DIGICULT

Digital Art, Design & Culture

Founder & Editor-in-chief: Marco Mancuso

Advisory Board: Marco Mancuso, Lucrezia Cippitelli, Claudia D'Alonzo

Publisher: Associazione Culturale Digicult Largo Murani 4, 20133 Milan (Italy) http://www.digicult.it Editorial Press registered at Milan Court, number N°240 of 10/04/06. ISSN Code: 2037-2256

Licenses: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs - Creative Commons 2.5 Italy (CC BY- NC-ND 2.5)

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Digicult is part of the The Leonardo Organizational Member Program TABLE OF CONTENTS

Giulia Simi Koan01+ootchio: Landscapes From A Past Future ...... 3

Lucrezia Cippitelli The Cinematic Experience Of Boris Debackere ...... 8

Annamaria Monteverdi Marianne Weems: Digital Divide And Theatre ...... 18

Barbara Sansone Offf In Lisbon: Post-digital Saudade ...... 24

Alessandro Massobrio Sonar 2008: Advanced Music & Cinema Beyond ...... 28

Marco Baravalle Militant Art, Cultural Subversion ...... 32

Salvatore Iaconesi We Are Not Alone – Part 2 ...... 36

Marco Mancuso Marc Garret & Ruth Catlow: Net Visions ...... 40

Valentina Tanni All Rights Reserved. All Wrongs Reversed ...... 49

Salvatore Iaconesi Degradarte @ Lpm 2008 ...... 52

Massimo Schiavoni A Show On Friendship ...... 58 Silvia Scaravaggi Confini Ttv ...... 61

Marco Mancuso The Wonderful Ideas Of Theodore Watson ...... 67

Alessio Galbiati I’m Not David Lynch. Charlemagne Palestine In Milan ...... 77

Claudia D'Alonzo The Last Supper: Souvenir From Milan ...... 82 Koan01+ootchio: Landscapes From A Past Future

Giulia Simi

Maria Grazia Mattei, from Studio Azzurro to Joshua Davis, from Forsythe to Fennesz and Mouse on Mars – just to mention a few. The festival is an undoubted opportunity to reflect and sum up the situation of contemporary culture linked to new media.

A specific space was reserved to audio-video performances, with the After three editions dedicated to overt intent to open a dialogue with great masters such as Cunningham, experimental and avant-garde Glass and Bertolucci, the fourth cinema. Thus, there was a whole edition of FUTURO PRESENTE festival series of site-specific works, as the opens up to the broader theme of the one by Mouse on Mars, based on the links between arts and new images of Herzog’s Fata Morgana or technologies: the legacy of the great the one by Christian Fennesz, whose experimenters, the dreams and performance rotated around Walter utopias of the greatest twentieth- Ruttmann’s Berlin: Die Sinfonie der century protagonists revised and Großstadt , one of the greatest developed by artists who employ the masterpieces in the history of cinema. latest technologies as lenses through In the wake of these artworks was which to observe and shape the also the young Italian duo world. koan01+ootchio (aka Massimo Vicentini and Salvatore Arangio) that, Around the MART and its striking during the last evening of the festival, dome, the festival gathered together presented Sci-fi Landscapes , a live many names of undisputed media tribute to sci-fi cinema and its importance, what with artists and ability to forcefully enter our critics: from Derrick De Kerckhove to imagination.

3 sci-fi cinema forced us to delimit the field of research somehow by identifying a specific theme. The “future landscapes” theme (views, sceneries, glimpses) always fascinated me. While at the school of fine arts, I attended a media course, held by Carlo Branzaglia, focusing on how sci- fi cinema – and above all futurology – had influenced the techno- . sociological development of contemporary society. This main I interviewed them to have a report on theme developed in two strands, how they welcomed the invitation to ‘interstellar space’ and ‘the city of the the festival and how they worked on future’. The in-depth analysis of these the project, which is their first work two ideas generated real antithetical together. polarities (city: syncopated, rhythmic, Giulia Simi: Sci-fi Landscapes – which pyrotechnic, neurotic, noisy//space: was specifically developed for absorbing, dilated, melodic, droning) FUTURO PRESENTE – helped you that later gave life to our live starting a dialogue with sci-fi cinema. performance. This dialogue gave life to an audio- As for the realisation modalities, we visual performance of great emotional divided the research on sources for impact. How was your idea born and areas of competence, meaning that how did you work? Salvatore (aka ootchio, Editor’s Note ) koan01: We can easily say that the screened sound materials and I dealt creation of Sci-fi Landscapes has been with video materials. We constantly quite hard, from the point of view of discussed the results of our concept and, most of all, of researches and ideas on how to put development. As you were saying, this them together slowly started to come work was born as a production for out. At the same time, we carried out FUTURO PRESENTE that, after the the more specifically technological original idea of an elaboration of research, pursuing the creation of a Lang’s Metropolis , took the form of a very strict relationship between the more extensive project on sci-fi unrecorded soundtrack and the real- cinema. The difficulty in managing a time video, so as to obtain a whole varied and boundless corpus such as series of situations where the video reacted precisely to audio impulses.

4 As the first results from both spontaneously. The first relation researches started to arrive and ideas concerns dates: even though Le turned into blocks, we started voyage dans la Lune can not precisely rehearsing them daily. After a month be placed within what we call of work or so, the first complete ‘Historical Avant-Gardes’, its dating outline came to light and, after many (1902) collocates it ideally at the changes and second thoughts, it took beginning of the history of avant- the finished form of the performance garde cinema. Metropolis (1927), you saw. instead, is placed at the end of this period, a short time before the lights of nascent Hollywood and the politics of the Third Reich caused the expatriation of the majority of directors who gave life to this art movement.

