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Micronations

July 31, 2010 in Art & Culture | 3 comments

Acetate drawings in a forest clearing. From safle.com.

In 1947 Llanrwst Town Council applied for a seat on the United Nations Security Council on the basis of its special status as an independent town state poised strategically between England and Wales. As someone intrigued by the phenomenon of micronations and the drivers that might inspire a person or group to declare their home a micronation, I have always admired the Llanrwstian pluck, going all the way to the UN with their case.

A couple of years ago, arts agency Safle invited applications for an artists project in Llanrwst inspired by this rich story of attempted micronationhood: “The title refers to the period of independent history of the area and famous historical characters such as Owain Glyndwr, Rhys Gethin and Hywel Coetmor, at which period the town was a rebel stronghold, was burnt to the ground by the Prince of England’s forces and was deserted except for a herd of deer grazing in the square.” In November 2008, windows across the town square were filled with light-based artworks as part of the culmination of this project, which recognised Llanwrst’s aspirations towards microstate status.

This elegant art project is only one chapter in a series of artistic tributes to Llanrwst’s struggle. 80s Welsh punk rock group Y Cyrff wrote “Cymru Lloegr a Llanrwst”, a song commemorating these aspirations, which has become a Welsh anthem of a sort:

I discovered long ago that my interest in micronations was far from isolated. When I was in Helsinki on a curatorial residency at NIFCA some years ago, I picked up the catalogue for a meeting of kings, presidents and representatives of “self made” countries that occurred in Helsinki in 2003, as part of a micronation summit at MUU Gallery. Susan Kelly’s talk was very insightful, revealing that if “democracy is about ‘shape shifting’, and not about being able to count up the heads within a particular pre-given ‘shape’ or constituency, there is a need to imagine and experiment with other practices and modes of belonging. Perhaps we could say that the micro-states de-familiarise the masking Russian doll and provide tools to imagine, recognise, make understandable or legible this complex ‘here-ness’”.

There’s something wild and speculative and wonderful about the idea of removing oneself from the constraints of the various spatial identities we find ourselves defined by (and you don’t even necessarily need to be in the crossfire of two cultures at odds, like the English and Welsh borders clashing near Llanrwst). The idea is so appealing that Wired recently released a cheat sheet on how to start your own country. Perhaps the most revealing bit of the surprisingly banal article was revealed in a quote from Carne Ross, the fact that the process of developing nationhood is “profoundly political.” To anyone who has started any new venture with a degree of visibility, this notion of “buy-in” and how profoundly political it is comes as no surprise. The desire to take the boundaries of a new venture and escalate the ambition to that of a genuinely recognised state, is more surprising, fascinating, and in some cases, understandable.

Launched: In-Site Toronto

April 1, 2010 in Art & Culture, My Projects | Be the first to comment

An sample of Jeremy Bailey's artwork for In-Site Toronto.

In-Site Toronto is a series of newly commissioned work that will be presented on the portal pages of several wireless internet hotspots in the Wireless Toronto network until the end of 2010. Artists Dave Dyment, Swintak, Jeremy Bailey, Fedora Romita, Willy Le Maitre and Brian Joseph Davis have created works that will be automatically displayed when users log in to their Wireless Toronto user account at designated hotspots. The project was launched on March 31, 2010 in partnership with Spacing Magazine. The project was produced by media arts organisation Year Zero One, was curated by myself, and was produced with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. The downloadable, printable, shareable e-catalogues that are available at each hotspot were produced using bookleteer by Proboscis.

Now, go out, use your free Wireless Toronto account, and discover some art that relates to the place where you are and our contemporary digital age.


View In-Site Toronto in a larger map

Advocating for Free Culture

February 25, 2010 in Art & Culture, My Lectures | Be the first to comment

Recently, I gave a talk at transmediale as part of their Free Culture Incubator series. I’ve embedded the video below. I highlighted three case studies that I think exemplify how advocating for the arts successfully can make profound differences to how we experience urban spaces.

