[rohrpost] An Archaeology of Imaginary Media
oliver grau
oliver.grau at culture.hu-berlin.de
Die Jan 13 10:43:00 CET 2004
Hier eine weitere interessante Intiative die zwischen
MedienKunstGeschichte und Bildwissenschaften changiert...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An Archaeology of Imaginary Media
Excavating mankind's dreams of the ultimate communication medium
February 5 - 8, 2004,
De Balie - Centre for Culture and Politics, Amsterdam
http://www.debalie.nl
An Archaeology of Imaginary Media is a mini-festival in De Balie in
Amsterdam around the eternal return of mankind's desire for the ultimate
communications medium. Will technological progress finally resolve the
human communication problem? The mobile phone mania demonstrates a
compulsively attempt to arrive at an affirmative answer to this question.
Digging in the history of human communication and its media provides ample
grounds for serious doubts.
De Balie will bring together a distinguished selection of artists,
filmmakers, authors, theoreticians, and especially media archaeologists, to
undertake a thorough investigation of the utopian visions of the ultimate
communications medium. In a variegated and highly diversified panorama, the
visionary perspectives of technological dreamers throughout the centuries
will be excavated and held up to the audience.
Already for some years, cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling has been collecting
dead media. Media that have withered and are mostly forgotten (much like
Dutch tv comedians van Kooten & De Bie predicted the demise of phillips'
cd-i many years ago). Erkki Huhtamo has been digging up the pre-history of
interactivity from the caverns of forgetfulness. Edwin Carels discovers in
the pre-history of cinema the bizarre concept that moving image and sound
might be a medium to establish contact with 'those in the hereafter'.
Siegfried Zielinksi also finds death in media in the (delusional)
conceptions of the media-engineers. Edison created a machine to communicate
with the "sprits", and Zoe Beloff made a film about it. She will cast a
light on the matter. And wasn't cyberspace the ultimate means to abolish
the borders of race and gender? Away with the body!!! Who still beliefs
that today? What is it that inspires men time and again to believe in their
own machines? Maybe literary scholar and media-sociologist Klaus Theweleit
can shed some light in the dark?
Peter Blegvad became famous as a musician because of his involvement with
cult-bands such as Faust, Slap Happy and Henry Cow in the early seventies,
after which he went through a remarkable solo career. As an avant-gardist
he appeared in New York in the environs of people like John Zorn (Locus
Solus). Simultaneously he established himself as an extraordinary
cartoonist with his series Leviathan, widely regarded as an important
innovation of the cartoon genre.
Blegvad created a theatrical performance "On Imaginary Media" specifically
for this program. A philosophical drama, a multi-layered collage of
meditations on the sublimity and tragedy of imaginary media, of the dream
for the ultimate communications medium. Musicians John Greaves and Chris
Cutler, with whom he has previously realised many avant-gardistic music
projects, and Dutch actor Kees Hulst accompany Blegvad during the performance.
Richly illustrated lectures, films, discussion, a narrative space with
works by cartoonists and artists, the philosophical theatre of Blegvad and
an extensive film program, together paint the contours of an eternal dream
that manages to hold people time and again under its sway, from Heinrich
Suso's late-medieval Horologium Sapientae to the unfolding debacle of 3G**.
(**3G: third generation mobile phones)
________________________
Biographical:
Zoe Beloff is a film maker and media artist, originally from Edinburgh, she
lives and works in New York.
http://www.zoebeloff.com
Peter Blegvad is cartoonist, musician, writer, and the creator of the
cartoon series Leviathan. He also produces radio plays for BBC radio, and
lives in London.
http://www.leviathan.co.uk
http://www.ibiblio.org/mal/blegvad/amateur.html
Edwin Carels is a freelance curator and writer, who is especially
interested in the relationship between visual arts and film, video, and
photography. He writes a.o. for "Andere Sinema".
http://www.debalie.nl/persoon.jsp?personid=10263
Timothy Druckrey is a curator, writer, and editor concerned with issues of
media history, representation, and technology. He lives in New York.
http://www.debalie.nl/dossierartikel.jsp?dossierid=10123&articleid=10430
http://users.rcn.com/druckrey/
Erkki Huhtamo is a Finnish Media Researcher, Curator, Writer and Professor
at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).
http://www.debalie.nl/artikel.jsp?articleid=10104
http://www.mediamatic.nl/magazine/8_2/Huhtamo-Armchair.html
Bruce Sterling is a writer, mostly renown for his cyberpunk fiction oeuvre.
His publications include Schismatrix, The Hacker Crackdown en The
Difference Engine (met William Gibson).
http://www.debalie.nl/dossierartikel.jsp?dossierid=10123&articleid=10097
http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades/
Klaus Theweleit is a writer, literary scholar, and cultural theorist. He is
the author of a.o. the monumental series "Buch der Könige" (Book of Kings)
and "Der Pochahontas Complex".
http://www.debalie.nl/persoon.jsp?personid=10353
http://proxy.arts.uci.edu/~nideffer/Tvc/reviews/18.Tvc.v9.reviews.Mladek.html
Siegfried Zielinski is a media researcher, the founding and former
principal of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. He teaches and researches
on the history, theory, and praxis of audiovision; his special field of
interest is media archaeology, and he has published numerous books and
articles on the topic.
http://www.debalie.nl/artikel.jsp?articleid=10116
________________________
Narrative Space
The idea for a narrative space was developed together with Peter Blegvad: A
visual space where the visions and conceptions of imaginary communication
machines are presented. A number of cartoonists and artists have been
invited to contribute their visual imaginations about imaginary media in
the form of drawings or short cartoons. During the entire weekend these
visions can be viewed continuously in a simultaneous three-channel
projection in the public vide in De Balie.
