les liens invisibles » Exhibitions http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org linking the invisible Mon, 06 Sep 2010 09:35:57 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 LLI @ Sonica 2010 Festival of transitory and experimental art http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/09/06/lli-sonica-2010-festival-of-transitory-and-experimental-art/ http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/09/06/lli-sonica-2010-festival-of-transitory-and-experimental-art/#comments Mon, 06 Sep 2010 09:33:02 +0000 dedalus http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/?p=421 “Sonica is conceived as a showcase of the yearly program of MoTA Museum of Transitory Art. Sonica is an experimental festival, which questions ways of representation, exhibition formats, crossing borders between art and theory, object and performance and this year specially the virtual and the real.

With the theme real virtuality, Sonica will start a discussion regarding the situation of production, representation and funding. To which extent has the break of virtuality into reality influenced conditions of production, representation of artworks and artists and how does it change funding matrixes will be the topics addressed at MoTA Sea Station residency in the summer, during production residencies in Ljubljana and at the festival with at the exhibition, the round tables and artist talks. But most importantly, Sonica will question how have these transitions affected the content of art produced in the past years and which alternative models are introduced by artists and cultural workers.”

MoTA Museum of transitory art

]]> http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/09/06/lli-sonica-2010-festival-of-transitory-and-experimental-art/feed/ 0 Cease & Desist Art: yes, this is illegal! http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/05/25/cease-desist-art-yes-this-is-illegal/ http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/05/25/cease-desist-art-yes-this-is-illegal/#comments Tue, 25 May 2010 13:09:00 +0000 dedalus http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/?p=413 Cease & Desist Art: yes, this is illegal!
curated by Simona Lodi

@ LPM 2010 – LIVE PERFORMERS MEETING

For some years now, it has become common among digital artists to focus on illegal art practices. Countless Cease & Desist letters have been sent out by companies to pirates, plagiarists, hackers and disturbers, which are shown off as trophies in exhibitions, web communities and mailing lists. Action artists promote controversial forms of art, using guerilla tactics to protest against the fairness of copyright and intellectual property laws.
Receiving a Cease & Desist letter has become the latest badge in championing the freedom to create in the Corporation Age. Any artist interested in taking part in the movement chooses a good lawyer rather than a good gallery owner. What is happening to the future of art? What rights and freedoms are these artists championing? Does all this have something to do with the end of techno-utopias?
In what way has business co-opted the values of hackers, exploiting open source initiatives, web freedom and on-line equality and sparking the use of these practices?

List of Artists and works:

* This work is displayed without legal permission of the artists.

here more: THURSDAY 27: Cease & Desist Art: yes, this is illegal! | LPM 2010 – LIVE PERFORMERS MEETING.

]]> http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/05/25/cease-desist-art-yes-this-is-illegal/feed/ 0 NETinSPACE @ National Museum of the Arts of the XXIst Century http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/05/10/netinspace/ http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/05/10/netinspace/#comments Mon, 10 May 2010 02:29:40 +0000 dedalus http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/?p=363 MAXXI – National Museum of the Arts of the XXIst Century
30. Mai – 25. December 2010

PREVIEWS: May 27. / 28. / 29. 2010
OPEN TO THE PUBLIC: May 30. 2010

Curator: Elena Rossi

Artists:
Bestiario.org(Santiago Ortiz; Marianna Rondon, Mariano Sardon; Mariela Yeregui)
Bianco-Valente
David Crawford
Boredomresearch (Vickey Isley e Paul Smith)
Dr. Hugo Heyrman
Les Liens Invisibiles
Katia Loher
Miltos Manetas
Stephen Vitiello

NETinSPACE is an exhibition dedicated to net art and its relation to the broader context of contemporary art. It is hosted and promoted by MAXXI – National Museum of the Arts of the XXIst Century in Rome. The exhibition will investigate the borders between virtual and physical space.