Firstly I mentioned BeautifulCity.ca, a campaign to introduce a billboard tax in the city of Toronto, with the tax money distributed to art and culture projects. They were very successful in winning the first battle, which was implementing the tax, but now they need people to speak up once more in favour of how the budget is actually allocated. Check out their Facebook event for more details on how you can help this terrific project.

I also mentioned Ile Sans Fil, the wireless community group that I used to work with, that built a grassroots infrastructure in Montreal that is wildly successful. They were also pioneers of using their infrastructure as a platform to distribute art and community content to their users. They have been so successful at building infrastructure and in their advocacy work that wireless internet infrastructure is now an issue in the Montreal municipal elections.

Last but not least, I mentioned Manchester Open Data City, a huge initiative by FutureEverything. FutureEverything is leading the advocacy around making Manchester the UK’s first open data city, by identifying data that can be made available, and looking at issues of data interoperability, quality and management. I’m programming the FutureEverything conference this year, and can tell you that Open Data and its implications for citizen participation and creativity will be a hot topic. Hope to see you in Manchester this May for FutureEverything!

This happened Edinburgh #3

October 5, 2009 in Art & Culture, My Projects, Technology | Be the first to comment

powerof8.org.uk

powerof8.org.uk

On October 12, the third This happened Edinburgh event will take place at the Wee Red Bar. Our exciting line up includes: Peter Pratt, Michael Salmond, Sarah Drummond & Lauren Currie, and Paul Rodgers & Euan Winton, and Anab Jain.

Tickets are available now at this site. Be fast — last time tickets sold out in under an hour! The event is sold out! If you want to follow all the This happened Edinburgh news, become a fan on Facebook, use the #thedi hashtag on twitter, or just keep an eye on the This happened website.

Catch me at Futuresonic

May 14, 2009 in Art & Culture | Be the first to comment

Image of Nuage Vert by HeHe, taken by Niklas Sjöblom

Image of Nuage Vert by HeHe, taken by Niklas Sjöblom

This year’s Futuresonic festival has some very tasty highlights, ranging from a Philip Glass concert, to a bubble-blowing contest, to the world premiere of Beuys’ Acorns by Ackroyd and Harvey. The festival kicked off last night, the conference is running today, and you can find me as one of the invited special guests who will be giving my take on the Environment 2.0 Art Exhibition with my own tours, MK-style! The exhibition is mainly based at CUBE and “…includes artworks that make visible and tangible the outcomes of our actions at a local level, artworks conceived as social interventions, and artworks which arise out of a sustained engagement and dialogue between artists and scientists.” See you there!

Do you want a beautiful city?

May 5, 2009 in Art & Culture | Be the first to comment

Photo by Matthew Blackett

Photo by Matthew Blackett

At the end of my talk at Manchester Urban Screens, I proposed a call to action, asking people to “get out their pencils” and write to their local politicians to ensure that art and culture becomes a priority in public space, and that billboard operators are compelled to give over space and time to artists and local communities.

I couldn’t be more delighted, then, with the marvellous Beautiful City initiative in Toronto. The Beautifulcity.ca Alliance is made up of 42 organizations, who are collectively proposing the BCBF (Beautiful City Billboard Fee), which “…will hold billboard advertisers accountable for their impact on public space via a charge on each billboard (tax or fee – to be determined by staff), with revenues dedicated to art in the public sphere.”

The possibility of this happening is real! A bill proposing this will go before Toronto city councillors soon. What can you do to support it?

  • Sign and circulate the petition at http://www.beautifulcity.ca.
  • Join their Facebook group.
  • Attend the International Youth Week Beautifulcity.ca Town Hall, tonight, Tues May 5, City Hall, Committee Rm 2, 6:30-9 pm.

Call for entries – transmediale 2010

May 3, 2009 in Art & Culture | Be the first to comment

tm09_harwood_tantalum21
I’m delighted to be on the jury for the transmediale Award 2010.

transmediale presents and pursues the advancement of artistic positions reflecting on the socio-cultural, political and creative impact of new technologies, network practices and digital innovation. As a festival aiming to define the contours of contemporary digital culture, it seeks out artistic practices that not only respond to scientific or technical developments, but that shape the way in which we think about and experience the technologies which impact virtually all aspects of our daily lives. As such, transmediale understands media technologies as cultural and aesthetic techniques that need to be embraced in order to comprehend, critique, and shape global societies.

