NETHERLANDS MEDIA ART INSTITUTE - AMSTERDAM
18 DECEMBER 2008
With: Florian Cramer, Jaromil, An Mertens and Peter Westenberg, Linda
Hilfling
Moderated by Susanne Jaschko
The Speaking Out Loud exhibition is on show until 24 January 2009 with works from: Tudor Bratu (RO), Tim Etchells (UK) and Vlatka Horvat (CRO/US), Linda Hilfling (DEN), Michael Hoepfel (DE), Jaromil (IT/NL) and Jodi (NL), KH Jeron (DE), Christoph Keller (DE), Manu Luksch (AT) and Mukul Patel (UK), Evan Roth (US), Charles Sandison (UK), Trikoton (DE).
Most works in the Speaking Out Loud exhibition suggest that language is
a fluid, dynamic system which offers itself for individual expression
and performance. On the other hand, language is a rational system not
driven by instinct but whose strict rules and signs we must learn in a
life long, enduring process. Looking at language from this other
perspective, we are confronted with an authority, a rigid system of code
that is preserved and governed even. Language shares this ambivalence
with the Internet, a system that on the one hand develops dynamically
through its users' contributions, on the other hand, it is a highly
regulated space, that is less and less public but where the transfer of
copyrights and censorship affect the Internet's appearance and use at
its core.
In this session, the speakers will discuss the nature of both systems
language and the Internet from their various perspectives, particularly
looking at ways to artistically respond to, escape and circumvent their
rigidness and constraints. On this occasion, Linda Hilfling will launch
'Gate Peepin', her new work that she has developed during a residency at
NIMk.
Florian Cramer is a theoretician and course director media design at
Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. He is the author of the essay 'Words
Made Flesh, code, culture Imagination' http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/research/fcramer/wordsmadeflesh/.
Previously, Florian was a junior lecturer in Comparative Literature at
Freie Universität Berlin and had published papers in the area of code
poetry, comparative studies in the literature and the arts, modernism,
text theory, literature and computing, collaborated on the http://www.runme.org/ Software Art repository and edited the Unstable
Digest of code poetry.
http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70
Jaromil is a media artist, GNU/Linux hacker, activist and researcher at
the Netherlands Media Art Institute. In 2005 he and jodi.org joined for
an artistic collaboration that led to the development of a tool to write
and publish time-based text to be used in email communications and
websites. 'Time Based Text' is currently exhibited in the Speaking Out
loud exhibition and very recently has been nominated for the Vilem
Flusser Theory Award of transmediale.09. Jaromil will talk about the
background and intention of Time Based Text and the concept of property
in the context of new media.
http://jaromil.dyne.org
An Mertens and Peter Westenberg are members of Constant, Brussels.
Constant develops radio, electronic music and database projects, by
means of migrating from cultural work to work places and back again. An
Mertens is a fiction writer, storyteller and dramaturge. She is
experimenting with analog and digital forms of storytelling. Peter
Westenberg is visual artist and film- and videomaker. His projects
evolve from an interest in social cartography, urban anomalies and the
relationships between locative identity and cultural geography. Together
they will talk about thoughts and motivations underlying their up-coming
long-term project 'Schaerbeekse taal / La langue schaerbeekoise' which
deals with the construction of an artificial language.
http://data.constantvzw.org/site/
Danish artist Linda Hilfling works with the premises of participation
and public spaces within media structures, with a focus on means of
control (codes, organisation and law) and their cultural impact. Her
artistic practice takes the form of interventions reflecting upon or
revealing hidden gaps in these structures. She will discuss her new art
work 'Gate peepin' that reflects on the hidden layers of regulations
governing the use of so-called democratic web-spaces. The Firefox
extension analyses the terms of services of Web 2.0 platforms and
reedits their content, thus enabling a new browsing experience. At the
launch, copies of the 'Gate peepin' publication will be available for free.
http://www.gatepeepin.org
www.nimk.nl
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