]]> http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/05/10/netinspace/feed/ 0 Turbulence Commission http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/04/24/turbulence-commission/ http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/04/24/turbulence-commission/#comments Sat, 24 Apr 2010 01:14:51 +0000 dedalus http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/?p=332 http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/04/24/turbulence-commission/feed/ 0 NODE FEST 2010 http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/04/16/node-fest-2010/ http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/04/16/node-fest-2010/#comments Fri, 16 Apr 2010 10:20:05 +0000 dedalus http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/?p=217 We’ll take part of the third edition of NODE FEST in Rome showing our “Too close to duchamp’s bycicle.

]]> http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/04/16/node-fest-2010/feed/ 0 The More I Look, the More I See http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/03/22/the-more-i-look-the-more-i-see/ http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/03/22/the-more-i-look-the-more-i-see/#comments Mon, 22 Mar 2010 15:39:35 +0000 dedalus http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/?p=209 ”“The More I Look, the More I See”, Nov 10 – Dec 10, 2010′
Galerija Galzenica, Velika Gorica (Croatia)

Giuseppe di Bella
Les Liens Invisibles
Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei & Jonas Staal
David Smithson
Tea Tupaji?

]]> http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/03/22/the-more-i-look-the-more-i-see/feed/ 0 GLOBALNE OCIEPLENIE / THE MEDIAGATE http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/03/22/globalne-ocieplenie-the-mediagate/ http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/03/22/globalne-ocieplenie-the-mediagate/#comments Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:57:44 +0000 dedalus http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/?p=213
Exhibition curated by: Marco Mancuso and Claudia D’Alonzo for Digicult & Michal Brzezinski

Exhibition period: 16/04/2010 – 16/05/2010
Opening: Friday 16/04/2010

Artists:

Milycon / En, Dorota Walentynowicz, Saso Sedlacek, Jan Van Neuenen, Les Liens Invisibles, Marc Lee, Yorit Kluitman, Vit Klusak a Filip Remunda
Concept:

On November 20, 2009, just few days before the COP 15 in Copenhagen, the credibility of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the government body that monitors the UN climate change studies, suffered a severe blow. A group of Russian hackers had published a series of documents, e-mails and confidential data from Hadley Center, Research Center of East Anglia University, one of the major international institutions of climate studies, strongly affiliated with the IPCC itself. The action seems to expose efforts of scholars and researchers to falsify data on one of the hottest media topics of the millennium: anthropic global warming, the so-called AGW. The ‘Climategate’ has shaken the conscience of many: if international government bodies, research centers, environmental organizations and even ecologist organizations like Greenpeace and even eco-activists groups have been warning us for years that independent fundamental problems like global warming, the greenhouse effect, emission harmful gases, are based on solid scientific foundations, what should we think about the leak? That global warming is all a big media game, serving superior economic and political interests? It’s a doubt that many are beginning to have.

In early days of January 2010, many international media revealed a striking news: the A(H1N1) flu seems to be a hoax orchestrated by the World Health Organization and the pharmaceutical companies. It was claimed not by some no-global critics, but the chairman of the Health Council of Europe, Wolfgang Wodarg, who forced the Council to approve a tough resolution demanding an international inquiry into the matter. After months of warnings and measures against the risk of infection involving the media and institutions around the world, one wonders when we can speak of trusted sources on a subject as important as health.

“Frankly, I believed beyond any doubt that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction” – said the former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, on 29th of January 2010, in front of the Commission of Inquiry on Iraq at the Queen Elizabeth Center in London. Blair denied that the government had put the idea, in the intelligence dossier, that Baghdad could use weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes, admitting, however, to have said so in his speech to the Commons in September 2002, although “without too much emphasis”. The emphasis was placed by the press, raising the issue that Blair now denies. So, how many and what threats are real? How and why is ‘global fear’ started?

