the MIT, and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Amber Frid-Jimenez

Sun, 31 May 2009 21:45:58 GMT

Frid-Jimenez will address the dynamic between people and machines in distributed networks, including CLI-mate, a project in development with conceptual artist Mel Chin composed of a networked platform that aims to create an intense personal relationship between individuals and global climate change. Frid-Jimenez is an artist, technologist, and Visiting Lecturer at the MIT Visual Arts Program, Rhode Island School of Design, and Brown University. Frid-Jimenez is a graduate of the MIT Media Laboratory.

Joe Dahmen

Sun, 31 May 2009 21:32:00 GMT

Joe Dahmen is an architect whose work engages resource and energy consumption in the design of space and the infrastructure that supports it. He is Chief Executive Officer of Bodega Algae LLC. Dahmen has pioneered new construction techniques for the use of rammed earth structures in New England, consults on projects internationally, and teaches sustainable design at the Boston Architectural College. He received a Master of Architecture degree from MIT in 2006.

Carlo Ratti

Sun, 31 May 2009 21:03:06 GMT

A designer, engineer and agit-prop proponent, Carlo Ratti teaches at MIT, where he directs the SENSEable City Laboratory. He also practices architecture in Turin, Italy. His work has been shown at many venues, including the Venice Biennale (2004, 2006 and 2008), the Graz Kunsthaus (2005), the Design Museum in Barcelona (2008), the World Expo (2008) and MoMa the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2008)

Nikolaus Hirsch

Sun, 31 May 2009 20:44:05 GMT

Nikolaus Hirsch is a Frankfurt-based architect, who has previously held academic positions at the Architectural Association in London, at the Institute of Applied Theater Studies at Giessen University, and at UPenn in Philadelphia. His projects include the award-winning Dresden Synagogue, Hinzert Document Center, the European Kunsthalle in Cologne, unitednationsplaza in Berlin and currently the Cybermohalla Hub in Delhi. The Cymbermohalla Hub in Delhi represents a hybrid condition of school, community center and gallery that involves 70 young practitioners in a project to engage their urban context through various media. Can such a project create a condition in which architecture becomes a self-reflexive tool for an institution and its cultural agency?

Ana Maria Tavares

Sun, 31 May 2009 20:42:33 GMT

Born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 1958, Tavares currently works and lives in Sao Paulo. She attained an MFA degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1986) and a PhD from the University of S?o Paulo (2000). In 2001 she was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Grant. She was the 2007 Ida Ely Rubin Artist-in-Residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), visiting the campus November 12-17, 2007 and March 2-15, 2008.

Jae Rhim Lee - FEMA Trailer Project

Sun, 31 May 2009 20:38:50 GMT

Jae Rhim Lee is a Visiting Lecturer and alumna of the MIT Visual Arts Program. She also directs the FEMA Trailer Project. Her artistic practice includes N=1=0=Infinity, a post-apocalyptic, urban eco-burial system. The FEMA Trailer Project transforms one of the 94,000 surplus trailers into an alternative vehicle, to be donated to a community or non-profit organization. The FEMA Trailer has come to symbolize many of the environmental, social, economic, and administrative challenges associated with temporary disaster housing. The FEMA Trailer Project catalyzes positive change in these areas, and applies environmental justice and permaculture principles to the conceptualization and re-design of the trailer.

Wendy Jacob - Autism Studio

Sun, 31 May 2009 20:36:54 GMT

Wendy Jacob is an artist and research associate at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT. She directs the newly-established Autism Studio in the MIT Visual Arts Program. Since 1989, she has also been part of the artists? collaborative Haha, whose site-based projects and public interventions have been shown internationally. Autism Studio is conceived as a multi-disciplinary studio where new and creative responses to living with autism are developed. In the United States, the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders has risen to one in every 150 children. The studio aims to explore perceptual features afforded by the broad range of autistic experience, and to create objects, spaces, and events that resonate with these experiences. Projects include a club to explore open space, an evening of video screenings and paper shredding, and the design of chairs that hug and clothing and architecture that extend the sensory reach.

Jegan Vincent de Paul - Community Grid Project

Sun, 31 May 2009 20:35:34 GMT

Jegan Vincent de Paul is a second-year graduate student in the MIT Visual Arts Program. His current work deals with global energy access. With a background in architecture, Vincent de Paul has worked with Lot-ek, New York and Ai Wei Wei, Beijing. Project collaborators (UROPs Rachel Cheney and Jennifer Tran, and CMS graduate student Jason Rockwood) will also be present. The Community Grid Project envisions a novel utilization of advances in ultracapacitor technology: using human labor to close the gap between communities with access to energy resources and those without, through the physical transport of personal ultracapacitors. Human labor and capacitors are combined to bring essential levels of energy to everyone.

