[spectre] Utopia Reversed - An assault on neurospace [Weimar, May 26-27]

[Matteo Pasquinelli]

UTOPIA REVERSED - An Assault on Neurospace

A two-day meeting in Weimar about new forms of art and activism hitting 
the global mind

Weimar, May 26-27, 2005, h20-22.
Schiller Festival, Utopia Baustelle
www.schillerfestival.com/Utopie/10_Reversed.html


What is today's space for political and artistic action? From political 
utopia to TV imagery to cyberspace, different kinds of 'space' have 
been populated in contemporary culture. A group of Italian and French 
activists will gather in Weimar trying to explore and discuss new 
spaces and new strategies of activism after the internet. Under the 
concept of 'neurospace' Matteo Pasquinelli, media theorist from Bologna 
and editor of Rekombinant, will focus on the convergence between 
popular imagery and networked environment. Technology-based activism is 
turning into biopolitical forms of communication: not simply 
counter-information or media activism but the production of new 
collective subjectivies and narrations. Just back from the EuroMayDay 
005 mobilizations, Alex Foti will tell tales of San Precario, the new 
icon of metropolitan resistance from net/temp/flex and precarious 
workers in Italy, while Zoe Romano will introduce Serpica Naro, the 
open source stylist whose multi-level media hoax caused waves of panic 
among Italian fashion designers. Turning to social reactions to 
mediascape, André Gattolin will look at the activities of the Anti-Pub 
Brigades, a French movement that fights against the visual dominance of 
commercial ads in the urban public space. Sara Massaccesi from Rome 
will illustrate Guerriglia Marketing's modus operandi in the 
brandscape. The Milan-based game developer Paolo Pedercini will screen 
his Molle Industria project, which has alredy been covered by the BBC 
in its treatment of 'political videogames'.

Curators: Jan Hendrik Brueggemeir, Matteo Pasquinelli.


PROGRAM

Thursday, May 26, 20-22h.
Introduction and presentations with:

    - Matteo Pasquinelli, Bologna/London (www.rekombinant.org)
    An Assault on Neurospace: New forms of art and activism hitting on 
the global mind

    - Paolo Pedercini, Milan (www.molleindustria.it)
    Molle Industria: Gaming as a new radical language

    - André Gattolin, Paris (www.hns-info.net, www.stopub.tk)
    The Antipub movement: From underground to "no ground"


Friday, May 27, 20-22h.
Presentations and final debate with:

    - Alex Foti, Milan (www.sanprecario.info, www.euromayday.org)
    San Precario: The Italian icon of flexible revolt

    - Zoe Romano, Milan (www.serpicanaro.com, www.chainworkers.org)
    Serpica Naro: Subvertising the fashion industry

    - Alex Foti + Zoe Romano
    May Day 005: Euroradicals fighting precarization across Neuropa

    - Sara Massaccesi,  Rome (www.guerrigliamarketing.it, 
www.espropriproletari.com)
    Guerriglia Marketing: brand economy encounters social conflict



More material, slides and articles available soon on:
www.schillerfestival.com/Utopie/10_Reversed.html

Some webcams on the Utopia baustelle:
www.thueringer-webcams.de/weimar/theaterplatz/fullsize.jpg
www.corneliaerdmann.de/venezia/Weimar.htm