ecopolis

“Hack the Gender! Pink networks of tactical and playful strategies” is lecture by Tatiana Bazzichelli on hacker ethics and networks entangled with the precarious and the sexual, in collaboration with the Festival Mesto Zensk (City of Women).
Since the 1980s in Italy reflections on sexuality and identity have been taking the form of a net. It is a network made up of multiple groups and individuals who put at stake their own bodies, using them as critical territories to go beyond borders, barriers and fixed frames of thinking. In this view, sexuality becomes an open and playful radical communication code, as it is no longer based on the gender opposition (male/female), but is expression of a flowing entity, able to manifest itself through a network of widespread and reticular links. The importance of experiment with body and sexuality on territories that are beyond the limits, can be traced in pink networks of tactical and playful strategies. “Queer” is the best term to connote these practices, crossing the limits of sexual stereotypes. In Italy, queer digital communities and gender activists are closely connected to those of the hackers. They are part of the same network and share a similar approach to technology. By emulating the hacker way of combining and recombining hard- and software into a more critical and all-encompassing technology, they want to subvert rigid cultural paradigms and create new interstice cultural zones for themselves. A collaborative cut-up, or cultural collage, combines hacker ethic, political activism and independent sexual culture.

Queer is the title of an early short novel (written 1951–1953, published 1985) by William S. Burroughs. It is partially a sequel to his earlier novel, Junkie. That novel ends with the stated ambition of finding the ultimate ‘high’- a telepathic drug called Yage. Queer, although not totally devoted to that quest, does include a trip to South America looking for the substance.

“Queer” is also a song released by Garbage which appears on their eponymous first album. It was written and recorded at Smart Studios during the 1994-1995 sessions for the debut album.With its suggestive title and subdued trip-hop feel, “Queer” quickly became a word-of-mouth success for the fledgling band.

Stream is any body of flowing fluid but also a continuous moving procession and line of development. A festive fluid – properly enviromental – which influenced the curatorial process of the first Stream Festival, in creating a three night and days artists residency on local and international levels. (check also Luca’s Streamfest point of review)

Ecopolis among other digital environmental experiences was invited to participate and reflect onto the topics : Emotions, Discovery, Play. So I have been driving from Rome to Galatina, via Taranto, Gallipoli, Martano streaming to the fest.

I have appreciated very much the occasion to meet a network of media activists dedicated at different levels to environmental “connection” : (not only) my Ecopolis partners Luca Barbeni and Antonio Rollo, (also) Paolo Atzori and the interesting 3d3 NABA students, Alessandra Pomarico of Sound Res, Jaromil, performing Carlo Infante, Gianluca Del Gobbo, Giulia Mainenti and great Cecile Landman of streamtime.org. A Fest which has produced a series of conversion of tacit knowledge and has explicited the difficulties related to the understanding of digital environments and social tagging. A paradigmatic meeting which ended up in the peace of nature. I think we all agreed that technology is not simply an extention of our body. More is a matter of (ever changing) environment. Consequently a multimedia and multisensorial experience.

My installation pick for this first edition is the Ingenium Loci an Interaction System by Giada Totaro, Giorgio Rinolfi, Alessandra Cascione with the sounding by Gilvia, a talented italian young composer.
While the live performance picks are the quite sophisticate Sombrero Party showcase featuring the Cologne duo playing a bubbling brew of mutant jazz, souls, electronics and funk with a baroque bassline;

and the finnish LackLuster, who managed to play – within the torrid heat – some fresh, icy and twitching textures.

Worth to mention the “historical” Sinatti Carillon Chandelier Sessions, a mixedmedia performance consisting of a specially constructed video chandelier and a real time image renderer, along with the presence of an electronic live set.

Kinotek Sound of Complexity, an attempt to make audible and visible the complexity of unheard and invisible waves: The crude sound of brain is translated in an audible frequencies through techniques of pitch shifting; then processed digitally in real time and the corresponding frequencies transformed in a Cartesian space to form visual trajectories projected on four screens that react dynamically.

Last but not leat: Jaromil hasciicam who makes possible to take live video from a capture device (like tv cards or quickcams) and renders it into ascii, formatting the output into an html page.
Valeria Guarcini aka Nikky deliriouniversale was the most fun and very interesting vjset which explored the possibility of infinitive framing and time topology through the use of diapositives. As much as the 2 days flowing PhotoStream of Matteo Barbeni and Alberto Ribotta.

Next day I continued my south pilgrimage to Copertino.

The Franciscan church of Saint Giuseppe is considered to be a Sanctuary. It dates back to 1754. Inside there is the “Stalletta”, a small room where the Saint was born, and a small museum. He became famous for his ecstasies, miracles, and for the gift of levitation, reported by numerous eye-witnesses. He experienced this so often he became known as “the flying Friar.”

Then I moved to Lecce. I was guested at Supersquillo’s home near the curved archway of Lecce’s “Porta Napoli” one of the city’s main thoroughfares that meander through the “Centro Storico”.

Porta Napoli – Also know as Arch of Triumph,was erected in 1548 to pay homepage to Charles V for having fortified the town. Near by you can find the famous Teatro Paisiello, Lecce’s most renowned opera house and named in honor of Giovanni Paisiello. Built in the late 1600’s and originally named the “Teatro Nuovo”, reopened in 1993 is also called by the locals “teatro muto” (mute) because of the last renewal which ruined the acoustic. I also heard of a protest against the elimination of many historical pine trees which badly failed as you can see walking by the viale dell’università. No pine trees are left.

On the contrary “pink park spaces” are politically and correctly placed in the heart of the leccese Baroque of public square S. Oronzo

South park is infact controversial. Big Romanesque central rose windows, the rich frames, the columns, the imaginay creatures, the animals, the mythological and historical characters, the rural landscape, the natural food makes the Salento a perfect site for streaming into an ecstatic time. Felicità maniaca Carmelo Bene would say and play it, wouldn’t he?

