The Bag Lady: Trading secrets, spreading news
An often recurring motif in many films and stories is a character carrying a bag or a suitcase whose content is rather mysterious, unknown or of shady nature as purloined information, stolen goods or pornography. Inspired by these underworld milieu characters, Nancy Mauro-Flude aka sister0 conceived the performance "Bag Lady 2.0", for which she designed a bag, that is able to record, store and broadcast information in real time. Images can be taken with a camera attached to the bag, a microphone records sounds, even a GPS device can apply geographical data to identify the geographical location of the recorded sites. The functions of the bag can be controlled through a small keyboard attached to the bag. Equipped with that bag sister0 roams through urban spaces to collect images and impressions, that are then transmitted through open WLANs to a server. The bag is not only an item for collecting, but also for broadcasting gathered information in realtime.
Wohnzimmerkonzert
The Viennese Wohnzimmerkonzert featured an evening with MuQua artist in residence Nancy Mauro-Flude, aka Sister0, and London based "pirate, post-postmodernist, rebel and rock star" performer Jesse Darlin'. The concerts literally take place in Costa Caspary's small living room, and as a good host he even provides a buffet and cold beers in his kitchen. The two artists rocked the LabFactory the previous night with Sister0's performance, "My First Burial", and Jesse Darlin''s "I Was A Teenage Porn Star". Tonight was on the whole a fast, fragile and funny performance of songs, poems and some in-between chit-chat; stand-up rock stars forced to low volume. Performing a cappella without microphones, spiced with iconoclastic humour and never taking themselves too seriously, their appearance was an unplugged post-punk version of chamber music for the jilted generation coming of age. Jesse Darlin', subtle and clownish while performing her song "When The Machines Went To Sleep" is evocative of Blade Runner-like replicants. The congenial duo complements one another, as the punk-vaudeville act of Jesse Darlin' provides a constant commentary to Sister0. They draw from a cornucopia of intertextual references to create an indisputable post-ironic winking collage of punk-rock gone coffee party. Subverting any intellectual interpretation the duo manages to literally perform their own commentary and discourse simultaneously in their show.
Beyond Vienna's posh culture venues, limited to an oddly small living room and stripped of sound equipment, Jesse Darlin' and Sister0 remain unquestionably passionate and sovereign artists, convincingly performing straight from the cerebral cortex.
Sister0 vs Jesse Darlin'
Wohnzimmerkonzert
Media Design Exhibition at WORM
The graduation show of the Piet Zwart Institute master program in Media Design takes place at WORM Rotterdam. On Saturady July 7th Florian Cramer, head of the MA Media Design, gives an exclusive tour for the new media master students from Utrecht University. The exhibition covers a wide range of topics, from mash up web sites, over hardware hacking and critical software design to performance.
Piet Zwart Media Design Master, graduation show at WORM
DEAF 07
The forthcoming Dutch Electronic Art Festival is emphasizing "messy, sloppy interactions: interaction whose outcome is malleable and not definitive." Sounds good so far, and a look upon the program shows
some most interesting events scheduled: The Evening of Knowbotic Research promises a Black Benz Race, a semi-fictional race in the migrational space between Switzerland and Albania. It deals with creating and using local communities to stimulate migration from one country into the other.
The seminar Not Everything is Interaction revisits the concepts of interactivity. The exhibition is assembled around concepts of interactivity in media art and presenting contemporary and almost classical works of the young field of media art. These are only a few examples from the comprehensive festival program. The festival will take place at the Las Palmas in Rotterdam.
DEAF, Interact Or Die! April 9 - April 14
The Evening of Knowbotic Research, Friday April 13, 20:00-22:00
Not Everything is Interaction, Thursday April 12, 15:00-18:00
The Sixties
The Gemeentemuseum in The Hague exhibits 'The Sixties' (January 20 - April 30 2007). For visitors not familiar with the dutch contribution to minimal art and concept art the exhibition offers some valuable insight. Unfortunately that is all 'The Sixties' can offer. While there would be many accounts to approach the 1960ies the curators seem not to have chosen one. The 60ies media situation and the media usage in art, activism and politics alone, would have offered an interesting approach to this era and could have been inspiring for reflecting media practice in digital age.
It is rather a collection of stuff that would widely be associated with that particular era, but it would be difficult to recognize an attempt to contextualize the presented objects. Art, fashion, furniture and media clippings are assembled and provoke elder visitors to nostalgic reactions. The displayed film fragments remind of MTV-style video clips and are accompanied by 60ies music. To younger visitors the incoherent collection would rather acknowledge the vague picture of the 'roaring sixties' mainstream media shaped in the blurring rear mirror of presentation. Unfortunately there is little attempt to explain the inconsistencies and socio-political frictions that were so much contributing to the cultural production and social efforts of that time. The dutch Volkskrant says it should have been more emphasized that the drive behind the "little revolution" was not essentially art, but students, hippies and activists who turned against the hypocritical and repressive politics.