These ‘cases’ exposed the incredibility of news that for months, if not years, have filled the media all over the Western world. We talk about cases and not news, because in them is put into question the very meaning of news, of factual information.

The world that we live in, with its division into mediasphere and biosphere, have been defined in many ways, among which two ideas are best known and best describe the relation between man and medium. Coined over 50 years ago by Marshall McLuhan, these ideas seem not too precise, however prophetic. One of them is the ‘global village’ theory (as a result of media becoming the extension of our nerve system), the other is the division of media into ‘hot’ (the ones that send a lot of impulses to stimulate senses) and ‘cold’ (the ones that require imagination in creating the transfer). Paradoxically, it is frequent that the ‘cold’ media generate bigger emotions as they involve imagination and feelings attached to it. Hot media, on the other hand, often cause greater distance towards the experiences. All visual media are hot as the visual communication absorbs around 80 per cent of attention. However, when interactivity is involved, visual media become cold, as they require complacement from the recipient. Contemporary visual art, that use abstraction or the beauty of artistic matter, are losing the figurative forms. They are the means of ‘cooling’ the visual art and involving the imagination or knowledge in it. Viewer’s distance towards the classic forms of art, which created a certain beauty canon, started evolving in the beginning of the 19th century. Visual art tend to approach literature, so much as through developing the conceptual layer of the work. The apogee of the process is achieved in the art of new technologies. With this exhibition, we try to present different attitudes of artists towards global warming of the media in our global village.

In recent years, we are witnessing the disintegration of the belief that the Internet was, for its unique nature, a free, participatory medium, in contrast to the medium of television. Positivity of the early years of the Internet is giving way to a situation in which one cannot help but admit that the Interet, even with large areas of autonomy, is subject to the same dangerous political and economic dynamics of traditional media. It becomes crucial not just to understand what is the most democratic medium of the third millennium, but rather open our eyes to the dual nature of all media, to identify ways in which we learn to move strategically between truth and deception.

These methodologies are the focus of many works of new media art: art is in fact the territory within which lays the duality of the media, playing creatively between liabilities and autonomy of the viewer’s interpretation of misconceptions and information. The art is able to expose the media automation because it puts the audience, and our role as spectators, in the center of the discourse on media.

Globalne Ocieplenie / The Mediagate exhibition aims at reflecting, through the new media artworks by international artists, our constant battle between questioning and faith towards the media, without suggesting solutions, but triggering questions and doubts about our role as users. Globalne Ocieplenie / The Mediagate wants to become explicit homage to the word Watergate, that has entered common parlance to describe an embarrassing and outrageous discovery, often used as a measure to test the seriousness of a sudden truth, considered to be big enough to be able to undermine any system.

]]> http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/03/22/globalne-ocieplenie-the-mediagate/feed/ 0 Project Arnolfini http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/03/10/project-arnolfini/ http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/03/10/project-arnolfini/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 01:11:00 +0000 dedalus http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/?p=330 http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/03/10/project-arnolfini/feed/ 0 Test_Lab: Tools for Propaganda http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/02/24/test_lab-tools-for-propaganda/ http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/02/24/test_lab-tools-for-propaganda/#comments Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:56:12 +0000 dedalus http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/?p=198 From http://www.v2.nl/events/test_lab-tools-for-propaganda

The increased accessibility and affordability of contemporary media technologies has greatly expanded possibilities for the dissemination of independent and grassroots information. At the same time, these developments have also greatly increased the opportunities for (mis)use of media technologies as powerful and effective tools for political and commercial propaganda. Although many theorists, artists, and activists have addressed the latter perspective on contemporary media technologies, critical debates have rarely relied on concrete demonstrations to prove their point. This edition of Test_Lab will therefore investigate the face of propaganda in the digital age by means of live artistic demonstrations, and will allow the audience to test hands-on how new media technologies can be applied as effective tools for propaganda.

How does Google determine which website shows up first and which one on page 2.480.133 of a search? Does a photograph only represent its own reality? How does social tagging affect the meaning of an online image? Why is spam persuasive and profitable? Is Uncyclopedia perhaps the true Wikipedia? What would the world look like if all advertisements were covered with artworks? And can Google’s Street View be a stage for artistic intervention?

Test_Lab: Tools for Propaganda allows you to experience and test for yourself how new media technologies can be (mis)used to direct, divert, distract and manipulate your gaze on the world.

Subvertr.com and streetwithaview.com are screened with kind permission of the artists, Les Liens Invisibles, and Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley, respectively.

This event will be streamed live

]]> http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/02/24/test_lab-tools-for-propaganda/feed/ 0 Whole Earth Catalogue http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/01/25/whole-earth-catalogue/ http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/2010/01/25/whole-earth-catalogue/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:34:36 +0000 dedalus http://www.lesliensinvisibles.org/?p=196 Video selection for the series “Playlist”, Neoncampobase, Bologna (Italy)

Opening: January 27, 2010

Curated by: Domenico Quaranta.

Founded by the American writer Stewart Brand in 1968, the Whole Earth Catalogue (WEC) was a catalogue of tools that was regarded as a bible by the counterculture generation – that is, by those who shaped the techno-cultural environment we are living in. Published regularly until 1972 and sporadically until 1998, it definitely died with the rise of the Web, of which it is considered a conceptual forerunner by people such as Steve Jobs (founder of Apple) and Kevin Kelly (founder of Wired). WEC was conceived as an “evaluation and access device” meant to bring power and knowledge to the people. It featured excellent reviews of books, maps, professional journals, courses, and classes, along with objects of any kind, from gardening tools to computers. Everybody could submit a review for the catalogue.

Like the WEC reviewers, the artists in this exhibition are contributing to a shared resource; like them, they love their tools and, like them, they are interested in understanding the world as a whole. What did change, in the meantime – and mostly thanks to the WEC generation – is the world itself.

These artists – WE – live in a world in which media don’t just reproduce reality, nor just simulate it, in Baudrillardian terms: they shape reality, improve it, sometimes they build parallel worlds in which we can spend our time. They redesign our way to live, to think, to make and enjoy culture, to eat, to sleep, to die. And to think about God.

These artists use simple tools and editing tricks in order to comment on the current status of the image, to talk about themselves, to edit found material and to improve its meaning; they explore cultures and habits in order to sample, remix and comment them; they use and abuse technologies; they export metaphors, practices, aesthetics and narratives to other situations. This may sound weird if you are not living in their same time slice, but please – don’t call them formalists. They are not working within a medium: they are working within a media-implemented reality. They are realists, in the only way that realism makes sense nowadays.

This peculiar realism can bring somebody to go back to when everything started. Notoriously, psychedelic drugs played an important rule in the beginning of digital culture. Without Sun, by Brody Condon, is a mesh-up of various found videos of individuals on a psychedelic substance. Why do people broadcast these materials? Do these “out of the body” experiences have any relationship with other now common forms of projection of the self, such as online videogaming? Some artists, such as Cory Arcangel or Oliver Laric, are interested in the conceptual consequences of technologies, and on the way they are updating fundamental concerns of our culture; others, such as the duo AIDS-3D, explore how technologies are increasingly affecting our spiritual life. In their own words, they want to make “the intangible magic of technology visible”. Not necessarily trough technologies themselves: Constant Dullart’s video, for example, turns Youtube’s “loading” animation into a suggestive, hypnotic object using light and styrofoam balls.

This concern with magic and transcendence is shared by many of the artists on show, from Petra Cortright to Damon Zucconi, from Harm Van den Dorpel to Martin Kohout. In their hands, a video filter can become the best way to explore how consistent the outer world is, and how consistent we are. It can become the best way to get a better knowledge of the world we live in, whatever we may mean with this word.

Selected works:

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