[spectre] War Against Terrorism, Economics and Media-Art

[Ned Rossiter]

Press release August 31th 2005


The Connection Between the War Against Terrorism, Economics and Media- 
Art

Researchers, activists and media-artists meet on the Trans-Siberian  
train from Moscow to Beijing September 11th -20th 2005.


The conference "Capturing the Moving Minds" gathers a pack of  
people ... artists, economists, researchers, philosophers,  
activists ... who are interested in the new logic of the economy, the  
new form of war against terrorism and in the new cooperative modes of  
creation and resistance, together in a space moving in time.  
Spatially moving bodies and bodies moving in time (through the  
different time zones) creates an event, a meeting that not really  
'is' but 'is going on'.


Is this project about economics, is it political activity or a work  
of art? This "boundlessness" or "indeterminacy", which always  
characterizes the creation of new, is where the energy of the project  
is coming: The enterprise expresses and exposes itself the "knowledge  
economy" in which it exists. It is something the orthodox conceptions  
about work, action, economy and art are unable to grasp. In this  
organizational experiment everybody is "alone together" like a pack  
of wolves around a fire having neighbours to the left and to the  
right but nobody behind their backs exposed to the desert.


There are 50 participants on the train involving well known media- 
artists, frontline contemporary thinkers and political activists. The  
project has been invited to participate in the International ARS2006  
biennial at Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki and to  
arrange an exhibition at the Villa Croce Museo d'arte contemporanea  
di Genova during summer 2006.


Pressconference and Opening Seminar Wed 7.9., 15:00-19:00, Hämeentie  
33 A, 2nd Floor, Helsinki

15:00-15:20 Intro to the project, its themes and methods (Tuula  
Karjalainen, Jussi Vähämäki, KlausHarju)

15:20-15:40 Launching of the mobile documentation (Minna Tarkka, Adam  
Hyde et al.)

15:40-16:00 Trans-sib as a work of art (Akseli Virtanen, Anna Daneri,  
Genova)

16:00-17:00 Questions, interviews, refreshments

17:00-19:00 "Aesthetics of Resistance" -seminar with Bracha L.  
Ettinger (Tel Aviv), Pierre Guillet de Monthoux (Stockholm), Jordan  
Crandall (Los Angeles), Steffen Böhm (London)

Mobicasting brings the event directly for all: The Trans-siberian  
conference is documented and broadcasted through an audiovisual  
mobicasting platform to the internet. The documentarists,  
photographers, artists and researchers produce discussions, ideas,  
interviews, texts and films along the route. The documentation will  
be projected in Kiasma during the journey and it will also be  
available on several international www-channels. The webpages http:// 
www.kiasma.fi/transsiberia <http://www.kiasma.fi/transsiberia>  will  
be opened on September 7th. See also http://trans-siberianradio.org  
<http://trans-siberianradio.org/>

Further info on the conference and the participants: http:// 
www.ephemeraweb.org/conference <http://www.ephemeraweb.org/conference>
Further info on the mobicasting platform: m-cult, Netta Norro +358  
40-5618004

Further info on the opening seminar: Akseli Virtanen +358 400-302010  
akseli.virtanen at hkkk.fi <mailto:akseli.virtanen at hkkk.fi>

The event is organised by Ephemera, Tutkijaliitto, Kiasma, Frame, m- 
cult, Helsinki School of Economics and the Chydenius Institute