Participating artists:
- Thomas Zummer
- Jonathan Rosen
- Peggy Yungue
- Sasa, aka Aleksandar Zograf
- Gary Panter
- Dick Tuinder
- Neal Fox
- Les Coleman
- Ben Katchor
- François Ducat
- Peter Blegvad
________________________
Further background information, essays, information about the presenters
and web links can be found in the dossier "Media Archaeology" on the
website of De Balie:
http://www.debalie.nl/dossierpagina.jsp?dossierid=10123
________________________
Film Program An Archaeology of Imaginary Media:
- Main program 22:00 Thursday, February 5:
My Browser
A web browser imagined as a person's alter ego
Orphee
Modern translation of the Greek myth about Orpheus and his wandering in the
underworld, where a radio becomes an indispensable device to communicate
with the after-world.
- Main program 22:00 Friday, February 6:
Shadow land or light from the other side
Stereoscopic film about the connection between technology and imagination,
presenting a mental projector to communicate with the dead.
In Absentia
Many visual illusions in a hybrid animation film in which the thoughts of a
woman writing a letter are visualised. Soundtrack by Karl Heinz Stockhausen.
Out of the ether
Handmade 16mm film, composed on an optical printer, tells about dark techno
forces that attempt not only to invade or bodies, but also our minds.
Gothic Aztecs
A demonic reliquary of Medusa-Quetzalcoatl gives godly and demonic visions
to a young woman. Gothic Aztects is a film in which the viewer is projected
into the brain of the female priest, and in doing so experience her
artificial mediatized delirium.
- Late program 23:30 Friday, February 6:
Anatomy of time
The waving to the camera of filmmaker and time-traveller Arthur Dauphin,
obscure contemporary of the Lumière brothers, who already knew a century
ago that behind the seemingly lifeless machine of the camera a new secret
future world was hidden.
Out of the present
Russian cosmonauts leave the Soviet Union for space station Mir. Meanwhile
the Soviet empire collapses, leaving the cosmonauts in limbo. Out of the
present contains the first breathtaking 35mm footage ever made of planet
Earth. Due to technical problems the majority of that footage and a 35mm
camera were set overboard before the last crew returned to earth, leaving
the pictures of the earth encircling it forever.
- Main program 22:00 Saturday, February 7:
Conceiving Ada
Programmer Emma wants to get contact with the long since passed away Ada
Byron King, pioneer on artificial intelligence and daughter of the poet
Lord Byron. Emma manages to establish contact by emerging her body into an
experimental DNA memory-coding device. The narrative of the film is
structured along the spiral of the double helix of DNA.
- Late program 23:30 Saturday, February 7:
More
Clay-animation in which a lonely engineer invents an apparatus that makes
live in the industrial age bearable again: 'Happy product', though without
happy ending thanks to the management of the world.
Quatermass and the pit
London subway construction is immediately halted when bones and sculls are
found. The well-known professor Quatermass discovers that the bones and
sculls are enclosed within the rotten structure of an ancient spacecraft.
- Main program 20:00 Sunday, February 8:
Anamorphosis
Esoteric illusions of the Quay brothers within an 'illustrated' reading
about physical and mental perception.
Eye like a strange balloon
A drawing of the French Symbolist painter Odile Redon is taken as the
surreal inspiration for a story about the triangle relationship between a
father, his son and an orphan girl during a strange train travel.
Retrospectroscope
Like Plateau's disk, the 'retrospectroscope' can be seen as a procession of
flickering phantasies and fragmented lyricism; its existence today lies
hidden within the processes from which it has created itself.
videØvoid
Contemplation about the apparent void of time and space as communication
vehicles for thought and matter.
- Continuous screening of documentaries,
6, 7, 8 February 14:00 - 20:00 hrs, among others:
The man who wanted to classify the world
Documentary about Belgian visionary Paul Otlet, who, long before Ted Nelson
claimed and invented the term hypertext, imagined the so called 'Mundaneum'
as a kind of proto Internet, aimed at a worldwide information system to
support and establish world peace, but obstructed by WWII.
"Alle kennis van de wereld, het papieren internet"
See description of 'the man who wanted to classify the world'.
Archaeology of the moving Image
Three issues of a Finnish documentary series about the archaeology of the
moving image.
(English subtitles)
________________________
Tickets and reservations
Ticket prices:
Lectures and film screenings: ¤E 8,-
With reduction: E 7,-
Opening hours ticket office:
During working days from 13:00 till 18:00 hrs. or till the start of the
program.
During the weekend from 1,5 hour before start of the program.
Reserving by phone: +31.20 5535100, during opening hours, till 45 minutes
before the program starts.
Address:
De Balie
Kleine Gartmanplantsoen 10
1017 RR Amsterdam
Tel +31(0)20 5535151
Fax +31(0)20 5535155
Reserve: +31(0)20 5535100
Balie at balie.nl
http://www.debalie.nl
Accessibility
- Tram 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, en 10
- De Balie is accessible for wheelchair users, and is equipped with audio
systems for hearing impaired visitors.
________________________
COLOFON
Editors:
Eric Kluitenberg, concept and final editing
Lucas Evers, coordination production, editing, film program
Design:
T(C), H&M, Felix Janssens.
Book & DVD:
Alongside the program a book and DVD will be published by Uitgeverij De
Balie, including contributions by all presenters in this program. During
the weekend of 5 - 8 February it will be possible to pre-order this
publication.
Special thanks:
Edwin Carels, Carel Alphenaar, Elly Ludenhof, Peter van Hoof, Peter Sep
Supported by:
VSB Fonds, the Mondriaan Foundation, and the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts.