[spectre] Gita Hashemi curates REAL PLAY

[[real_play]]

Gita Hashemi (Iran/Canada) curates RealPlay
for 
[R][R][F] 2005--->XP
[Remembering-Repressing-Forgetting] 
<http://rrf2005.newmediafest.org>
global networking project
created and developed by Agricola de Cologne 
.
including following artists 
.
1. Jaromil
2. Hard Pressed Collective
3. Mireille Astore
4. Project Threadbare Coalition
5. Haleh Niazmand
.
Curatorial statement
.
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 masterminding experience,
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.
(Excerpt from Gita Hashemi's curatorial statement -
full text on <http://rrf2005.newmediafest.org> )
.
About the curator:
Gita Hashemi (http://strictlypersonal.net <>)
engages in cultural practice as artist, writer, curator,
organizer,
worker and educator. Her most recent curatorial projects include
RealPlay (2004, netart exhibit)
Negotiations: From a Piece of Land to a Land of Peace
(2003, art-driven multidisciplinary event, http://negotiations2003.net <>),
WILL (2003, multidisciplinary transnational exhibition,
http://negotiations2003.net/will <>),
Afghanistan, 2002: No Refuge and Locating Afghanistan
(2002-3, image-text exhibition and publication with photography by Babak
Salari),
and Trans/Planting: Contemporary Art by Women from/in Iran
(2001, with Taraneh Hemami, http://strictlypersonal.net/transplanting <>).
.
Hashemi's labour as an intellectual has crystallized in simultaneous
processes #
of de/re/construction; not in any specific class of objects or within any
particular
representational genres, but in the envisioning of the spaces and
formulation
of the critical practices that can be constitutive in transformative social
and
political movements. Informed by her direct engagement in liberatory
political
struggles before, during and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution as well as
her
experience of exile in North America, Hashemi's work takes shape in a
continuous
process of countering masculinist discourses of fundamentalism, fascism,
colonialism,
corporatism and militarism. Notions of community, co-labouring, public space
and
active participation are integral to her creative engagement. So is the
understanding
that artistic practice, as a fundamentally social process, is inherently
political and must,
therefore, be subject to conscious (re-visionary) feminist re-articulation:
The political is personal, the personal is poetic, the poetic is political,
the political must become ethical.
.
About the artists
.
1. Jaromil
Rami a.k.a. Jaromil (http://korova.dyne.org <>) is a free software programmer
and
streaming media pioneer, media artist and activist, performer and emigrant.
Wired to the matrix since 1991 (point of NeuromanteBBS on Cybernet
65:1500/3.13),
Jaromil co-founded (1994) the non-profit organization Metro Olografix for
the diffusion
of information technology, and in 2000 founded the free software lab
dyne.org; sub-root
for the autistici.org / inventati.org community. Jaromil is active in the
Italy Indymedia
Collective, and is currently the software analyst and developer for PUBLIC
VOICE Lab (Vienna).
Jaromil's most recent online piece is Farah: a documentation of his travel
through the occupied territories of Palestine, in search for joy.
.
2. Hard Pressed Collective
The Olive Project is a project of the Hard Pressed Collective and Charles
Street Video.
The Hard Pressed Collective is a group of video artists working in support
of a
just peace in Israel/Palestine. This project was inspired by the solidarity
efforts
around the olive harvest in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Members include: Riad Bahhur, Richard Fung, Rebecca Garrett, John Greyson,
Jayce Salloum, and b.h. Yael. The Olive Project coordinator at Charles
Street Video is Greg Woodbury.
.
3. Mireille Astore
Mireille Astore was born in Beirut and came to Australia in 1975 following
the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon. Although at the time Astore was
classified as
a migrant by the Australian Government, her status bears a strong
resemblance to that
of past and current refugees in the world. She has two children and lives in
Sydney.
A multi disciplinary artist, Astore also has a solid background in the
visual and
literary Arts, the Sciences, art administration as well as policy
development.
She has been publishing and exhibiting for over 14 years. She is currently
undertaking a scholarship funded PhD candidature in Contemporary Arts at the
University of Western Sydney.
.
4. Project Threadbare Coalition
Project Threadbare is a city-wide coalition in Toronto, Ontario, made up of
members of the Pakistani and south Asian communities, cultural organisations,
immigrant and refugee groups, anti-poverty organisations, political groups, faith groups,
trade unionists, students, and concerned activists and individuals who came together in
response to the arrest and detention of twenty Pakistani men and one south Indian man
in August 2003.
None of the men have committed a crime and none have been charged.
.
5. Haleh Niazmand
Haleh Niazmand's art has been exhibited widely in many galleries and museums
including
the San Diego Museum of Art, the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, The Des Moines
Art Center,
the University of Arizona Museum of Art, The Worth Rider Gallery at the
University of California,
Berkeley, the Macy Gallery at Columbia University and A Space Gallery,
Toronto.
The internet-adapted version of her participatory projects The Survey of
Common Sense
and the Post Exile collective's Word Room are included in the Rhizome's
Artbase archive.
In addition, Niazmand's art has been discussed in numerous scholarly essays,
journals, and
professional magazines including the Middle East Women Studies Review,
Radical History Review, Mix Magazine and Artweek.
Between 1996 and 2000 Haleh Niazmand designed and implemented several
collaborative art projects with under-represented community groups in
California as
well as Iowa while serving as the Artist in Residence at the Des Moines Art
Center from 1998-2000.
She holds a Master of Fine Arts from University of Arizona.
.
**********************************************************
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"RealPlay" the curatorial contribution by Gita Hashimi
can be accesssed via "Memory Channel 1", i.e [R][R][F] Channel
on the artistic body of [R][R]F[] 2005--->XP 
<http://rrf2005.newmediafest.org>
.
[R][R][F] 2005 --->XP is realized in collaboration and networking with
numerous virtual and physical locations and partners around the globe,
it will be developed and operating during 2006 and beyond.
.
All details are available on
[R][R][F] 2005 --->XP info site 
<http://rrf2005.newmediafest.org>
rrf2005 at newmediafest.org <mailto:rrf2005 at newmediafest.org>
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[R][R][F] 2005 --->XP
is corporate member of
[NewMediaArtProjectNetwork]:||cologne 
www.nmartproject.net <http://www.nmartproject.net>
info at nmartproject.net <>
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