The full call for entries is here, and the deadline is the 31st July.

The image depicts the wonderful work Tantalum Memorial, by Graham Harwood, Richard Wright, and Matsuko Yokokoji. This work won the transmediale Award in 2009. The work “is a memorial to the more than 3 million people who have perished in the complex wars that have gone on in the Congo since 1998, often referred to as the ‘Coltan Wars’. The ore coltan is used as the raw material for the metal tantalum, which is an essential component of mobile phones and computers. Therefore tantalum is coveted by dozens of international mining industries and local warring groups, and is nowadays more valuable than gold. Built of electromagnetic ‘Strowger’ telephone switches, invented in 1938, and connected to a computer, the installation serves not only as a memorial, but functions also as a center of a social telephone network that is used by Congolese immigrants living in the UK.”

This happened Edinburgh #2

May 2, 2009 in Art & Culture, My Projects, Technology | Be the first to comment

Hop, by Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino (tinker.it)

Hop, by Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino (tinker.it)

On May 4, the second This happened Edinburgh event will take place, in our swanky new digs at the Voodoo Rooms. The speakers are great: Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino, Jen Southern, Andrew Spitz, and Ben Dembroski.

The event sold out in under an hour! However, we’ll soon be posting videos of the talks, from this event and from the previous event, so stay tuned. If you want to follow all the This happened Edinburgh news, become a fan on Facebook, use the #thedi hashtag on twitter, or just keep an eye on the This happened website.

Creating Spaces: Net Art in the “Real World”

March 8, 2009 in Art & Culture, My Projects, Technology | Be the first to comment

afk

A short while ago, I wrote a lead article for the latest issue of the electronic magazine of the Centre international d’art contemporain de Montréal (CIAC). CIAC was created in 1983 and since 1998, it has been producing the Biennale de Montréal.

In the article I wrote, Creating Spaces: Net Art in the “Real World”, I look back on Canadian net art history, filtered through the lens of projects that have strong links to occurrences and objects in the offline world. As I mention in the article, “These links between online and offline, net art and other forms, has proven to be one of net art’s most consistent strengths in recent history, underpinning the critical complexity of the works and adding to the durability of these works over time.” I discuss the work of Wayne Dunkley, Michelle Teran & Isabelle Jenniches, Willy Le Maitre & Eric Rosenzveig, and Risa Horowitz.

Image: AFK by Michelle Teran & Isabelle Jenniches

The Aesthetics of Gaming

February 8, 2009 in Art & Culture, My Projects | Be the first to comment



The Aesthetics of Gaming
Pace Digital Gallery, 163 William St, New York City, USA (Directions)
February 10 – March 3 2009
Reception Feb 26, 5 – 7pm (5:00 pm lecture by Joe McKay / 6:00pm reception)
Featuring CuteXdoom II by Anita Fontaine and Mike Pelletier, and Avoid by Joe McKay
Guest curated by Michelle Kasprzak

Curatorial statement:
At the Interactive City summit in 2006, design guru Matt Jones conducted an informal poll that guests could respond to immediately using their mobile phones. The poll was a fragment of a question: Games or stories? This short but provocative query caused a low rumble of chatter within the group, and within minutes results began appearing, showing more or less a tie. What made the question stimulating was that the two are so intertwined, it can often be unclear where the story stops and the games begin. Can games live without even the roughest hint of a narrative, and can stories develop without an element of a game?