The tribute to these two directors was unavoidable and due: Méliès is remembered as the pioneer in special effects and Le voyage dans la Lune is . the first sci-fi film; on the other hand, Lang’s Metropolis inaugurated some Giulia Simi: Avant-gardes open and of the main themes in science fiction close your show, which is totally (the automaton, the social control, the based, as far as images are concerned, city of the future), which constantly on editing and live re-editing of movie return both in literature (Orwell, Dick, excerpts that have forcefully entered Sterling, just to mention a few) and in our imagination. May we look at this cinema ( Blade Runner , Brazil , etc.). as at a tribute to the utopias of the Besides, the subjects of these two seventh art, born well before masterpieces are exactly the same we technological means allowed the decided to deal with in Sci-fi hyperrealism perspectives that sci-fi Landscapes , i.e. ‘the exploration of cinema have broadly employed? interstellar space’ and ‘the city of the koan01: The idea of setting the show future’. By setting the whole show within Le voyage dans la Lune and within these two movies, we want to Metropolis was an apt as well as say that the progresses sci-fi cinema obvious choice, meaning that many made in the last hundred years or so relations generated almost were already potentially present at the beginning of the twentieth

5 century. generation computers), new composers generated a very complex and unpredictable musical aesthetics, reaching amazing sound results. It was easy then to find a combination with the world of sci-fi cinema, for those very characters of complexity and unpredictability. Moreover, we had to express ourselves within an edition of the festival conceived around the relation between arts and new technologies. . The tribute to those composers who Giulia Simi: We can find a tribute to entrusted large part of their aesthetics avant-gardes in sound too, since there to technological devices was almost are references to great music due. More specifically, I sampled experimenters of the twentieth many fragments with different length, century, from Berio to Xenakis. taken from the works of many Therefore, from a crossmedial point of contemporary composers and I view, new technologies can be seen overlapped them, making them as tools to develop the dream of new unintelligible and often obtaining a modalities of perception and fruition musicality totally different from the of imagination? primitive concept. I feel the urge to ootchio: They are chief works in the say that the tribute to these evolution of musical science and composers was paid not only through taste, but they are also mostly the quotations of pieces from unknown to general public, remaining different compositions, but also, and prerogative of some “educated” elite. mainly, by means of the Recently, there has been a growing instrumentation and the performance demand for this kind of music (by an practices I used in my electroacoustic ever wider and younger public), where live-set. the use of new technologies has overcome the traditional sound production systems. With the www.festivalfuturopresente.it/interne introduction of increasingly /home.aspx?ID=4336 sophisticated devices (we passed from the phonograph to new- www.koan01.net/video_db/scifi_land

6 scapes_demo.mov www.koan01.net

www.myspace.com/ootchio

7 The Cinematic Experience Of Boris Debackere

Lucrezia Cippitelli

whom he created the “Rotor” live cinema performance”), Herman Asselberghs (with whom he won the Transmediale prize for “Proof of life” in 2007). He works and lives among Brussels , Antwerp , Rotterdam and Amsterdam .

Among his latest works there is “Probe“, which was presented in Montevideo during the Sonic Acts XII Boris Debackere is an artist and sound festival (February 2008), in a collective designer; he teaches at the Sint Lukas project called “The Cinematic Academy in Brussels , where he leads Experience”. Our interview starts the Transmedia department. exactly from “Probe” and the “Cinematic Experience“. “The He studied at the Image and Sound Cinematic Experience” is the title of a department at the music academy in study that was carried out in 2007 by The Hague , which trained a Debackere with the funds of the Sint generation of artists who devote Lukas Academy and then published themselves to experimentations with the same title in collaboration mixing image and sound and who with Sonic Acts. work above all in the Netherlands and in the Flanders . This input was probably one of the experiences that brought him to “think in a multimedia way”, as he told us during our conversation.

He collaborated with several artists, among which Marnix De Nijs (with whom he created the “Run Motherfucker Run” interactive installation), Brecht Debackere (with .

8 Lucrezia Cippitelli: I would like to talk constantly measured: your distance first of all about “Probe”. from the projection influences the generation of images and sound. The Boris Debackere: In the booklet that perception of the approaching is accompanies the installation, I doubled: “Probe” let you make an describe “Probe” with its definition in experience that you can’t usually the dictionary: ” noun, an unmanned make with the human eye, but you exploratory spacecraft designed to can make only with the television transmit information about its camera: zooming. I think this aspect is environment”. fundamental, because we usually estimate the quality of a film Lucrezia Cippitelli: In the same text according to its ability to lead us far you describe “Probe” as a work that away, we consider how much the deals with a medium: cinema. Which shuttle has been able to make us is its basic concept? wander in time and space. In other Boris Debackere: “Probe” is a words, we judge the quality of the metaphor of cinema: cinema as a immersion. The immersion effect space shuttle, or a probe you enter takes place when you can’t “feel and you are completely separated yourself” there any longer, but you are from the external world. Suddenly, completely absorbed in the film. the huge screen you have in front of In this installation every step you take you disappears and becomes a sort of forward and backward has an window to travel in time and space. instantaneous effect on the output And you sit in this vehicle, but the that is projected on the screen. whole “trip” takes place in your brain: Because of the zoom effect, every you concentrate with your mind with move you make towards the screen is the screen that becomes invisible and perceived as doubled, because you everything that is projected on the put an optical (of the video) and screen puts your mind and physical (you are approaching) zoom imagination into action. The setting of into action. the film is in your brain, not on the screen: it is part of the same dynamics of cinema, which stimulate your brain, the mechanism of your perceptive abilities.

“Probe” is this, it plays with your attention to the screen, which is

9 . turn your back and you return to the entrance of the room and everything Lucrezia Cippitelli: A very interesting appears again. thing, in my opinion, is that whenever you near the projection, the sound disappears and only a white projection remains of the video. You think that if you draw nearer, you can understand what there is on the other side of the “window”, but, in front of you, you have, instead, only the screen and the white light of the video projector, you practically see only the medium. . Boris Debackere: It happens if you are very close to the screen, I mean, if you Lucrezia Cippitelli: Something I have have your nose nearly attached to the mentioned to you before, I find very screen: what is interesting is that a lot interesting also the fact that on the of spectators, when they understand day of the inauguration you had the the mechanism of the installation – words “interactive installation” which is not taken for granted – really removed from the caption at the do that, they touch with their nose entrance of your room. I read it in this the surface of this huge screen that is way: if you use this word that refers so more than 6 metres large. For me it is strongly to the context of New Media amusing that I can make people do and of Media Art, you force the these things. However, above all, spectator to look more for the play talking about contents, when you than its content. concentrate more on the screen, Boris Debackere: There are many everything becomes empty and silent. ways to accost the matter of Everything works only in your brain. interactivity. You might say, for And you don’t have to trigger the example, that also cinema is screen interactive. If there is a screen, but Lucrezia Cippitelli: That is, everything there isn’t any spectator in the disappears cinema, can you say or not that there is a film? Each work needs a public. Boris Debackere: The play disappears, Think about a picture: the public look it was only an illusion. At least, till you at it, they contemplate it: there is also

