Baudelaire in Cyberspace

‘Baudelaire in Cyberspace’ bundelt een tiental dialogen tussen filosoof Antoon Van den Braembussche (º1946) en beeldend kunstenaar Angelo Vermeulen (º1971), die alle voor een breed publiek bestemd zijn. Antoon Van den Braembussche – kind van de jaren zestig en al jaren actief als dichter – heeft als filosoof een bijzondere interesse in hedendaagse kunst en beeldcultuur. Angelo Vermeulen heeft een wetenschappelijke achtergrond als bioloog. Hij maakt in zijn kunstprojecten kruisbestuivingen tussen kunst en technologie en is daarnaast ook een fervent gamer. In een gedreven, meeslepend vraag- en antwoordspel wordt rijkelijk uit het verleden geput, gul vooruitgeblikt en naar hartelust in- en uitgezoomd. Op ongedwongen wijze flanerend en meanderend in het huidige landschap van kunst en digitale cultuur, geven zij langzaam in hun gemeenschappelijke zoektocht een eigentijdse en eigenzinnige visie prijs. Hierdoor wordt de onderlinge betrokkenheid duidelijk van heel verschillende actuele thema’s, zoals de verhouding tussen kunst en wetenschap, de malaise in de kunst, geweld in media, de filosofie van computer games, engagement en betrokkenheid, de esthetische ervaring en de kunst van het onzegbare.

via AngeloVermeulen.

Op dit moment zijn dialoog 1, 2 en 5 reeds downloadbaar. Ga naar de vault om de respectievelijke pdf-bestanden te downloaden.

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Daniel Buren

http://www.vvork.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/picture-81.png

Daniel Buren born 25 March 1938 in Boulogne-Billancourt, Hauts-de-Seine is a French conceptual artist.In 1986 he created a 3,000 m² sculpture in the great courtyard of the Palais Royal, in Paris: “Les Deux Plateaux”, more commonly referred to as the “Colonnes de Buren” “Buren’s Columns”. This provoked an intense debate over the integration of contemporary art and historic buildings.

via Daniel Buren – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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NAi Publishers: Open 11 Hybrid Space

Thanks to new wireless technologies (WIFI, GPS, RFID) and mobile media, public space is subject to drastic changes. It is being traversed by electronic infrastructures and networks, and alternative cultural and social domains are evolving, though often invisible from a conventional viewpoint. The traditional physical and social conditions of the public domain are being supplanted by zones, places and subcultures that transcend the local and interlink with translocal and global processes. The question is whether there are also new opportunities for the individual and for groups to act, participate and intervene publicly in this hybrid, seemingly flexible space. How do people appropriate the new public spaces? Where does the ‘public’ take place in this day and age? Who shapes and moulds it by devising spatial, cultural and political strategies?

via NAi Publishers: Open 11 Hybrid Space.

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ctrl[space] : Rhetorics of Surveillance

Rhetorics of Surveillance

from Bentham to Big Brother

In 1785, the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham

(1748-1832), founder of the doctrine of Utilitarianism, began working on a plan for a model prison called the panopticon. The signature feature of this design was that every one of the individual jail cells could be seen from a central observation tower which, however, remained visually inscrutable to the prisoners. Since they could thus never know for sure whether they were being watched, but had to assume that they were, the fact of actual observation was replaced by the possibility of being watched. As a rationalist, Bentham assumed that this would lead the delinquents to refrain from misbehaving, since in order to avoid punishment, they would effectively internalize the disciplinary gaze. Indeed, Bentham considered the panoptic arrangement, whereby power operates by means of the spatial design itself, as a real contribution to the education of man, in the spirit of the Enlightenment.

via ctrl[space] : Rhetorics of Surveillance.

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Richard Rorty

Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. His complex intellectual background gave him a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the analytic tradition in philosophy he would later famously reject. The philosophical program he developed included a rejection of a representationalist account of knowledge, a concept he referred to as a “mirror of nature” and which he saw as a holdover from Platonism. In response to this tradition, which he saw embodied by analytic philosophy, Rorty developed a novel form of pragmatism incorporating both contingency and naturalism. For Rorty, this brand of philosophy is always tied to the notion of “social hope,” that without the ideas of representation and other concepts standing in the way between the mind and the world, human society would be more free. His best known book is Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979).

via Richard Rorty – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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I Am Sitting in a Room – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I am sitting in a room 1969 is one of composer Alvin Lucier’s best known works, featuring Lucier recording himself narrating a text, and then playing the recording back into the room, re-recording it. The new recording is then played back and re-recorded, and this process is repeated. Since all rooms have characteristic resonance or formant frequencies e.g. different between a large hall and a small room, the effect is that certain frequencies are emphasized as they resonate in the room, until eventually the words become unintelligible, replaced by the pure resonant harmonies and tones of the room itself. The recited text describes this process in action—it begins “I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice,” and the rationale, concluding, “I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have,” referring to his own stuttering.Lucier had also specified that a performance need not use his text and the performance may be recorded in any room. The composer himself has recorded the piece in at least one room he did not find aesthetically acceptable.

via I Am Sitting in a Room – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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Holy Theatre from Peter Brook’s book The Empty Space

The Holy Theatre

By Peter BrookI am calling it the Holy Theatre for short, but it could be called The Theatre of the Invisible-Made-Visible: the notion that the stage is a place where the invisible can appear has a deep hold on our thoughts. We are all aware that most of life escapes our senses: a most powerful explanation of the various arts is that they talk of patterns which we can only begin to recognize when they manifest themselves as rhythms or shapes. We observe that the behaviour of people, of crowds, of history, obeys such recurrent patterns. We hear that trumpets destroyed the walls of Jericho , we recognize that a magical thing called music can come from men in white ties and tails, blowing, waving, thumping and scraping away. Despite the absurd means that produce it, through the con­crete in music we recognize the abstract, we understand that ordinary men and their clumsy instruments are transformed by an art of possession. We may make a personality cult of the conductor, but we are aware that he is not really making the music, it is making him—if he is relaxed, open and attuned, then the invisible will take possession of him; through him, it will reach us.

via Holy Theatre from Peter Brook’s book The Empty Space.

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Nepotists, opportunists, freaks, friends and strangers intersecting in the grey zone. | z33

Grijze zone

In de kunstwereld wordt er over een galerijruimte vaak gesproken als een ‘white cube’, een lege witte doos waarbinnen de kunst ongestoord kunst kan zijn. In het theater wordt gesproken over de ‘black box’, het podium waarop acteurs een imaginaire wereld creëren. Met het project ‘Nepotists, opportunists, freaks, friends and strangers instersecting in the grey zone’ zoekt bolwerK de tussenruimte op, een ongedefinieerde, interpretatieve ruimte tussen de plooien van de geijkte systemen. De grijze zone is een interpreteerbare ruimte. Het is een zone vol potentialiteit, waarin de nadruk ligt op dynamiek en actie. De grijze zone nodigt dan ook de kunstenaars, de toeschouwers, de tentoonstellingsbezoeker en de toevallige passant uit tot vrije bijdrage.

De tentoonstelling valt het best te vergelijken met een doorlopende performance waarin de bezoeker zelf een rol speelt.

via Nepotists, opportunists, freaks, friends and strangers intersecting in the grey zone. | z33.

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