[rohrpost] Open Call - Operative Performances "ctrl alt ESCAPE"
daniel franke
wearechopchop at googlemail.com
Sam Apr 2 13:21:49 CEST 2011
*ctrl alt ESCAPE – Open Call*
The Berlin based media art collective
weareChopChop<http://www.wearechopchop.com>and
LEAP <http://www.leapknecht.de> (Lab for Electronic Arts and Performance)
will collaborate with invited media- and performance artists in a syncretism
of advanced media technology and performing bodies.
We are inviting media- software- and performance artists to participate in a
1-week workshop and work presentation with the title “ctrl alt ESCAPE”; we
want to explore the topic of “digital resistance” and develop a line of
tools aimed at the subversion of information power structures through
digital intervention.
The project will take place at LEAP in Berlin Mitte this *May 8th-13th* and
is the 2nd part of the workshop & exhibition series “Operative Performances”
(for detailed information on the 1st part visit
WACC<http://wearechopchop.com/operative-performances/>or see the
Documentation <http://www.wearechopchop.com/operative_Performances_doku.pdf>
).
Operative Performance is aimed at connecting the fields of media and
performance art in workshops exploring the relationship between new media
technologies and the body in a setting incorporating political and academic
perspectives on the subject.
The workshop is framed by semi-public lectures and talks by
academics/journalists/activists elaborating the topic theoretically and
offering the participants critical perspectives on their work-approaches.
If you are interested in participating in the project as an artist and/or a
scholar and/or ... please send us some work samples along with your
particular interests in terms of collaboration (conceptual approach,
integrated media etc.).
___________________________________________________________________
Abstract
With the ongoing event series and workshop program “Operative performances”
we seek the exchange between media artists (in all categories) and
“body-based” artists primarily working with performance, dance or theater.
Our program is structured as a 1-week workshop among small interdisciplinary
groups and concludes in a 1-night public Werkschau/presentation of the
processual outcome.
O.P. 2 "ctrl alt ESCAPE": Our workshop title is deducted from the keyboard
short cut used to force-quit a computing process gone unresponsive or awry.
For us it serves as a metaphor for an obstruction, a subversion or an
intervention into digitally-based data-distribution systems moving towards
unrestricted information flows, opaque recycling of (personal) data and
monopolistic market dominators.
In a software related context the „reboot“ command (Windows: Ctrl alt del /
Mac: Cmd alt esc) that requests the system to terminate itself can be seen
as expressing a paradox as one might deduct: “If self-termination is an
implicit quality of the system itself, is our agency then merely an
expression of that very system?”
We ask:
- Is actual resistance possible under the given circumstances? Are
strategies
of digital resistance or resistance towards the digital better suited?
and
-What role does the body play in a system without touch? How do we render
the workings of virtual systems tangible in real space? Which problematics
and
which potential can we locate in the contact area of the body and its
virtual extension?
A central question to us is how we can interact with the complex mediated
processes
that determine the exchange of data, their re-contextualization and digital
representational strategies and thus significantly informing society today.
The processes in question take place mostly with little regard to questions
of ethics,
or in a wider range- of philosophy; we want to connect the topic of The
Personal and
The Body with (www-orientated) questions of data recycling, image
domination,
copyright and market. In doing so, we attempt to track the discourse from
the virtual
back to actual bodies – presenting our artistic output in a medial set-up of
bodies
performing within spaces that merge characteristics of the virtual with the
real.
Implicit to our title is the central imperative of examining if and how it
is possible to
tamper with, extend, reverse or terminate the digital processes that
determine how
we are being (re)presented, perceived and ultimately- who we end up being.
Into the
discourse we want to intertwine a broader set of associations including
subversive
systems, semiotics/linguistics/language/code, simulation, inter face,
behavioral
patterns,representational critique, image storm / Bilderflut, market
dynamics, oppression,
escapism, freedom fighter, piracy, Control – regaining it, reclaiming it,
tracing its limits.
___________________________________________________________________
A project by
Mikala Hyldig Dal <http://www.mikala-hyldig-dal.net/>, Daniel
Franke<http://www.daniel-franke.com>,
John McKiernan & Kai Kreuzmueller <http://www.wearechopchop.com>
___________________________________________________________________
Work Flow
weareChopChop invites 5 media artists/-collectives/-groups and 5 performance
artists/dancers to a 1-week workshop on May 08. 2011 to May 13. 2011 at
LEAP.
The theme will be “Operative Performances” as we will work in the
intersection
point of performance art and media art to experiment with “interactive
sculptures”:
sculptures that react to and interact with a moving -performing- body.
The invited artists will form 5 groups pairing performance artists and
media/sound
artists. Each group will prepare a “staging” – a performance with a medial
overlay
at LEAP.
The five stagings will take place on May the 13th between 7-11 p.m. in
a rotating
order; some might overlap if they fit the individual concept.
As the workshop will take place in the same gallery as the
exhibition/presentation,
objects, sketches and notes from the creative work process might stay to
form a
processual framing of the artworks.
Wearechopchop will present their research on Operative Performances and
together with invited scholars offer a theoretical build up to the
exhibition. The presentation will take place in the intersection point of
theory and praxis and oscillate with the exhibited artworks.
weareChopChop <http://www.wearechopchop.com>
___________________________________________________________________
LEAP
Lab for Electronic Arts and Performance
(Berlin Carré, 1. Stock)
Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 13
10178 Berlin
info at leapknecht.de
www.leapknecht.de