Armin Linke

Sun, 31 May 2009 20:33:08 GMT

Photographer; filmmaker, Guest Professor for Photography at the HFG Karlsruhe, Germany; Milan (Italy) Armin Linke is working on an ongoing archive about human activity and the most varied natural and human-made landscapes. His attempt is to document scenes where the boundary between fiction and non-fiction blurs or becomes invisible.

Lucy Orta

Sun, 31 May 2009 20:29:57 GMT

Artist; fashion designer; Professor for Art, Fashion and the Environment at the London College of Fashion; Paris (France) Is the idea of a settlement in a place like Antarctica ? inherently isolated, inhospitable and uninhabitable - a tabula rasa that could lead to a ?nation of humanity? and a peaceful land for those escaping economic or natural disasters, war or political intimidation?

Nicholas Makris

Sun, 31 May 2009 20:14:08 GMT

Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering; Director of the Laboratory for Undersea Remote Sensing at MIT. How are new technologies, such as Ocean Waveguide Remote Sensing, enabling many new discoveries about remote undersea habitats? How will these technologies permit scientists to detect and monitor extra-terrestrial ecosystems, such as the vast ocean under the ice of Jupiter?s moon Europa? How is a habitat, remote in terms of time now being retrieved and sensed?

AbdouMaliq Simone

Sun, 31 May 2009 20:09:55 GMT

Urbanist; Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, London (UK) What kinds of survival tactics are being developed by city dwellers who live in marginalized environments that are not stable, orderly or sustaining? How do these conditions produce not only conflicts, defenses and vulnerabilities, but also skills and possibilities for outward mobility? AbdouMaliq Simone is an urbanist in the broad sense that his work focuses on various communities, powers, cultural expressions, governance and planning discourses, spaces and times in cities across the world. Simone is presently Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Key publications include In Whose Image? Political Islam and Urban Practices in Sudan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), For the City Yet to Come: Changing Urban Life in Four African Cities (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004) and Movements at the Crossroads: Urbanization from the Peripheries (Forthcoming: Routledge, 2009). In 2002 he gave a keynote lecture within Platform4_Documenta11 in Lagos, Nigeria.

Lukas Feireiss

Sun, 31 May 2009 20:05:33 GMT

Curator and editor, die gestalten verlag (dvg), Berlin (Germany) With a population of six billion and an increasingly complex technology, civilization has become a force akin to nature, causing far-reaching changes to earth?s ecosystem. Confronted with the challenges of creating space in this altered environment, how are architects and city planners dealing with problems requiring expertise beyond the confines of their disciplines? Can they draw upon the past, current and future visions of the built environment from art, architecture, literature and film? Lukas Feireiss is a teacher, writer and curator who is involved in the discussion and mediation of architecture, art and media beyond its disciplinary boundaries. He attained his graduate education in Religious Studies, Ethnology and Philosophy. His recent publication Architecture of Change. Sustainability and Humanity in the Built Environment (Berlin: die Gestalten Verlag, 2008) addresses the issue of sustainability by presenting architectural projects from around the globe that combine creativity, scientific knowledge, technical innovation, social engagement and a strong sense of responsibility to address environmental challenges. Furthermore he is the editor of Strike a Pose! Eccentric Architecture and Spectacular Spaces (Berlin: ibid, 2008), Spacecraft. Fleeting Architecture and Hideouts (Berlin: ibid, 2007) and Game Set and Match II. On Computer Games, Advanced Geometries and Digital Technologies (Rotterdam: Episode, 2006).

Bartolomeo Pietromarchi

Sun, 31 May 2009 20:00:09 GMT

Art Critic; chief curator Italian National Contemporary Art Museum (MAXXI), Rome (Italy) What cultural dimensional insights can be drawn from the juxtaposition of our contemporary visions of the future with those of the optimistic and utopian visions of the 1950s? How and why are today?s artists appropriating current and ?past future? perspectives of the city?

Stefano Boeri

Sun, 31 May 2009 19:51:07 GMT

Architect; editor in chief of the magazine Abitare; Visiting Professor Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, Cambridge (USA) Stefano Boeri is a Milan-based architect and founder of the research agency Multiplicity (www.multiplicity.it) participating regular in architecture, urbanism and art projects. His professional studio, Boeri Studio is involved in several architectural projects and urban transformations. Since September 2007, Stefano Boeri is the editor in chief of the international magazine Abitare (www.abitare.it) and from 2004 to 2007 he was editor in chief of Domus magazine. He teaches urban design at the Milan Polytechnic and is a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, Cambridge.

Regina Bittner

Sun, 31 May 2009 19:40:19 GMT

Cultural scientist; art historian; coordinator Bauhaus Kolleg at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation; curator, Dessau (Germany) What mechanisms are restructuring cities of Middle and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain? How and why are these cities falling short of the promise of better living conditions, growth and welfare? How are they dealing with issues of fragmentation and integration, growth and stagnation and diminished socio-economic and political status? What are the potential solutions for these shrinking cities marred by urban wastelands and collective despair?

Shuddhabrata Sengupta

Sun, 31 May 2009 19:33:38 GMT

How does a series of anxiety-producing events and incidents play out in urban situations in the course of the perpetration of ?terror? that claims not only bodies but biographies as well? Can it be said that the discourse about ?terrorism? also makes claims on those same bodies and biographies? How can we read images and media narratives about this topic from the city of Delhi? Shuddhabrata Sengupta is an artist, writer and member of the Raqs Media Collective, co-initiator of the Sarai Program at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, India. Most recently, Raqs Media Collective was a co-curator of Manifesta 7 at Ex Alumnix, Bolzano, Italy and the collective's work in contemporary art has been exhibited at international art venues most prominently at Documenta 11, Kassel, the 51. Venice Biennale and art biennals in Istanbul, Liverpool, Guangxhou, Taipei and Sydney, besides of several other international venues. Sengupta works at the Sarai Media Lab and is member of the editorial collective of the Sarai Reader Series. Sengupta lives and works in Delhi, India.

Philippe Rekacewicz

Sun, 31 May 2009 19:21:40 GMT

What is the relationship between cartography and art, between science and politics? How does this influence the use and manipulation of maps as a propaganda tool? Philippe Rekacewicz is a geographer, cartographer and journalist. For twenty years he has worked for Le Monde diplomatique, an international French magazine published in 70 international editions in 26 languages. Since 1999 he has participated in diverse artistic projects in Germany, Spain, Norway and France including Fareed Armaly?s project From/To at the Witte de With, Rotterdam and at Documenta11. In 2004 he participated as the editor of the Atlas of Globalization (Paris: Le Monde Diplomatique, 2003) at the 3rd Berlin Biennale of contemporary art. From 1996 to 2006, he was the head of the Department of Cartography in a sub department of the United Nations in Norway in the framework of their environmental program (PNUE/GRID-Arendal). Currently he is a consultant for the World Bank in a climate change program. His main interest is the relationships between cartography and art, and between science and politics. He focuses particularly on the role of art in the production of maps and how this influences the political use of maps as a propaganda tool. ?

Pia Maria Ahlback

Sun, 31 May 2009 19:11:45 GMT

Lecturer, Researcher in Comparative Literature, Åbo Akademi University, Finland Ahlbäck will examine a small number of spatial examples, urban and others, in the light of the phenomenological thought of the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. She will also make use of the concepts of the "chronotope", which was devised by Russian literary theoretician Mikhail Bakhtin, and the "heterotopia," conceived by the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault. Her purpose in utilizing these thoughts and concepts is to facilitate a way of thinking imaginatively about climate change that is related to the Western tradition of utopias/dystopias. Ultimately, she will attempt to answers questions about the challenges this particular approach presents and its implications for current urban spatial thinking.

Peter Marcuse

Sun, 31 May 2009 19:09:38 GMT

Planner; lawyer; Professor Emeritus Urban Planning, Columbia University (NYC) Utopias can be good (humanist) or bad (neo-liberal), achievable (the city of plenty) or unachievable (the dream city), strategic (utopias of process) or illusory (architectural fantasies). Critical approaches to planning and urban activism would incorporate the former images of utopia into meaningful programs of change. The Right to the City is an example of the effort at such a use of utopian thinking

Yvonne P. Doderer

Sun, 31 May 2009 19:05:29 GMT

Doderer is an architect and urban researcher, and a Professor of Gender in Media and Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Duesseldorf, Germany. Doderer will discuss the contribution of sociopolitical movements to the imagination of alternative urban communities. Focusing on the Women's Liberation and the Lesbian, Gay, Queer and Transgender movements, mainly (but not only) in Germany, she will present some conclusions of her research. Furthermore, she will question if these "other" spaces can be read as heterotopian spaces.

Ute Meta Bauer

Sun, 31 May 2009 18:46:21 GMT

Bauer will introduce the lectures series. "This is Tomorrow" was a ground-breaking trans-disciplinary exhibition (London's Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1956) involving key artists, architects, musicians and designers evaluating "habitation" through the human senses. Fifty years later: how do we now imagine future co-habitation, alternative communities and societies?

Jesko Fezer

Sun, 31 May 2009 18:41:22 GMT

the MONDAY NIGHTS @ VAP LECTURE SERIES: THIS IS TOMORROW?Urban Utopia - Dystopia - Heterotopia September 29, 2008 "Imagining Communities" Series Introduction by Ute Meta Bauer, Director MIT Visual Arts Program; Yvonne P. Doderer, architect and urban researcher, MIT Visiting Professor in Visual Arts; Jesko Fezer, architect, collaboration with ifau (Institute of Applied Urbanism) and co-editor of AnArchitektur, Berlin, Germany.