10 an interaction between the spectator problem, however, is that it takes and the picture. The painter himself – I many years to control this instrument am convinced of it – thinks about the and to be able to use it. moment in which a watcher starts looking at the picture and when There is also a missing link in the he/she finishes. On the other hand, as matter of interaction. And I also you say, “interactive installation” wonder if people really want to refers specifically to New Media. interact with art. Certainly, if you However, what is an interactive want, instead, to create a videogame, installation? A works that needs input for example, a tennis or ski simulator from its user, which I don’t like at all, in which you are completely because you use the word “user” in absorbed, this is something different. relation to a work of art as if you were Even if complexity goes also for talking about a business context. The games: it’s difficult to reach a certain user, the consumer: suddenly, also the level and you have to learn how it watchers of a work change their role works to be able to play it. And I’m and become users. not talking about videogames such as Pac Man, but about the latest games, In any case, watchers have to do which become more and more something: but is a very common complex. It takes time to learn event that, when someone enters the techniques. The question is: can you space of an installation of that kind, expect the same thing from the they don’t know well how to use it public? Of course, you could argue taking advantage from all its that also the public of Contemporary potentialities, because it’s something Art needs suitable intellectual tools to completely new. If the installation is understand a work. However, can you complex enough (programming, really expect a physical ability?. audiovisual aids), if it’s strong enough, you always need some time to understand what to do, how to use it and surf it. I always give this example: Stradivarius makes a violin and says: “this is an interactive installation”. And it is that: there is wood, strings, a specific shape. “If you interact with it, it produces a sound”. Then he puts it on a pedestal and people come and start touching its strings and claim: . “It’s true, it produces a sound!”. The

11 Lucrezia Cippitelli: When you talked that goes hand in hand with the about interaction and generic work of concept of the work and it’s not its art, I thought inevitably about the core? In general, we can say that “classic” examples of contemporary every good technique is deeply art. From the performances to the hidden by its content. It works alone, Action Kunst , where watchers have you can’t see it. It’s invisible. We don’t to take part in an action that is think every second that we are suggested by an artist, to the great breathing and our heart is beating. If I classics of the installations or of the had been forced to interact lifelong, Happenings. Kaprow, the Fifties, and every second, with my heart, I so on. They are interactive works, wouldn’t have been able to do where nobody tries to understand anything else . how its mechanism works. In the places of Kaprow’s happenings, for example, where things “happen”. The audience only takes part in the “event” decided by the artist, without wondering how it works. Maybe it would be this way also in the context of Media.

Boris Debackere: I am convinced that every work is interactive. If you think about a group performing concerts, . they certainly say that it’s better to Lucrezia Cippitelli: We often talked play “live” because there is the about the Black box and the “interaction” with the public. Even if relationship of “Probe” with this kind the public, from the stage, seems only of space and the space of Cinema. a huge black hole, because you are completely enveloped by light beams Boris Debackere: I don’t like that blind you. But actually, “producing art for the Black box”. As something magic comes true, so you I’m not interested in producing can define it interaction: does it exist “interactive art”, however. It happens or not? Is it real only in the musicians’ that this kind of installations has to minds? stay in a Black box. If I see one of them in a gallery, in a museum or in a So the most important question is: is Biennale, I can’t understand at all why it really necessary to focus on the they have to stay there. I also interaction or is it simply something

12 expressly asked many people how artistic director was Enwezor… much time they usually spend in such environment, if they see the video Boris Debackere: How can an from the beginning to the end. exhibition model of this kind work? I think that the context of The average spectator enters, he/she contemporary Art is based on a passes through the black curtains or vertical perception and observation of the “bric-à-brac” doors; he/she is in a the work. It has nothing to do with room where there is a projector that time, but with space. You sit in front probably has a colour predominance of a picture or a sculpture and the which is inappropriate for the video, a perception is vertical: that is, time poor quality sound system and he/she goes into action only if and when an sits on a wooden bench to watch a interaction between the spectator video that probably began a long time and the work exists. It’s not an ago. element of the work, but it’s something secondary that begins only I am convinced that such situation in the relationship with the spectator. doesn’t work at all. I wonder whether For a video, instead, spectators need a these artists that are presented in this period of time that is fixed in advance: way don’t actually dream of making if time is missing, the video will films in Hollywood , but aren’t able to become a still, a photograph. do it. It is said that someone summed Suddenly, with the video, the element the total hours of the videos of one of of time has been introduced in the these biennial exhibitions . context of contemporary Art, but the public still wander from a Black box to another in the same way they watch a picture. It’s something completely different from when you go, for example, to the cinema and you know you’ll stay there for an hour and a half or two hours: you choose the film you want to watch, you try to arrive on time and you sit till the end of the film. Nobody behaves like that for a video in a Biennale. Maybe someone . persists, because he/she wants to be Lucrezia Cippitelli: A review of taken in earnest by the others but the Documenta XI from 2001 with the title time devoted to a video in the context “600 hours Documenta”, whose of art is not usually the specific time

13 of the work. . By the way, I’ve always found very interesting people’s serious faces Lucrezia Cippitelli: But “Probe” has, when they watch “Art” Talking about above all, something to do with “Probe”, anyway, I prefer to define the Cinema in general. And I dare say that installation “reactive” than cinema is one of your favourite topics, “interactive”. A conversation is also taking into account other works interactive, but not “Probe”. The of yours. I’m referring to “Rotor” live spectators that watch it behave like cinema (2005), which you created with a Black box: they enter, they lean with Brecht Debackere, and the against the wall at the end of the “Vortices” installation (2006). room and they wait, wait, wait. They Boris Debackere: I’m not interested in don’t imagine that the work reacts cinema in the sense of “making the and they have to cross a spatial more interesting film in the history”, boundary to start the reaction. During but in its effect. In its influence on the the performance in Montevideo , past and present community and in during the Sonic Acts festival, some our way of producing art and thinking spectators entered, they saw the first in general. I’m interested in the level of the video, in which a constant immersion effect of cinema, which I flow of images moving from left and think is one of the key factors of the right is accompanied by a very loud success of this art that has also sound, and they went away without experienced the evolution of this really seeing the work. From this point medium during a century of life. I try of view, “Probe” is in relation to the to transfer these factors not in Black box, because somehow it plays cinema, but in other kinds of with the expectations that the public environment. And this is the reason usually have with this kind of spaces. why I started a research project with the title “The cinematic experience”, which culminated in a homonymous book presented (and edited) to coincide with the Sonic Acts festival. I try to transfer the cinematic features of this medium in other possible forms in comparison with the cinema we know. I try not to imitate the cinema of the present, but to create the cinema of the future. I wonder

