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digital event'11 subversive technologies |
Main Presentation Projects Texts Workshops |
Subversive Technologies
Curated by Arlan Londoño, with Gabriel Roldos and Federica Matelli
September 15 to October 2 of 2011
Opening reception:
September 15, from 6 - 9 pm
Toronto Free Gallery
1277 Bloor Street West
Toronto, ON M4E 2J8
Gallery Hours:
Wednesday-Friday 12-5pm
Saturday 12-6pm |
This year’s Digital Event Subversive Technologies investigates how artists respond to communication technology as one of the major sources of power in contemporary societies. During the last few years we have seen an increase in web and electronic artists and activists that use digital tools to create an impact on their societies or to register social unrest. The artists participating in Subversive Technologies use communication, information and networking technologies as a tool to reject control society, in an attempt to liberate bodies across spaces/territories, and across social and political categories.
This exhibition features new installations, performances and video art works by about 20 artists from Canada and abroad. The art exhibition will be presented in conjunction with conferences, workshops and live media events, with curators and scholars from different countries. Some of the main works and artists included in this exhibition are Transborder Immigrant Tool a Mexico/U.S border disturbance art project by Electronic Disturbance Theater / b.a.n.g lab presenterd in Toronto by Ricardo Dominguez; Virus.circus.laboratory by transgender performance and new media artists Micha Cardenas and Elle Mehrmand; Dystorpia Project by local artists of No Media Collective; Activism Beyond The Interface an itinerant production lab by Alessandra Renzi and Roberta Buiani. Also, Ulysses Castellanos, Sofia Escobar, Juan David Casas, Miguel García, Angie Bonino, Ian Paul, Nacho Duran and Balam Soto.
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artists talks
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How might artists and digital activists respond to the 3rd or 4th World War? Ricardo Dominguez is a proponent of tactical media, transparent hacking, and virtual sit-ins, among many other possible actions and art projects. Dominguez is a co-founder of The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), past co-Director of Thing (post.thing.net), and past member of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). His collaborations with artists, collectives and tactical media groups have resulted in controversial projects including Digital Zapatismo in solidarity with Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico and the recent *Transborder Immigrant Tool* (a GPS cellphone safety net tool for crossing the Mexico/U.S border) winner of the "Transnational Communities Award.” Ricardo is Associate Professor at UCSD in the Visual Arts Department, a Hellman Fellow, and Principal/Principle Investigator at CALIT2. (bang.calit2.net)
Tuesday september 13, from 7:30 – 9 pm
Auditorium, OCAD University, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto, ON, M5T 1W1
Thursday September 15, 6 – 7 pm
At Toronto Free Gallery |
live streaming
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DystoRpia Project
No Media Collective will create an intervention in the gallery with their media artifacts, including a live streaming presentation of their project and the main events in the gallery.
DystoRpia is a combined word that works as much in English as it does in Spanish. This neologism comes from the English word dystopia used in its original sense as meaning the vision of a society as a negative or anti-utopian community, together with the Latin root torpere which in English gives us the word torpid and in Spanish the equivalent word torpe. This is a mental or fisical inactivity, even clumsiness. Our project applies the neologism dystoRpia to examine through a variety of artisitc approaches, torpid visions of a vaguely utopian basis as actual anti-utopian practices
DystoRpia online channel
Thursday September 15, from 6 - 9 pm
Saturday September 17, 24, and October 1,from 2 - 5 pm
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performances
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Reverse Apotheosis: End of The World
a media performance developed and performed by Castellanos in a collaboration with Fluid New Media Lab. The sound elements are created by Roldós and a noise band, Zueiing, and will be dub in a live performance with Ulysess combined with a stremed projection from Argentina of the performances by Hijas del Mal art group. The visualization is a mix of images coming from a lightbox with sand, and a selection of video footage of apocalyptic events taken from a variety of disaster films, as well as footage from the Heaven’s Gate cult, the Manson Family, John Berger’s Ways of Seeing and Argentinean singer Sandro, culminating in a meditative, calm and tranquil landscape, celebrating the continuation of life on earth.