Felicità
Felicità maniaca che ne faremo io della mia anima e
lei della gioventù sua cagionevole
lei, che tutto il mio cuore e la mia vita dove sarà a quest’ora …

But there is the emergency to create more Cultural and Environmental international occasion for the local population and more attention from the provincial administration. On preserving and updating these cultural treasures ensures their contribution to tourism and regional economic development is sustained over the long term, so that future generations may also benefit from them. We need old and new Fairs. Updated structure. Renewed festival. An essential pluriliguism, made of cultural vagabondage and more attention to electronic women. Streamfest was a good, yet critical, begin. And we are looking forward to check it next year – In the mean time the stream goes on.

On July 19, members of Indian Parliament will vote to select the president — a largely ceremonial role in India — for the next five years.
Thousands of women rallied in the southeast city of Chennai to launch the campaign of the presidential candidate of the United Progressive Alliance and the Left parties, Pratibha Patil, who hopes to become India’s first woman president.

Throughout her public life she had worked for the empowerment and development of women, Ms. Patil said. Recalling the glorious role of women in the freedom movement, she said many of them who participated in the struggle for Independence in response to the call of Gandhiji, had faced lathis and bullets of the colonial rulers.

She also referred to the contributions made by women in different fields in the process of making India a strong and powerful nation and called for a combined effort of the people to uphold the principles of secularism, equal respect for all faiths, social harmony and all-inclusive development.
Once in office, Patil will push for 33 percent of Parliamentary seats to be reserved for women. Currently, one in six members of Parliament are women.

Media Source: The Hindu, Indian epaper

Mujer and Murales (Conditioned freedom of Art)

It’s not often that you come across a Gainsborough’s Mr and Mrs Andrews while wondering around London’s Soho. But for the next 12 weeks is possible: the National Gallery is showing off (street) art collection. you will find Masterpieces life-sized reproductions hanged on the walls of London. Caravaggio painting like a Graffiti.. conditioned freedom of art?

From 13th june till the 19th of August FRIDA KAHLO 1907-2007 HOMENAJE NACIONAL at Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes. Frida Kahlo was the first Latin American woman to have a painting in the Louvre at an exhibition entitled Méxique. She was also the first solo exhibition by any Latin American artist to be held at Tate Modern. The Mexican capital will host the largest ever exhibition of Frida Kahlo’s works to mark 100 years since the birth of the artist, who has represented the body as the centre of a gender thought, a fold between her internal self (as women and artist) and her external environment (cultural, political and social aspects of her time). More: when you are pierced from the stomach to the pelvis your body becomes a place to understand any event.

Nature is a language – can’t you read ?
Nature is a language – can’t you read ?

SO … ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME
ASK ME, ASK ME, ASK ME

Because if it’s not Love
Then it’s the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb, the Bomb
That will bring us together

HHH #4 from the Hedonistic Honkey Haters series, 2004
Ultrachrome print, 39 7/10 x 29 9/10” (101 x 76 cm)
(Photo: courtesy of the artist and Niagara Galleries, Melbourne)

March 23–July 1, 2007
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art and Morris A. and Meyer Schapiro Wing, 4th Floor
Location: 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York 11238-6052

In celebration of the opening of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the Museum presents Global Feminisms, the first international exhibition exclusively dedicated to feminist art from 1990 to the present. The show consists of work by approximately eighty women artists from around the world and includes work in all media—painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, installation, and performance:

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/global_feminisms/check_list_revised.pdf

In conjunction with Global Feminisms, 46 out 88 international artists featured in the exhibition discussed or performed their works in the Forum of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. These artist talks took place during the Center’s opening weekend, March 23–25, 2007:

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/global_feminisms/artist_talk_schedule.php

29 April 2007 – 2 September 2007

Ranging from reincarnation to cyber pop, Japanese artist Mariko Mori will address all manner of universal themes in this exhibition, which will consist of drawings, paintings, animations, videos, and enormous sculptures and installations. Mariko Mori creates artificial landscapes in which she often appears herself in various guises. She also puts modern science and technology to engaging use. A spectacular example is the large teardrop-shaped Wave-UFO, one of the highlights of the 2005 Venice Biennale, which also will go on show in the Groninger Museum.

Groninger Museum
Museumeiland 1
9711 ME Groningen
The Netherlands

Artista : Maria Thereza Alves
Origine : Ilari Valbonesi RAM Interview

Interview with Maria Thereza Alves

Durata 55.05
Formato Audio Windows Media
Qualità 24Kbps
Canali audio 2

Maria Thereza Alves , born in 1961 in Brazil, lives today in Berlin. In 1986, she co-founded Brazil’s Green Party in São Paulo. Amongst others, her work has been exhibited at the Liverpool Biennial; NGBK, Berlin; Villa Medici, Rome; Steirischer Herbst, Graz; Venice Biennial; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Musée Portuaire, Dunkerque; CEAAC, Strasbourg; Spacex, Exeter; Gallery 101, Montréal; BüroFriedrich, Berlin; The House of World Cultures, Berlin; Galerija Miroslav Kraljevi, Zagreb; Porin Taidemuseo; Kunstwerkt, München; Zerynthia, Italy; Museum in Progress, Vienna; Werkleitz Biennial, Halle/ Saale; Insite, Tijuana/San Diego; Boxx, Brussels; Buersschouwburg, Brussels; Central Space Gallery, London; Temistocles 44, Mexico City; Casa del Lago, Mexico City; La Estación Gallery, Cuernavaca; Biennial Havana; Kenkeleba House, New York.