14 how to create the same kind of The performances of live cinema like cinematic experience that people live “Rotor” have this name because they when they move in a dark room or have a connection with cinema in stay in front of a projection. relation to the display mode: projection and sound. However, they “Vortices” is a pillar on which images probably have a much more deep link move by rotating around it. It is a with the dream of performing live, in tribute to the Trajan’s column, which real time, volume and video, image was the first visual narration of a story and sound, together, by improvising in western culture. It is a kind of as people improvise with musical comics. What was interesting is that instruments. It has much more to do the watcher had to go round the with “coloured music” and with the column to know the story, and watch research of synaesthesia. However, its bas-reliefs. A narration that is told the idea of performing how music is by means of images is very similar to played is predominant in comparison cinema. “Vortices” worked on this with the idea of performing “Indiana concept, trying not to be interactive, Jones 7″ . but reactive.

15 much more to do with a music approach. Music, that without any words, is abstract and it creates, for the spectator, a much more abstract experience than that of traditional cinema, based on the linear narration of events.

Lucrezia Cippitelli: Speaking about Hollywood cinema, there is another

. topic, about which you were talking to me, that intrigues me: the effects of Lucrezia Cippitelli: However, when that kind of cinema are connected you were talking about “Rotor”, you with a narration form that is much told me that it’s a work which has to more abstract than that of traditional do with cinema, in particular with the cinema. sound of cinema. Boris Debackere: I call this factor Boris Debackere: If on one hand the “emancipation of the effects in the performance is an important aspect, film” from the narration. You could say then the real question comes into that during the history, apart from the play: after deciding how we want to fact that cinema itself is an effect create the work, we have to think (that, as we have said, takes place in about the content. And here cinema your brain), spectators have been plays an important role, much more always involved by the effect of important than if we talk only about cinema: a magical and mysterious the setting of the performance: we show of images in motion on a wall. tried to reproduce the “cinematic After some time, the theatrical experience” with an abstract narration was introduced into the language. We removed any elements cinema to draw the public, who, at that could remind us of a Hollywood that point, had begun to get bored, “icon”: dolls, weapons, cars, ships, because there was only a play of explosions. We removed them, trying lights and motion. From that moment, to create the same kind of experience, the narration has entered the cinema but in a completely abstract form. as a novelty, which has been now Therefore, there isn’t any traditional perfectly integrated in the cinema we narration, on the contrary, “Rotor” has know.

16 has become a sort of race from the seat in the cinema to appeal to more spectators.

The shuttle has started a trip at high speed. What’s happened?

In the cinema of recent years, the narration is not important any longer and special effects and how to shock the public really matter. It’s an . audiovisual shock, where narration is However, during the development of used only to justify next great cinema, from the first projection of explosion. images and lights, which was the real attraction for spectators, to today, the language of special effects, the stunts, www.rotorscoop.net/ quick editing, and so on, everything

17 Marianne Weems: Digital Divide And Theatre

Annamaria Monteverdi

theatre, continuously played within exceptionally self-evident and visually effective theatrical scenography.

Supervision is their latest production; three stories describing privacy violation and real-time control and monitoring of free citizens: lives turning transparent, from their economic transactions and their physical movements, to their salary in Marianne Weems is the founder of the bank and their meetings in American techno-theatre ensemble monitored public spaces. Marianne The Builders Association, specialised Weems puts up stories of ordinary in theatre exhibitions exploiting the data piracy in a post-private era, richness of interactive digital associated the underlying theme of technology and panoramic screens. In personal identity turned into complex, 2004, they brought to RomaEuropa uncontrollable information, separate the multi-awarded Alladeen , winner from physical body and travelling of an Obie Award, a not so much through an invisible data-space within fairy-tale story about employees in a thousands of processors. call centre in Bangalore . People living in the continuous Technology is always there, both remote connection of white noise, concretely and as subject of the travellers held up at the border shows: the technological gap because of cross-controls between between civilised countries and the strictly personal information and the third world, the exploitation of AIDC (Automatic Identification and workers by means of outsourcing, Data Capture). Marianne Weems (who media simulation of events, worked as playwright and assistant technological mediation invading all director for Elizabeth LeCompte and actions in people’s life, electronic Richard Foreman) gave visibility and control. We witness a genuine tangible concreteness to these example of politico-technological databodies, to this immaterial

18 infosphere, by means of an impressive makers, musicians, lighting and sound structure made up of a panoramic designers and, of course, actors. screen, multiple real-time video projections, computer animations and I create and direct productions based a motion capture system. on real everyday life stories – stories with an accessible, topical, pregnant content, reflecting modern human experience. In the last 14 years, with my company The Builders Association, I’ve put up shows on data theft, outsourcing, even jetlag. It sounds somehow a little sterile, but our productions are colossal, colourful, amusing at times. I told myself these stories should address a wide range of people external to experimental . theatre: artists working with other media, the youngest members of the A.Monteverdi: Which have been the public and even the eldest. In an fundamental steps in your work as a attempt to make theatre a mirror of theatre ensemble: when were you our chaotic contemporary world, I born, what is your education and work with actors and traditional which are the artistic reference theatre designers, but also with less models for your multi-media shows? traditional collaborators, such as video M.Weems: We started 14 years ago by and sound designers, software mounting a full-scale house, although designers, architects, and many more. “deconstructed”, inside a huge Our productions went touring all over industrial space, taking inspiration the world, from BAM to Bogotá, from from Gordon Matta-Clark. The house Singapore to Melbourne , to was filled with videos and sound Minneapolis , Los Angeles and triggers that the performer Budapest . interpreting Ibsen’s play The Master These productions produced a Builder set off while moving through passionate debate among the public space. It was a utopian moment – the on the real mutable essence of show, the house – and that is how our identity, work, life, speed and ensemble formed, during those eight travelling. I want to expand theatre, I months of joint work that involved want to combine entertaining and architects, software designers, video critical thinking – and I want the public

19 to investigate the invisible networks tools to extend the boundaries of around us. theatre.

A.Monteverdi: Can you describe the common creative process behind your productions?

M.Weems: Our projects develop in a highly inclusive way – all technology, designers, producers and actors are there from the very first rehearsal. This practice made us able to develop projects which really incorporate

. technology – content and form are interconnected on a deep A.Monteverdi: How do you think it is dramaturgical level. possible to make technologies, even the newest ones, become part of an aesthetic horizon in theatre?

M.Weems: The Builders Association’s projects establish a fructuous relation between the liveliness of actors and that of technology, generating a sort of media network around the performers. In every show, the actors, together with the technicians, interpret and animate this very media . network. A.Monteverdi: I was touched by the A.Monteverdi: Steve Dixon proposes a themes of your works, the hard definition for digital performance criticism on multinational companies “enhanced theatre”. Others talk of holding economic power thanks to “post-dramatic theatre”. Which technologies, the exploitation of definition do you think suits you best? work, data piracy, monitoring, the distorted use of media in order to M.Weems: We create original generate consent, and control society productions based on everyday life in general. But, which is the starting stories. The company exploits the point and the real goal of your works? richness of old and new technological

20 M.Weems: Our projects are the Scofidio), outsourcing (in Alladeen, stepping stone to political observation developed with the South Asian and discussion, wherever they are company MOTIROTI) and, of course, staged. For example, when we data sphere in Supervision developed brought Alladeen to London , riots with the dbox group. broke out since British Telecom had recently transferred thousands of workplaces to India. We came across similar demonstrations in Seattle (against Microsoft) and even in Bogota , while we were there presenting the show.

Supervision has a powerful scenography and the message is immediate: the negative use of technology against the individual, . against his or her freedom: a distorted A.Monteverdi: What’s the use, manipulated by the contribution of the Net to your work? governments, but also by ourselves, since we would rather have M.Weems: R ecently, I’ve tried to technologically mediated relations reach outside the stage to arrive to than human contacts whom has too little interest or resources to go to the theatre. There A.Monteverdi: Do you think people are websites linked to our are aware of this abuse, of this excess, productions, where thousands of of the worldwide digital divide? people share thoughts and M. Weems: All our projects make use congratulations. My next show, of technology to tell stories about Continuous City , asks the public to technology but also about the create material that will be included complication of identity – rich stories, nightly in the show. In my opinion, true stories taken from contemporary this is a high-risk choice, since it events. Each project considers produces a high-tech large-scale cultural productions and the effects of show, changing night after night and mediatisation; through this filter, we answering to different locations, decided to report the most varied modalities of participation and subjects, like travelling (in Jet Lag , audience concerns. developed with architects Diller + I also started working with high-risk

21 students in Brooklyn . We work on a balances the long time dedicated to long term production called Invisible creation. Cities . I feel that all my performance modalities are based on broader perspectives, both when dealing with Brooklyn secondary schools and call centres in South Asia or global cities networks. I created theatre pieces for me and my strictest co-workers in order to embrace and evoke a much wider world.

A.Monteverdi: Most multimedia theatre projects need a rather long . time to develop, both to carry out A.Monteverdi: Do you think the public technical proof tests and because of has the right tools to understand high costs – therefore, the long time correctly this type of theatre? depends on the search for sponsors or co-productions; sometimes, the show M.Weems: In Europe, yes. In the US , is presented using a “work in this ability to understand is growing progress” concept, going through day by day. different in-between steps; sometimes, during the setting up of a A.Monteverdi: Who do you know show, the single elements (video, among the Italian artists who use sound) achieve full autonomy and technology on stage? become concerts, installations, video- creations. Do you use this M.Weems: Romeo Castellucci is my intermediate “work in progress” hero modality too? A.Monteverdi: Are you planning a tour M.Weems: We need lot of time to in Italy ? raise funds and literally to build these M.Weems: We would like to go back performances – there are many people to RomaEuropa: we presented involved and many development Alladeen there in 2004 and we had a stages. Of course, if funds were there very good time. immediately, it would be easier to proceed quickly I must add that each show keeps touring for at least two ears after the premiere, and this http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=jlTps

22 TAKDGY

23 Offf In Lisbon: Post-digital Saudade

Barbara Sansone

passions, experiences, emotions. This is the distinctive feature that will accompany OFFF forever, since it is written in its public’s DNA.

It is a pity that, for those who were accustomed to the more formal, comfortable and well-prepared spaces at the CCCB in Barcelona, this time the so much expected event was a really difficult experience. This year OFFF moved to the wonderful Portuguese capital. The spaces in the ex-factory were Considering its huge international large but not enough to contain the public, it probably matters very little huge crowd (this year an average of where the very loved festival of “post- 2500 people a day, 1000 more in digital” culture takes place. comparison with last year’s festival, took part in the event); the poor Young and creative people from all ventilation raised the temperature over the world, experts of graphic unbearably and “melted” the garden arts, supporters of cultural holidays, chairs which opened like a bearskin, hunters of events and excuses to making them useless; the floor soon break out of the routine for some filled with spilt beers and orange days, combining business with sodas, but the dim light did not let pleasure, brought also this year to an people who, having no choice, sat on early sale of all the tickets, because the ground realize that in time; the they have been bought on the bluish light made the sheet of the Internet; moreover, people took programme illegible, which because advantage of the low-cost flights. And of the colours chosen for font and now they are walking around Lisbon background lost completely the streets, exploring its steep alleys, contrast (or elsewhere it had a too refreshing in cafés, crowding small little point size also in an intense hotels with a view; then, they meet light); then, columns and metallic again at midday at LX Factory to share structures supporting the lighting

24 further reduced the visibility of the hum was worsened by continuous projections, in spite of the several “migrations” of people who were widescreen televisions. exasperated by the heat or were looking for a better place from where they could see and/or hear something.

A solution to improve the listening was to use the headphones with the simultaneous translation, even when they were not necessary, but they did not pick up the signal out of the large but very crowded and stifling area near the stage, where a bit more . visible screens had been set up.

