Thinking of coming to PICNIC in Amsterdam next week? Be sure to come to a session I am speaking at on September 22 entitled Cultural Criticism in the Age of New Journalism, with Claudine Boeglin, Diana Krabbendam, Wilfried Ruetten, and moderated by Raymond van den Boogaard, Chief Arts Editor, NRC/Handelsblad.
This panel will be followed immediately by the launch of Cultural Bloggers Interviewed,
The South by Southwest conference panel picker allows anyone who considers themselves to be part of the SXSW community to vote on panels that will appear at next year’s conferences in music, film, and interactive technologies. It’s a good, simple way to get people involved in the content they would invest their time in seeing.
As you can see from the pie chart, SXSW organisers are no fools, however: say what you like about the “wisdom of the crowd”, the advisory board and staff still run the show (and that’s a good thing).
What struck me after a quick browse was a certain homogenous feel to the panel titles. Nearly all of them are twisting themselves into pretzels to sound clever and punchy in a peculiarly uniform tone. Few simply tell you exactly what the panel content will be, and one wonders if the public voting feature exacerbates this kind of look-at-me marketing. The contrast between conferences meant to appeal to the general public and academic conferences couldn’t be more pointed, through the prism of this one tiny feature. For example:
Semi-random* sampling of SXSWi proposed panel titles:
Semi-random* sampling of academic panel titles (I chose the College Art Association conference from last year):
But I digress (interesting as conference panel titles are). I promised a quick guide, and so here is the guide part. Here’s what you need to know:
Vote thumbs down:
Vote thumbs up:
Oh, and share your faves please — there’s no way I’ll get through all 2,500 or so panel proposals.
(* – Like any good storyteller, I might notice data that supports my thesis more often than data that doesn’t.)
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.
2011 is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Canadian media and communications visionary Marshall McLuhan. McLuhanites all over the world will be marking the anniversary in one way or another, and here in Europe transmediale festival and the Marshall McLuhan Salon of the Canadian Embassy in Berlin are producing a year-long programme of activity. The cultural network project McLuhan in Europe 2011 will explore, critique and celebrate McLuhan’s impact on European art and culture through a series of manifestations to occur in various locations, contexts and timeframes across Europe. While embracing and celebrating the relatively unwritten history of McLuhan in Europe, the events will also look at the development of contemporary media, tactile and mobile cultures, the politics of media culture in the context of the divided Europe and other themes that emerged out of McLuhan’s primary period of intellectual production.
The McLuhan in Europe 2011 project is seeking partnership proposals from organisations across Europe that wish to host and organise activities — download the Call for Partnership Proposals here.
The project has already produced the inaugural lecture, by Darren Wershler, Assistant Professor at Concordia University, and presented by FutureEverything in cooperation with transmediale. Many of McLuhan’s most powerful insights came from his deep engagement with the artistic and literary avant-gardes of the early 20th century. The inaugural McLuhan in Europe 2011 lecture illuminated McLuhan’s creative influences and described the fascinating connections between McLuhan’s predictions and declarations, and contemporary poetry, artwork, and thought. Watch it below: