[spectre] Call: Art of the Overhead Festival, Malmoe, 15 - 31 May 2009

[Andreas Broeckmann]

From: Kristoffer Gansing <kristoffer.gansing at mah.se>
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:45:08 +0100


*   T H E   A R T   O F   T H E   O V E R H E A D 
*   2 o o 9   *   http://www.overheads.org

Call for Overheads

We are happy to announce "OHPen Surface" - the 
2009 edition of the Art of the Overhead Festival 
featuring an exhibition, performances and 
workshops in Malmö, Sweden May 15 - 31 2009.

This years festival will take place at 
Stapelbäddsparken, a former Shipbuilding slipway 
featuring 3000m2 of largely underground areas in 
Malmö, Sweden. The "OHpen Surface" theme then, 
refers not only to the OHpen Surface of the 
Overhead projector but also the physical location 
and organisational workshop-based structure of 
the festival itself. However, with this framework 
we also aim to encourage a critical reflection on 
how technological standards, such as the Overhead 
projector, relates to the dynamic of open and 
closed which is so pervasive in the standards of 
today's networked media culture (read on below 
for more details on the festival theme).

We are now welcoming submissions for the OHPen 
Surface workshop and/or festival in the following 
categories:

* Transparencies for The Art of the Overhead 
Archive (physical or as PDF's for printing). The 
archive is a wall-mounted installation where 
folders containing the different works can be 
browsed and projected by the audience.

* Installation, works incorporating overhead 
projection, custom built projectors, 
digital-analogue hybrids etc.

* Performances, live performances incorporating 
overhead projectors. From live cinema, vj acts or 
different kinds of kinetic-sound generation to 
the good old conference presentation.

Deadline for submissions is March 30, 2009 - use our "Submit" PDF on the
http://www.overheads.org website for 
contributions in any of the above categories.

* Projects for OHPen Surface Workshop:
For work-in-progress (or more or less finished 
works which require some time for preparation) 
you may apply for our workshop week which will 
run from May 15 until the opening weekend May 
22-23. (NB: you do not need to be present the 
whole week, please state how many days you'd like 
to participate) This part of the festival is 
organised in collaboration with "Kunst und Musik 
mit dem Tageslichtsprojektor" (derstrudel.org, 
Ralf Schreiber and Tina Tonagel) from Köln and 
focuses on low-tech DIY appopriations and 
performative uses of the Overhead projector.


*** O H P e n   S u r f a c e   -   F e s t i v a l   T h e m e   2 0 0 9 ***

"The reason for why we used simple overhead 
projectors was because of their open surface, 
where you could directly work with your 
materials."
- Joshua White of Joshua Light Show.

Through performances, installations, workshops 
and a growing archive of overhead transparencies, 
the festival reflects on the different practices 
connected to the history of the overhead 
projector, from the bureaucratic and educational 
settings of the classroom or business conference 
to the counter-culture context of the 1960's and 
onwards to the contemporary media culture. The 
overhead prepared us for the cognitive structure 
of PowerPoint, teaching us the importance of 
keywords, summaries, bullet-lists, illustrative 
pictures and a straightforward way of 
presentation. In short, the overhead as a device 
for instruction is a disciplinary technology. But 
there are other histories of the Overhead 
projector as well: from the 1940's it was a 
standard equipment in Bowling alleys for the 
projection of players scores and later in the 
1950's and 1960's it was appropriated by beatniks 
and hippies to create psychedelic "light shows".

This edition of the media-archaeological festival 
The Art of the Overhead is centered around the 
theme of the OHPen Surface, aiming at a critical 
reflection on the role of standards in the 
contemporary mediascape. The overhead projector 
is a clearly recognisable standard for the art of 
projection: it comes with institutional 
disciplinary settings such as the school or the 
business enterprise and with regulatory 
frameworks of presentation both of the material 
(such as the illuminated surface and the 
transparency) and the mental/cognitive kind 
(presentation guidelines, the do's and don'ts of 
instruction). In our culture of increasingly 
integrated networks of data flows, standards take 
on a pivotal role, from legal frameworks to file 
formats and communication protocols, we are 
surrounded by the institutions of cultural 
production that they bring about. What is 
important to remember is that while all these 
areas define different models of the "Open", 
they, as all standards do, also leave some other 
paths closed. How can such tensions be revealed 
and acted-reflected upon in artistic production?

With this call for contributions for The Art of 
the Overhead 2009 - we encourage artists and 
other media practitioners to depart from the 
Overhead projector as a standardized technology 
which has the potential for re-activation by way 
of its near outdated character. This entails 
reflection-as-projection, deploying the Overhead 
projector in the double sense of projection 
described by Siegfried Zielinski: as both casting 
out images representing the world and as a 
shaping movement, a production or rather a 
visionary pro-jecting of reality as delimited by 
how we see it through the image. To work in one 
media, criticizing another, or reflecting across 
a whole domain of media culture through a 
particular and well-known technological 
institution is a kind of non-digitalisable 
cultural practice that The Art of the Overhead is 
all about, and through the OHPen Surface we call 
for works that engage in this dynamic.

AbOHut
The Art of the Overhead is an international media 
art festival, which took place for the first time 
in Copenhagen September-October 2005. Since then 
it has been followed by various exhibitions and 
workshops, inspiring the collaborating offshoot 
project "Kunst und Musik mit dem 
Tageslichtsprojektor" in Cologne 2007. Now we 
join forces and return to Scandinavia for a 2009 
edition in Malmö, Sweden.

cOHntact
Concept and Coordinators: Linda Hilfling & Kristoffer Gansing
OHpen Surface is managed by the cultural 
association The Art of the Overhead which is 
based in the Öresund region and supported by 
Framtidens Kultur and Malmö Stad.

info at overheads.org    http://www.overheads.org

Adress:
The Art of the Overhead
C/O Kristoffer Gansing
K3 School of Arts and Communication
Malmö University
205 06 Malmö Sweden


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*   T H E   A R T   O F   T H E   O V E R H E A D 
*   2 o o 9   *   http://www.overheads.org
* Workshops, Exhibition and Performances * May 15 
- 31 * Stapelbäddsparken, Malmö, Sweden *