This exhibition presents two game environments that address both the intertwining of games and stories and the aesthetics of artist-created games. CuteXdoom II by Anita Fontaine and Mike Pelletier is a game modification that transforms Unreal Tournament 3 into a digi-Rococo experience. Players are tasked with the mission of piloting their poisoned character, Sally Sanrio, through a world that is simultaneously cute and sinister in search of the antidote. CuteXdoom II expands the narrative developed in the first instance of the project, wherein Sally Sanrio is drawn to the CuteXdoom cult, which centres around the notion that ‘the possession and worship of cute material objects will ultimately lead to happiness’.

The CuteXdoom series utilizes the aesthetics of kawaii (Japanese style of “cuteness”) and otaku (obsessive fan-based culture of anime and computer games), but these influences are ultimately just parts of the overall style that emerges under Fontaine’s direction. The incredible level of detail, striking color palettes, and repeated patterns and imagery are distinctly Fontaine’s and contribute to a delightful and dazzling game experience that is the aesthetic opposite of the formulaic graphics usually delivered via the Unreal Tournament platform. The CuteXdoom game aesthetic also responds to the story, using darker imagery to emphasize the main character’s altered state due to the consumption of the poison.

Joe McKay’s Avoid also breaks from the dominant aesthetic of commercial games, and utilizes a look that is beautiful in its minimalism. The premise of the game is to avoid the black dots, and to “eat” the colored dots, with the pace of the game dictating a high level of concentration from the player. The game was developed with Processing, which is described by its creators as “an electronic sketchbook for developing ideas.” Avoid, too, can be seen as a nearly-blank sketchbook upon which players can superimpose their own traces of narratives: clinging to life (when you only get one), consuming good, avoiding bad, acting in self-preservation. Though Avoid is, at its heart, a puzzle game much like widely-known games Tetris and Minesweeper, McKay’s statement about the game includes discussion of longevity, having only one life and making the most of that one life, which immediately lends a rule-based puzzle more of a human, narrative direction.

CuteXdoom II and Avoid present two distinct approaches, which are unified by their contributions to an evolving aesthetic of gaming. These two works mark a stage in the use of game platforms and structures by artists, which will see further evolution as technology advances, more game platforms develop or open up, and a notion of what games could be and could look like expands.

Version of this statement translated into Italian available here, thanks to digicult.it.

A one-liner about Cloaca

February 8, 2009 in Art & Culture | 1 comment

Cloaca, artist Wim Delvoye’s shit-generating installation, is now on view at the Galerie de l’UQAM in Montréal.

The video posted above depicts gourmet meals being lovingly fed to the machine. When Cloaca was installed in New York City in 2002, well-known restaurants such as Barolo, Jerry’s, MARKT, and Savoy produced meals for the machine that were presented during public feedings.

Years later, Cloaca is still doing the art-circuit, but its diet has apparently shifted. At the Galerie de l’UQAM, several local artists in Montreal prepared it a meal as part of a public event. For the rest of the duration of the show, rumour has it that the machine will be fed leftovers from the University’s cafeteria — which would give even a robot indigestion, I’m sure.

Urban Media: Interventionist Digital Art in the City

January 23, 2009 in Art & Culture, My Lectures | 2 comments

Exiles of the Shattered Star by Kelly Richardson
Recently, I gave a talk at Pixel Gallery in Toronto on the subject of ‘urban media’. I also was on the national CBC radio programme “Here and Now” before the talk, discussing the concept of urban media.

I used several case studies to construct the argument that urban media takes many forms, and often invites logistical and conceptual challenges, but that the rewards are significant: exposure to a public that would not normally call themselves art patrons, and the possibilities of conceptual layers added to a work because of an urban context.

The talk was quite freeform, so instead of presenting my slides, here are the links to the projects I discussed:

The Geostash urban intervention project
The Meta-Parade performance projects
Snout, an urban sensing project by Proboscis
The Transmedia 2000 video billboard project
The Transmedia 2002 video billboard project
The Transmedia 29:59 video billboard project
Fernando Prats at Madrid Abierto

…and a couple of bonus links:
Otherworldly and Best of Transmedia, programmes I curated especially for urban screens.

Schematic: New Media Art from Canada

November 4, 2008 in Art & Culture, My Projects | Be the first to comment

I’m very pleased to announce that this Friday, November 7th, Schematic: New Media Art from Canada will be opening at [ s p a c e ] media arts in London, UK. I co-curated this exhibition and wrote the curatorial essay.

This show is the second part of a two part exhibition. The first part, Schematic: Eric Raymond was a solo exhibition of Montreal-based artist Eric Raymond at Canada House in Trafalgar Square. This second exhibition is a group show featuring work by Peter Flemming (his work, Canoe, is pictured above), Germaine Koh, Joe Mckay, Nicholas Stedman, and Norman White. This group of artists represents a wide range of practice: emerging and established, from cities across Canada, and treating technology as both a driver of the work and simply another tool.

This exhibition showcases the creativity and technological innovation of artists who also act as inventors and engineers, sometimes intentionally, and sometimes incidentally. The works explore our relationships with technology and also highlight the shifts in direction taking place across international new media practices.

Schematic is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, and the Canadian government (Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade).

The exhibition runs from 8 November – 20 December 2008. For information on how to get to the show and its opening hours, please visit the [ s p a c e ] website. Once the show has opened, I will post my curatorial essay here and post more information about the upcoming catalogue.

Islands + Data Garbage + Real Reality vs. Virtual Reality

October 13, 2008 in Art & Culture | 2 comments

Call To Action

August 22, 2008 in Art & Culture | Be the first to comment

I hereby interrupt my long blogular silence to join the chorus of concerned Canadians who are raising their voices against the Conservative government’s recent cuts to culture.

What’s truly dispiriting is reading the comments on the slew of news articles that have appeared. Small but determined groups of commenters slag off artists in the most vicious way, and dismiss solid evidence that culture spending generates income for Canada and enriches lives. It is also shocking, when navigating through the morass, to witness a near-total disbelief in these tried and tested systems of cultural support that often work as a hand up, not a hand out. (Need stats to support these opinions of mine? Go here and here.) Sage commenters have pointed out that if the Harper government were really interested in fiscal responsibility they would find other, far more significant and costly “boondoggles” to hack away at.

What can be done? As always, it is fine and good to be concerned but unless action is taken, the slash and burn will continue unabated. Guess what — surprise! — it’s not about fiscal responsibility, it’s all about appealing to voters. So get out those pencils and start writing passionate, personal letters to your MP. There are full details on how to do this and further background information at the Council for Canadians website, and additional insightful commentary from John Sobol at his blog.

Two published items

June 8, 2008 in Art & Culture, Featured | 1 comment

On Curating

I was honoured to be a contributor to a new online publication, On Curating, an independent international web-journal focusing on questions around curatorial practice and theory, published by Dorothee Richter. For the inaugural issue, the editors asked thirty-one curators a series of questions around what topics in curating they would most like to see discussed, about key resources online, and about exhibitions and peers that have influenced them.

I’m also very pleased to be included in Decentre, the latest book to be released by YYZ Books. “decentre is a book about artist-run culture that hopes to describe the breadth and quality of artist-initiated programs, projects and events, the issues we face in this milieu and how effectively we deal with them, that aims to both celebrate artist-run culture and demonstrate the vital role artist-initiated activity plays in the larger cultural scene.” I wrote about the future of artist-run culture as it relates to digital media and audience development.

I know these “what MK has been doing elsewhere” posts are not the most interesting… but at the very least, they keep everyone up to date! Hopefully I’ll post another opinion piece soon.

Lead Into Gold

January 3, 2008 in Art & Culture | 9 comments

“…the majority of popular culture is worthless, anti-democratic, scelerotic garbage”, according to Stephen Moss, writing recently on the Guardian’s blogs. Mr Moss’ article is in part a reaction to a new report from Oxford sociologists that has determined that the cultural elite does not exist. The report suggests that there are actually four groups of cultural consumers, which Moss summarises as: “univores, who like popular culture; omnivores, who like everything from Posh Spice to Puccini; paucivores, who absorb little culture; and inactives, who absorb none (is that possible?).”