Kanwar

Sun, 31 May 2009 18:32:50 GMT

Kanwar_Raj

Sun, 31 May 2009 18:24:04 GMT

Mel Chin

Sun, 31 May 2009 18:10:42 GMT

Ntone Edjabe

Sun, 31 May 2009 18:05:47 GMT

DJ, musician, and editor Ntone Edjabe will speak about his work with Chimurenga, a pan African journal of writing, art and politics in a presention entitled Chimurenga, Felasophy and the Quest for Lightness in the New South Africa.

Marjetica Potrc + Thierry Nlandu Discussion

Sun, 31 May 2009 18:03:44 GMT

The contrast between Thierry Nlanduâ's and Marjetica Potrcâ's approaches made this conversation particularly intriguing. Thierry focused on building dialog and critique within the community about the larger democratic system within which the citizens are a part. He points out that while a large number of the participants in his program are illiterate, all participants have the most important skills needed to participate in democracy, that is the ability to â€œsee, judge, and act.â€ Marjetica Potrc, on the other hand, focused on the ways in which communities fragment or â€œpixelateâ€ finding alternative configurations outside of larger governing structures.

Thierry Nlandu

Sun, 31 May 2009 18:02:10 GMT

Thierry Nlandu joined Marjetica Potrc at the Zones of Emergency event on April 14 in Bartos Theater. Thierry gave an amazing talk about his project Picture Book on Participatory Democracy: An Art's Act of Resistance against Facade Democracy that is intended to incite dialog about participatory democracy among the people in and around Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Marjetica Potrc

Sun, 31 May 2009 18:00:23 GMT

Marjetica Potrc joined Thierry Nlandu in conversation at the Zones of Emergency event on April 14. Marjetica spoke about her research in three areas: the Western Balkans (LHE), the Amazonian state of Acre and the city of New Orleans. She argues that "the territory of the body and the structures that shelter it are ... at the core of the existential concerns of contemporary society. From there, new citizenships are articulated, an example being patterns on painted facades in Tirana, Albania."

Dr. John Tirman

Sun, 31 May 2009 17:58:39 GMT

Dr. John Tirman joined a conversation with David Small at Zones of Emergency on March 10. Dr. Tirman, the Executive Director of MITâ€™s Center for International Studies, will speak about the website Iraq: The Human Cost. The conversation brought up issues relating to the aesthetic and social issues surrounding the communication and representation of emergency situations.

Amar Kanwar Intro

Sun, 31 May 2009 17:54:49 GMT

Amar Kanwar Intro

Tad Hirsch

Sun, 31 May 2009 17:47:57 GMT

Tad Hirsch spoke about Dialup Radio, a tool that delivers human rights and independent media via telephone. Currently Dialup Radio is being developed for the citizens of Zimbabwe, but the system has been designed to meet the needs of human rights activists around the world. This project is one example of what Tad calls "activist infrastructure" drawing on his knowledge of technology, system design, and his experience working with human rights and non-governmental organizations. Like Mako's voting machine for the masses, Tad's projects show the power of artists, technologists and policy makers working together towards projects that can effect lasting social and political change.

David Small

Thu, 28 May 2009 17:24:04 GMT

David Small and the Small Design Firm was selected to help design and implement four large interactive installations for the new established Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Norway, that inaugurated on June 11, 2005. David be spoke about their projects in relation to the aesthetic and social issues that arise as a result of communicating and representing emergency situations.

Mark Tribe

Wed, 27 May 2009 20:02:01 GMT

Mark Tribe will present a selection of projects, such as the Port Huron Project, that explore how tactical practices and public interventions use the internet and other networks as a means to instigate political discourse and public collaboration. This work addresses zones of emergency in a broad sense, raising issues related to the psychological condition of being politically oppressed.

Benjamin Mako Hil

Wed, 27 May 2009 19:56:28 GMT

Benjamin Mako Hil will present his work on online voting machines for the masses as well as discuss his involvment as an activist in the free software movement.

Alfredo Jaar

Wed, 27 May 2009 19:52:57 GMT

The Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar will present a selection of works, that focus on his practice in zones of emergency like Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship, and in Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide (1994-2000).

Kayvan Zainabadi

Wed, 27 May 2009 17:24:33 GMT

Kayvan Zainabadi, former president of Amnesty International at MIT, will speak about his experience at MIT working with Amnesty on crisis in Darfur.

Bill Viola

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 21:25:13 GMT

Bill Viola talks about his experiences during his 2009 Eugene McDermott Arts Award Residency at MIT, including computational photography and video, the Opera of the Future Group, and the end of the optical age. Video funded by the MIT Council for the Arts.