[spectre] Speaking Out Loud symposium and launch of Gate peepin'

[Marieke Istha]

Speaking Out Loud symposium and launch of Gate peepin'
Thursday December 18
Netherlands Media Art Institute, Keizersgracht 264, Amsterdam

LIVE STREAM http://www.nimk.nl

With: Florian Cramer, Jaromil, An Mertens and Peter Westenberg,  Linda 
Hilfling
Moderated by Susanne Jaschko

Most works in the Speaking Out Loud exhibition suggest that language is 
a fluid, dynamic system which offers itself for individual expression 
and performance. On the other hand, language is a rational system not 
driven by instinct but whose strict rules and signs we must learn in a 
life long, enduring process. Looking at language from this other 
perspective, we are confronted with an authority, a rigid system of code 
that is preserved and governed even. Language shares this ambivalence 
with the Internet, a system that on the one hand develops dynamically 
through its users' contributions, on the other hand, it is a highly 
regulated space, that is less and less public but where the transfer of 
copyrights and censorship affect the Internet's appearance and use at 
its core.

In this session, the speakers will discuss the nature of both systems 
language and the Internet from their various perspectives, particularly 
looking at ways to artistically respond to, escape and circumvent their 
rigidness and constraints. On this occasion, Linda Hilfling will launch 
'Gate Peepin', her new work that she has developed during a residency at 
NIMk.

Florian Cramer is a theoretician and course director media design at 
Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. He is the author of the essay 'Words 
Made Flesh, code, culture imagination' 
http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/research/fcramer/wordsmadeflesh/
Previously, Florian was a junior lecturer in Comparative Literature at 
Freie Universität Berlin and had published papers in the area of code 
poetry, comparative studies in the literature and the arts, modernism, 
text theory, literature and computing, collaborated on the 
http://www.runme.org/ Software Art repository and edited the Unstable 
Digest of code poetry. http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70

Jaromil is a media artist, GNU/Linux hacker, activist and researcher at 
the Netherlands Media Art Institute. In 2005 he and jodi.org joined for 
an artistic collaboration that led to the development of a tool to write 
and publish time-based text to be used in email communications and 
websites. 'Time Based Text' is currently exhibited in the Speaking Out 
loud exhibition and very recently has been nominated for the Vilem 
Flusser Theory Award of transmediale.09. Jaromil will talk about the 
background and intention of Time Based Text and the concept of property 
in the context of new media. http://jaromil.dyne.org

An Mertens and Peter Westenberg are members of Constant, Brussels. 
Constant develops radio, electronic music and database projects, by 
means of migrating from cultural work to work places and back again. An 
Mertens is a fiction writer, storyteller and dramaturge. She is 
experimenting with analog and digital forms of storytelling. Peter 
Westenberg is visual artist and film- and videomaker. His projects 
evolve from an interest in social cartography, urban anomalies and the 
relationships between locative identity and cultural geography. Together 
they will talk about thoughts and motivations underlying their up-coming 
long-term project 'Schaerbeekse taal / La langue schaerbeekoise' which 
deals with the construction of an artificial language. 
http://data.constantvzw.org/site/

Danish artist Linda Hilfling works with the premises of participation 
and public spaces within media structures, with a focus on means of 
control (codes, organisation and law) and their cultural impact. Her 
artistic practice takes the form of interventions reflecting upon or 
revealing hidden gaps in these structures. She will discuss her new art 
work 'Gate peepin' that reflects on the hidden layers of regulations 
governing the use of so-called democratic web-spaces. The Firefox 
extension analyses the terms of services of Web 2.0 platforms and 
reedits their content, thus enabling a new browsing experience. At the 
launch, copies of the 'Gate peepin' publication will be available for free.
http://www.gatepeepin.org

Start 20.00 hours
Entrance 3,50 (students 2,50)
Reservations: info at nimk.nl
Language: English

The Speaking Out Loud exhibition is on show until  24 January 2009 with 
works from: Tudor Bratu (RO), Tim Etchells (UK) and Vlatka Horvat 
(CRO/US), Linda Hilfling (DEN), Michael Hoepfel (DE, Jaromil (IT/NL) and 
Jodi (NL), KH Jeron (DE), Christoph Keller (DE), Manu Luksch (AT) and 
Mukul Patel (UK), Evan Roth (US), Charles Sandison (UK), Trikoton (DE).

Netherlands Media Art Institute
Keizersgracht 264
1016 EV Amsterdams
The Netherlands
http://www.nimk.nl