Moss’ article takes a rather extreme stance against all forms of pop culture, and revels in the notion that despite the research taking place at Oxford, there may still be those faithful enough to high art that they are blissfully ignorant that pop culture even exists.

While I consider myself an “omnivore” as defined by the report, I sympathise with what I believe is the underlying sentiment in Moss’ article – that in general, we don’t recognise and appreciate true quality enough of the time. However, in my recent trawling of “best of 2007″ lists that multiply across the world wide web like mushrooms at the end of December, I found two pieces of work that, once and for all, firmly solidified the value of popular culture in my mind.

As the CBC’s “Best of 2007” list editors put it, Alanis Morissette’s parody of the song “My Humps” by Black Eyed Peas “…almost justifies its existence”.

Alanis, herself a pop princess (albeit with a more “serious” persona) takes lyrical gems (cough, cough) from the Black Eyed Peas like this:

What you gonna do with all that junk?
All that junk inside that trunk?
How’m I gonna get get get you drunk
Get you drunk off this hump?

…and makes it actually, almost, kind of — beautiful. The melody is memorable, and the parody is spot-on. It takes a “hit” that I never bothered to listen to, and recycles it into something infinitely more interesting, if even to simply take note of precisely how ridiculous the original lyrics are.

Peaches, another “popular culture” phenom, takes the whole parody of this one amazingly banal song to the next level, by applying her usual raw and raunchy treatment, but also folding in elements of Alanis’ parody.

What’s marvellous about Peaches taking the parody a bit further is that it picks up where Alanis left off. Alanis did a great job of laying bare the inanity of the lyrics of the original song. Peaches links the whole thing back to the inanity of daily life – our dumps, our humps. Perhaps there will never be a Top 40 hit about our dumps, or our shopping list, or taking children to daycare, or going to the gym and doing the same routine for the fortieth time. It makes one wonder why there is a song about “how’m I gonna get get get you drunk” at all, since that sentiment is about as interesting as my shopping list. Or perhaps even less interesting, depending on what I’m shopping for?

And so, Mr Moss, that’s the value of pop culture today, for those of us who fancy ourselves to be a bit more highbrow, or at the very least, “omnivores” by the standards of Oxford researchers: the best and the worst of it can be fodder for other artists to make bigger, more interesting statements. To turn lead into gold, as it were.

Hat tip to the CBC’s “Best of 2007” list, which led me to both of these gems. If you really want to get get get the original version of “My Humps”, you can click here.

xxxboîte launch

October 16, 2007 in Art & Culture | Be the first to comment

xxxboite

If I was in Montreal tomorrow, I would certainly be going to this launch! It’s an event to celebrate the release of xxxboîte, a collection of critical writing and a DVD compilation of works celebrating the last 10 years of Montreal’s own new media and network arts centre for women – Studio XX.

First, the details:
Date: Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Time: 5:00pm – 7:00pm
Location: Gallery Yergeau, 2060 Joly, (one block west of St. Denis, just up from Ontario) Montreal, QC

Kick off the 2007 HTMlles festival with a toast to the community that made it all happen. New texts from one of the four founding mothers, Kim Sawchuk, as well as extraordinary artists, Anna Friz, J.R. Carpenter, Michelle Kasprzak, and Marie-Christine Mathieu, and a DVD compilation that is part humourous, part touching, and all guerilla girl action – a true portrait of Studio XX!

Next, the reminiscing: I knew of XX for a long time, but my first real interaction with it was being invited to participate in one of their excellent Femmes Branchées events in 2003. That particular event was themed “Home“, and I presented my interactive piece Scrub, which explores eroticism and domesticity. Dr Perla Serfaty-Garzon was a perfect foil to my comedic performance (complete with featherduster and rubber gloves) in a housewife persona. Shortly thereafter I moved to Montreal, and became the Studio’s technician for a while, as well as being involved in several projects and participating on the programming committee. I have so many happy memories around the Studio and all the people that make up the XX community, which makes it a real honour to take part in xxxboîte and the 10th anniversary. Bonne fête et félicitations, Studio XX!