[spectre] The Juxtaposium / open letter to event organisers

[Darko Fritz]

Dear Juxtaposiumists and Spectrists

I agree on the urge of new presentation formats for both art practices  
and related theory and criticism in symposium format.

Many artist talks already transgressed reading/papers/listing/slides  
symposium formats turning the presentations of art practice into  
specific kind of performances. We can learn from it while searching  
for new symposium formats.

At the other hand, I propose to look closer the cases where  
theoreticians transgressing their usual formats, making use of an art  
toolbox in their practice. An example is the presentation of Next 5  
minutes festival (N5M) by art historian / organizer / theoretician  
Eric Kluitenberg made as TJ (theory jay) performance. Performance was  
dealing with the subject of change of the language within political  
context, in format of live sound-performance with sampled texts,  
sounds and text-to-speech (with Theory Machine software designed  
specially for this event by Adam Hyde). It was presented at the  
CLUB.NL project that I co-curate back in 2000. Presentation was made  
after curatorial proposal to present Next 5 minutes festival, but  
strictly expressed that presentation don't use reading/papers/listing/ 
slides format. This presentation did not prezented realized artworks/ 
projects/activities/outputs of N5M festival as usual, but its  
content / idea in another format. Same went for several other  
organizations and institutions that were presented within CLUB.NL  
project, each choosing different way of presentation. As well, CLUB.NL  
merge the press-conference with 15 minutes presentations of each  
invited organization (with standard  reading/papers/listing/slides),  
while two artist simultaneously made performances in the same space  
and made some noise that deliberatelly disturbed readability of the  
presentations / press conference.

All in all, it's about leaving the safe zone of established  
presentation formats and inaugurating new relationship to presented  
content. It is applicable for ones who are ready for it, with the  
respect for ones who are not. In some cases standard symposia formats  
working best for presenting the content, so here I vote for supporting  
all (new, old and hybrid) formats in the symposia, where the content  
is in forefront.

Best regards

Darko



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Darko Fritz

http://darkofritz.net