[spectre] RealPlay in [R][R][F] 2004]

[geert]

From: Gita Hashemi <gita at ping.ca>
Subject: RealPlay in [R][R][F] 2004
Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 11:19:02 -0500

RealPlay
Part of [R][R][F] 2004

Including:
 
Farah: In Search for Joy
<http://farah.dyne.org/>
by Jaromil

The Olive Project
<http://www.charlesstreetvideo.com/project.php?id=1>
by Hard Pressed Collective

Migrant
<http://www.crixa.com/mireille/Migrant/Tampa.htm>
by Mireille Astore

Project Threadbare
<http://www.threadbare.tyo.ca/>
by Project Threadbare Coalition

Survey of Common Sense
<http://surveyofcommonsense.net/>
by Haleh Niazmand

Curated by Gita Hashemi for [R][R][F] 2004

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[R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
[Remembering-Repressing-Forgetting]
<http://www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004>
global networking project
created and developed by Agricola de Cologne

5-29 March 2004
National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucaresti/Romania
<http://www.mnac.ro/next>
&
Bergen Center of Electronic Arts Bergen/Norway
<http://www.bek.no>

20-28 March 2004
New Media Art Festival Bangkok/Thailand
<http://thailand.culturebase.org>

For other programmes, times and places visit [R][R][F] 2004
<http://www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004>
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RealPlay
Curatorial essay by Gita Hashemi

RealPlay has little to do with play, really. It is about playing for
real. Topically positioned in specific times and/or places, the works in
RealPlay contest, counter and/or subvert dominant geopolitical and/or
cultural notions with reference to the colonial constructs of the
"Middle East" and the "West." This selection works as a broad political
commentary as well as responses to certain trends in "new media"
discourse that explicitly or implicitly (sometimes inadvertently)
postulate and promote fundamental distinctions and discontinuities
between the "virtual" and the "real." Such distinctions inevitably
idealize the illusionary (utopic or distopic) space where code is
entirely capable of mastermindingexperience, or where code becomes
experience. The projects in RealPlay reject such Western-oriented
techno-centric and techno-determinist tendencies by privileging urgent
socio-political issues over media formalism and by insisting on the
priority of social interaction over, as well as through, cyberspace
interactivity. Using diverse practices of documenting and archiving,
these projects capitalize on the function of the internet as a
repository of retrievable data and, more importantly, as a communication
channel that can be advantageously put to use towards inciting
counter-hegemonic thought and action.

Subverting stereotypical representations of Palestinians as fanatic
terrorists or people solely occupied and pre-occupied by war, inFarah:
In Search for Joy  <http://farah.dyne.org/>, an account from a trip to
Palestine following the brutal Israeli re-occupation campaign of the
West Bank in 2002, software pioneer and artist Jaromil (Italy) gives an
account of the everlasting human search and capacity for joy in towns
and refugee camps under siege (again). Farah: In Search for Joy is a
brief and unpretentious traveler's search for and documentation of those
aspects of the Palestinian popular culture that continue to create,
offer and celebrate joy in spite of the prolonged conditions of colonial
occupation and war. As an archive (in progress), the website is
incubated in and reflective of the artist's interactions with his
environment as it is a virtual space for our encounter with a dimension
of Palestinian reality categorically forgotten or ignored in dominant
representations in the West.

An initiative of Hard Pressed Collective (Canada), a group of media
artists with a penchant for politically-engaged art-making,The Olive
Project  <http://www.charlesstreetvideo.com/project.php?id=1> is, on the
surface, a programmed compilation of short videos by diverse
international artists. Thematically grounded in the historically rich
and culturally diverse symbolism of the olive, the videos exhibit a
range of artist responses to the ruthless practice of uprooting olive
trees in Palestine by Israeli forces- a favourite occupation strategy
aiming to force Palestinians off their land by effectively undermining
the economic survival of the growers and their local production.
Collectively, the videos construct a time-based memorial to "peace and
justice" made of 2-minute blocks. Before, through and beyond the
remediated compilation and its dissemination in cyberspace, however,
this project functions as a tool for consciousness-raising, mobilizing
and networking around an issue of real world significance.

Migrant <http://www.crixa.com/mireille/Migrant/Tampa.htm> is the web
component of Mireille Astore's (Australia) larger sculpture and
performance project that takes as its starting point the infamous Tampa
ship incident in August 2001. The incident brought local and
international public attention to the plight of the "boat people"-
refugees primarily from the "Middle East"-who, upon arrival in
Australian waters, were first refused landing and then recast as
prisoners by a xenophobic "Western" state. Astore's obsessive
photographic documentation (from the inside looking out) of her 18-day
self-inflicted virtual imprisonment-in a scaled recreation of Tampa on a
public beach in Sydney-functions as a looking glass in which to observe
the uneasy and disturbing reactions to the arrival of new migrants by a
society that has repressed its own memory and burried its own racist and
colonial settler history under the grounds on which Woomera and Nauru
detention centres currently stand for real.

Project Threadbare <http://www.threadbare.tyo.ca/> is animated by a
coalition of activists in response to the detention in August 2003 of 21
South Asian (primarily Pakistani) students in Toronto, Canada under the
guise of anti-terrorist and national security operations. Since its
inception, Project Threadbare has been an immensely successful local
expository and legal campaign against racial targeting, detention and
deportation of immigrants and refugees by Canadian police, intelligence
and immigration forces, who are hotly in the race for the third place
prize of dishonour, after USA and Australia, for breaking their own
nation's civil liberties codes as well as international human rights
conventions. This website, an ongoing forum, newsboard and archive for
Toronto activists, is one wiki that doesn't pretend to be the virtual
world's better-than-original replica of "democracy." Although some of
the active members of the coalition are artists and their website is
pretty slick,Project Threadbare was not conceived as and does not make a
claim to being new media art; rather, it is a real world experiment in
social and creative participation and collaboration, with tangible
impact in the lives of the original 21 detainees and now in the lives of
many others in similar predicaments.

Survey of Common Sense <http://surveyofcommonsense.net/> is a recreation
of an earlier participatory painting installation project by the same
title by Haleh Niazmand (USA). A parody of the polling industry that for
the past 5 or 6 decades has been the engine of "democracy" in the United
States, Niazmand's image-text intervention, in the form of survey
questions with forced yes/no "choices," is not only an authorial comment
on the practices of polling as determinant of "democratic outcome," but
a strong challenge to notions of "pragmatism" and "common sense"
preached from political pulpits in the present-day United States. Beyond
this,Survey of Common Sense is an invitation, courtesy of an artist from
the "Middle East" and a citizen of the "West," to the
participants/viewers to recongnize, acknowledge and reflect upon the
ways in which each and every one of us are intricately and deeply
implicated, really and virtually, in the bloody absurdity of this
political moment. As such and in the very impossibility of responding
with any degree of ease and resolution to Niazmand's questions, this
work is an incessant challenge issued so we will not slip into
forgetting.

The projects in this selection have taken shape independently of this
curatorial effort. My thanks to all the participants for allowing me to
include their work in RealPlay.

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[R][R][F] 2004 includes selection by:
Gita Hashemi (Iran/Canada)
Raul Ferrera-Balanquet (Cuba/USA)
Calin Man and Stefan Tiron (Romania)
Eva Sjuve (Norway)
Bjoern Norberg (Sweden)
Raquel Partnoy (USA/Argentina)
Agricola de Cologne (Germany)
Melody Parker-Carter (Germany)

For more on other curator's programmes, visit [R][R][F] 2004
<http://www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004>
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