at Toronto Free Gallery
Saturday September 17, from 3 - 4 pm |
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Virus.circus.laboratory
by transgender performance and new media artists Micha Cardenas and Elle Mehrmand
virus.circus is an episodic series of performances exploring a speculative world of queer futures of latex sexuality and DIY medicine in resistance to virus hysteria. The performances use wearable electronics, soft sensors and live audio to bridge virtual and physical spaces. The history of queer politics shows that the rhetoric of viruses such as HIV are used to control marginalized populations, while the present transnational politics of viruses such as H1N1 unearth the militarization of medical authority, microscopic migrations and global inequities.
at Toronto Free Gallery
Saturday September 24, from 3 - 4 pm
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workshops
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From Html Conceptualism to Transborder Disturbances
by Ricardo Dominguez
The course will cover the emergence of HTMLconceptualism, tactical media, and browser based aesthetics with Mosaic in 1993/4 to 1998, it will then explore art and activist based ISPs (Internet Service Providers), such as thing.net. The second section will consider the performative matrix of distributed forms of simulation and code from 1998 to 2000. The final section will consider the rise of social media and locative media – or how code moves into world.
At 80 Gould Street, Room 202, Rogers Communications Centre Ryerson University
With the support of The Infoscape Centre For The Study Of Social Media, Ryerson University
Monday 12, Wednesday 14, and Friday 16 of September
from 6 - 8 pm
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Performing The Body: Wearable Electronics, Sound And Erotics
by Micha Cardenas and Elle Mehrmand
In this workshop participants will create wearable electronics using the lilypad arduino, sensors, and sound. The workshop will consist of three days including performance, Puredata (Pd-extended) and open source electronics. Elle Mehrmand and Micha Cárdenas will share their experiences developing performance art using these tools. Participants will work towards developing a performance piece of their own/collaboration, and will have an opportunity for performing at the end of the workshop, if they choose to do so. To develop the performances the workshop will entail performance exercises inspired by Theater of the Oppressed, La Pocha Nostra and physical improvisation.
Registration: In person at LIFT, Liason Of Independent Filmmakers Of Toronto,
1137 Dupont Street, M6H 2A3
by telephone with a credit card: 416 - 588 - 6444
From Monday 26 to Wednesday 28 of September, 6 - 10 pm |
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Activism Beyond The Interface an itinerant production lab
by Alessandra Renzi and Roberta Buiani
During this lab activists and artists are invited to produce a radio programme about an ecology of different forms of activist practices. The second part of the event will involve guests and the audience in a radio show, to discuss in more detail the contexts and situations that can engender new modes of relation among groups, the sharing of values, the co-creation of specific tools (e.g. media, forms of collaboration, tactics, etc.) to understand and learn from the work of others.
We understand the production of the radio show as work-in-progress striving to create a positive, respectful and safe space where activists and artists support each other in this inquiry. This is the first of a series of labs that will take place in different cities and that will adapt and grow with different situations, to create a useful resource that continuously rethinks and (re)imagines activism. Join us as we experiment with collaboration, tool boxes, and sand boxes...
At toronto Free Gallery
workshop and performance on October 1, from 12 - 4 pm
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on screen
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Political Subversion,
a curatorial video project presented by Federica Matelli from Liminalb, Barcelona, Spain that includes the following program:
Monography
by Angie Bonino
Saturday September 17, from 2 - 3 pm
Interferences
by Miguel García
Saturday September 24, from 2 - 3 pm
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Digital Event’11 is possible thanks to the support from: Canada Council For The Arts, The Toronto Free Gallery, Tinto Coffee House, Ryerson University, and OCAD University. We would also like to acknowledge the support from the artists Ricardo Rozental, Edgardo Moreno and Rodrigo Hernandez, Sue Johnson, Blanca López and all the volunteers that have made this possible
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    tinto coffee house |
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