Ceilings were not so high to be able to install too wide screens, so too many heads hid at least their inferior half. Those who found a place in the front rows did not leave it for all the day. The other people had to make do with screens which were set up in spots that were far from the stage (the first day they could not see their favourites, who were then filmed by a television camera in real time), . sometimes had no sound (this problem was solved from the second The “Loopita” space, which was day) and sometimes people could not devoted to concerts and because of hear anything because of the noise. its public was less frequented, thus became a happy haven where to The acoustics (at the beginning of the relax. However, because of its first day really bad and then resemblance to a social centre which improved) were certainly not favoured aroused less awe and respect than the by the fusion of the open room, and elegant Auditorium at the CCCB, above all of a very busy coffee bar, people continued to come and go with the space that was devoted to and, even worse, talked loudly all the conferences, and the unacceptable time, turning the electronic

25 performances into a mess of irritating . noises. In short, it was impossible to concentrate, to enjoy oneself and to Also the Mercadillo disappointed the become enthusiastic as it had always visitors: very little music, no books (in happened during this festival. Barcelona several specialized bookshops were represented and it As every year, the approach was was impossible to resist the interdisciplinary: web, graphics, data temptation to buy something), no visualization, motion graphics, music, new hardware products to try (like generative code, interactive design, last year’s screen/graphics tablet by typography (in this field young Alex Wacom). Trochut stood out and made the visitors fall in love with his modesty We hope that, during the next and imagination). festivals, the event, it does not matter where it will take place, will try to But actually also the programme return the affection and the attentions worsened, because the “same old” of its faithful visitors, taking into people performed (Eric Natzke, higher consideration the conditions it Joshua Davis, Hi-Res, for example, needs for a correct use and who were professional and pleasant enjoyment, so that it will be worth as usual, but now too known for the spending money for the expensive regular visitors of the festival), and ticket and the possible trip. there were impeccable design agencies, which were though less For this year, the impressions that exciting than the lovers of digital art remain are to have been on a good and new creative paths would have trip and to have lived new synergies, wanted to see. Maybe the difficult but also a sensation of having lost conditions for the enjoyment something and a kind of nostalgia. contributed to give this impression. Maybe is it the famous that saddens the Portuguesesaudade soul and inspires the ?. Fado

www.offf.ws

26 27 Sonar 2008: Advanced Music & Cinema Beyond

Alessandro Massobrio

The three days of the festival will offer, as always, a comprehensive panorama of the international scene and of the favourite trends of electronic music, by focusing on the latest development of Eurodance and the fiesta , with a lot of surprises for the most curious people.

The presence of Spain at Sònar 2008 is very important, with a third of the music schedule presenting more than ninety artists including composers, DJs and producers.

At the centre of the festival there is also a tribute to the creative advertising communication on the . Internet, from the fake to the self- promotion through MySpace. Starting Among the famous artists there are from the coordinate image of Sònar Pan Sonic, Clark, Matmos, Goldfrapp, 2008, conceived at first as a series of Jeff Mills, M.I.A., Róisín Murphy, short amateur videos in which strange Soulwax, Chloé, Frankie Knuckles, genetic experiments are filmed, in a Hercules and Love Affair, and mysterious place, by mixing animals Kalabrese; among the most and talking human heads; the interesting groups there is the Spanish anonymous broadcast of the videos group Q’AA, who presents on YouTube and through a false psychedelic atmospheres with long website caused an incredible drones of guitar, bass and pedals, or response with hundreds of thousands aggressive pieces of noise and guitar of hits in few hours. saturations, accompanied by the disconnected rhythmics of the drums.

28 Cabo San Roque with their musica a Spectrum Orchestra, who plays and maquina usually perform in costume projects with terrific Sinclair. within improbable sets made up of toys, washing-machines, tracks for toy cars, aquariums and strange sound pieces, creating romantic sounds and borderline. They are very original and often indefinable during their concerts and they play unconventional, alcoholic, melodramatic and, at the same time, enjoyable music, which reminds us of the atmosphere of the circus and of . less known Pink Floyd. New sounds and approaches are Those who love improvised music will often the result of the fusion of try to listen to the Aixsònoéspànic, a different music genres and styles, like Spanish group consisting of electric it happens for the delicate, original clarinet, drums and samplers for the and bucolic influences of Jahbitat, for radical improvisation characterized by the vaguely glamour sound of avant-garde, free-jazz and Christopher D Ashley, who mix pop, psychedelic nuances. Coh – Ivan IDM and dark music, till Diplo’s sound Pavlov/Raster Noton – will give an pastiche , who mixes everything in full obsessive and very original live freedom and with irony. Among the performance on the frontier between showcases, Emily Records will present musique concrète and IDM, whereas Arbol, a Spanish producer of digital Iranian-English musician Lelia Arab sounds and organic rhythms, (that Bjork’s fans certainly already characterized by a minimal and know) will present her third refined approach, while Edbangers performance as a solo singer, which will confirm the French dance-rock will be early available on Warp style with Busy P, Krazy Baldhead, Nil Records. The string quintet Basquiat and Sebastian; Justice, instead, will Strings from London – violins, viola, perform in the larger spaces at Sònar cello and double bass – will present to de Noche. the Auditorium a hybrid of modal and classic harmonies, accompanied by Following a general trend of this solar jazz rhythmics. Electronic tendencies, year (from the conferences during the 8-bit music and music from the Cimatics festival in Brussels to the Eighties characterize the duo

29 most important issues of the Sonic Acts festival in Amsterdam, of which Digicult was media partner), also the exhibition area of Sonar (Sonarmatica, Sonar Cinema and Sonarama) will be devoted to a critical analysis of the development of contemporary audiovisual and multimedia culture, basing on the interactions and experiences of the cinema of last . century. Sonarama, the festival area in Santa As a matter of fact, Sonarmatica will Monica Art Centre, will explore the present the “Future Past Cinema” potentialities of light and sound as exhibition, which deals with the elements that are both cinematic and opportunities that the re-use of pre- synaesthetic. Light and Sound will cinematographic techniques in the present the audiovisual works of field of art and new media can offer. Edwin Van Der Heide, Mark Fell, Pablo This exhibition (which exhibits works Valbuena and the group Sonom. of Marnix De Nijs, Juliene Maire, Julian Oliver) will present a selection of Finally, as every year, the Auditorium installations and performances that of the CCCB will present, during the re-use some of the essential elements day, Sonarcinema, with audiovisual of the analogue cinema, such as creations ranging from video art to zoetropes and cinéoramas. On show experimental cinema, from music there are also some of the pioneer videos to animations, till fiction machines and devices for a view of documentary films. the nineteenth century, which are part of Tomàs Mallol’s collection. We from Digicult, as a media partner, will be there, so you will know more about the festival in the summer July/August issue of “Digimag” with a detailed report of the event.

www.sonar.es

30 31 Militant Art, Cultural Subversion

Marco Baravalle

used to generate exploitation, uncertainty and new kinds of alienation.

herefore, Claire Fontaine’s work introduces a new perspective of the (really serious) problem of political impasse in the field of contemporary art production, and it also introduces the theme of capital valorisation of cultural production and, most of all, of that subversive power that can be “Arbeit macht kapital”: this is what represented by the metropolis says the neon work by Claire Fontaine cognitive work. These political , at S.a.L.E.-Docks in Venice, a space problems promoted “Multiversity, or for the promotion of contemporary the Art of Subversion“, the event that art and cultural production. It was took place at S.a.L.E.-Docks between open last October and it is self- May 16th and May 18th. managed by a group of students and militants with a background in community centers.

Arbeit Macht Kapital (work makes capital) is the detournement by Claire Fontaine of the slogan placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. It is a detournement that invites us to reflect on the capital valorisation processes of cultural production and . creativity in this Post-Fordism era, that means a production model where The event can be seen as an languages, affections, relationships important stage of a project that is and, last but not least, creativity are not only an artistic exhibition project

32 because, on the contrary, it has a Obrist, Matteo Pasquinelli, Gigi militant nature in Venice, where the Roggero and Anna Daneri . But I field of cultural production is would like to talk especially about two becoming more and more important. speakers and their seminars, that underline the importance of a theme However, it is not a localist that is crucial to those who are perspective; indeed it underlines the interested in activism in the so-called fact that every kind of knowledge, “culture factory”. including the artistic one, must be used, in fighting situations, to take a The first one is Maurizio Lazzarato. He stand (as Michel Foucault said) and to is a Paris-based Italian philosopher be tested every day in the real world. who introduced an interesting vision of art practices as a governmental Thus, Multiversity is aimed at bringing tool. Going back to Félix Guattari, the discussion about art and cultural Lazzarato underlined the coexistence production to a militant context, of two dimensions in the artistic through the meeting of twenty context: molar and molecular. The speakers and a comparison among first one represents functions (work, different kinds of movement research artist, public), tools (festivals, and institutional points of view. museums, biennials) and assessment criteria. The second one represents The event was organized into three what Guattari defined as freedom seminar sessions: art and activism, art diversity, heterogeneity and and the market, art and multitude. subjectivity of every art practice.

But there is a problem: there isn’t a dialectical relation between the two dimensions, and the molecular part is constantly absorbed in the molar one, and so it is impossible to subvert art as institution.

In art, the molar and the molecular exist at the same time, without canceling each other out, and we can . find the same process in the Just to mention some of the speakers: valorisation of cultural production, Antonio Negri, Brian Holmes, where the subjectivity production Giovanna Zapperi, Osfa, Hans Ulrich diversity is absorbed and subsumed

33 into the culture industry that is a This subversive feature, according to means of promotion of intellectual Judith Revel, comes from the concept tourism and luxury business. of power by Michel Foucault, who claimed that power is always wielded on free movements (otherwise, we should talk of dominance).

.

Judith Revel, a sociologist of Centre

Foucault, started from where . Lazzarato stopped. Lazzarato decided to concentrate on the analysis of the Capital and, in this specific case, relation between capitalist apparatus cultural industry and art as institution and art production, while Judith Revel function as parasites of these free underlined how art can face, with movements, by eating them, by subjectivity, that apparatus. valorising them, but, at the same time, these freedom elements can be Judith Revel claimed that the seen as a representation of the huge contemporary capitalism is power conflicts with capital, that responsible for an equation of depends on them, always comes production and creation – i.e. after, able to reproduce, but not to valorisation of relationships, create, something. affections, languages and cooperation – and all this means that capital So, creation is the prerogative of men depends on what can’t be dominated and women, and it is denied to (even if it can be governed): capital. Art and politics share the subjectivity production, potential for being fields of experimenting, invention, human experimenting, (potentially capacity to create ontology, to subversive) invention of new spaces in produce new forms of existence that the urban context, of new kinds of can defeat and subvert power. subjectivity and of metropolitan

34 communities. .

Revel’s speech ends with a warning S.a.L.E.-Docks hopes that soon the (that S.a.L.E in Venice has already Multiversity debate can be read in understood) about the importance of some publications and, most of all, investigation into the social structure behind the reasons of uncontrollable of metropolitan Post-Fordism working large and small conflicts. class. According to Judith Revel, this investigation is not just a Post- working class desire; it is an important http://www.globalproject.info/art-16 part of a policy that wants to generate 007.html real conflicts, and not self-referential knowledge. http://sale-docks.org/gui/

35 We Are Not Alone – Part 2

Salvatore Iaconesi

selected characters; a software has been designed to allow the avatars to independently move through the virtual world and to interact with other avatars.

Second Kafka, Second Marx e Second Coco (5), with their thin aureole above their head to point out their existence as artificial zombies, freely stroll around Second Life, talking to other Having achieved presence, the curios – and often, upset/scared – research systematically proceeded avatars with a remix of their own through the study of identity, writings. The “Talker” leaves the following two directions: on one side abstract dimension to acquire an the inversion of the strategy designed autonomous life and its own identity, for “Talker” and “Talker Performance” using the memory and the and, on the other side, the creation of iconic/evocative power represented a totally virtual identity. Ex-novo. by these cult characters to a higher “Dead on SecondLife” inverts the level: a revisited version – and a totally process created for “Talker realistic one – of the constructs found Performance”. The direction changes: in William Gibson’s books. “Angel_f” body shifts towards virtual. (Autonomous Non Generative E- volitive Life Form) implements the The technological engine behind the complete digital being. “Talker” is used to bring famous, iconic, characters from the past back to life in Second Life’s virtual world. The texts (in their native languages) by Franz Kafka, Carl Marx e Coco Chanel have been gathered and loaded in the “Talker”’s linguistic engine; avatars have been designed to look as closely as possible to the

36 . family environment; Angel_f starts to act on its own and to define its own In “Dead on ScondLife”, history and context and relationships; identity are inferred through the ones of the iconic characters. In Angel_f • going to school; the Talker is used to the Talker assumes a completely create a blog structure through which independent life and identity. The 5 professors could load texts and personification process takes place articles, contributing to the education through the application of a strong of the child:The Talker_Mind (8). narrative line. The Talker is used to crate the identity of an artificial kid, Angel_f, initially evolving in his mother’s – the Biodoll (6) – website.

Life’s phases are completely mimicked and reproduced:

• the conceivement; Angel_F is the product of the loving relationship between the Biodoll and her lover

Derrick de Kerckhove; .

• the gestation; the life form evolves The identity grew stronger through in its mother’s website, feeding on her the a large use of aesthetics and interactions, eating the texts that she iconicity: the icon of Angel_F, the face offers it, and following visitors around of an indian child stolen on Flickr, is the internet as a spyware; used to create a logo applied to 2 production lines (the USB pen-drives • the birth; its first real-world and the Bangel (9), a line of open manifestation was the Bloki source chocolates built around the FreePrexxx (7), an experiment in design of the “Baci di Perugina”, generative publishing; replacing the romantic sentences with the sentences generated by the • the first explorations of the world Talker). The narrative structure grows through the context of its family in complexity: Angel_f starts relationships; Angel_f follows its interacting in the real world, mother around in her digital storms appearing as a relator in congresses around blogs, posting her messages; and conventions, and even ending up • the progressive separation from the in a case of international censorship. A

37 blog is created to keep the narrative contemporary. The use of a narrative line up to date (10) telling the stories approach is, possibly, the single factor of the young AI, in first person. that was able to efficiently communicate the concepts assessed The performance is in continuous by the research: these, formally, evolution, bringing young Angel_F to completely and realistically defined, participate to the Internet Governance are still far from the perception of the Forum in Rio de Janeiro, as the only general public. representative of the Digital Beings at the planetary discussion of the rights By “telling stories”, the message of Internet Users ( the IGF is an open becomes accessible and desirable. forum promoted by the United And this is a great lesson to be Nations to discuss such issues), and to learned by new media arts. This participate to public events on integrated approach to research and sexuality, family and digital arts. narrative, in this anti-dualistic and post-human perspective, is forming under the name of Virtual Neo- Realism, Neo Realismo Virtuale (NeRVi). And this will, possibly, be the story of an interesting subject to be told in a future article.

(5) www.artisopensource.net/dosl/

. (6) www.biodollsmouse.org/

Lately, Angel_F has been seen at the (7) www.bloki.tv/ Computer Art Congress (11), to tell its (8) Contribuiscono attualmente alla story to a delighted audience. Seen performance in qualità di progessori: the dynamic essence (life!) of this Derrick de Kerckhove, Carlo Formenti, research, we don’t like to draw Antonio Caronia, Massimo Canevacci conclusions. It is our wish to denote e Luigi Pagliarini the ways in which a research on our ( identity (and on the ones of the new www.artisopensource.net/talker_min forms of life) is an excellent research d/index.html ) platform on anthropology, culture, technology, politics. Truly (9) le due linee di prodotti sono

38 reperibili on line su HowTo shop a (10) www.beyourbrowser.com/ablog/ questo indirizzo www.artisopensource.net/ecom/ . (11) Città del Messico, 26-7-8 marzo 2008 ( http://europia.org/CAC2/ ).

39 Marc Garret & Ruth Catlow: Net Visions

Marco Mancuso

experiences. The Furtherfield project is obviously as crucial as other few on-line projects. And now we can talk about it at Digicult, and this discussion was really interesting…

Let’s talk again about Marc Garret and Ruth Catlow , two people that don’t need to be introduced in the context of networking and mailing list about new international media art. Marc

Garret and Ruth Catlow promoted . many on-line debates, through not only their channel, NetBehaviour , Marco Mancuso: When did you start many art networking projects, and the ten-year-old Furtherfield project? they’ve been working for ten years on Marc Garrett & Ruth Catlow: their project Furtherfield.org . They Furtherfield started at Backspace ( already wrote an important text of http://bak.spc.org ), an informal reflections and theories about art, cyber-lounge based on the Thames that was published on Digimag 33 – near London Bridge , that existed April 2008 . And they promised us to between 1996-1999 . We all shared the be interviewed; let’s see what they spirit of free-networking, answered. collaboration and a dynamic passion If you didn’t read the article, my for Indy media and peer oriented advice is to read it: now I don’t want exchange, which we ourselves still to digress too much. The text you’ll promote and explore to this day as read is a long description of their art Furtherfield. Backspace as a creative activities, their thought and their framework, inspired many individuals

40 and groups involved in Net Art, Media Internet and making an effort to Art and technologically orientated deeply understand the nature of new activism. types of connectivity, to observe the processes and behaviours of other Marco Mancuso: It seems that you artists and digital networks as well as think Internet is the ideal ground for the social contexts that have evolved. networking, collaboration and sharing. As an artist-run community, with a You think art is created on the basis of D.I.Y. attitude to networking dynamics. In this sense, technology it is a natural thing for us for many years you’ve been interested to share information and collaborate in arts for the Internet, such as Net with each other, bypassing many of Art. What can you tell me about all the more traditional cultural gate- this and which was your best keeping structures. In this way we experience with DIWO project? share an artistic impulse with movements such as Fluxus and Marc Garrett & Ruth Catlow: We have Situationism, as well as the D.I.Y been interested in artwork that is culture of early net art. specifically created for the net for a while now and deliberately make a concerted effort to review net art on Furtherfield all of the time, and will continue to do so in future. We have always been interested in those who are making work which does not fit into already accepted art frameworks and that which does not rely on and emerge from hegemonic culture. Net art is one those forms of creativity which finds its strongest expression . when it is connecting across differences of culture, background We see that collaborations offer a and specialization; especially when it sidestep from the cultivation of connects and activates artists and individual creativity. This is not to say audiences in new ways. It is an art that individual art forms are not form which is still being assessed by interesting or valid, but we found that the fine art world and its institutions. by breaking away from the restriction of ‘individual genius’, that exciting Many of Furtherfield’s projects have things begin to happen that transcend come from an experience of using the the singular ego and bring about a

41 wholesome and nourishing ethos of early Net Art, which used the experience with art. We feel that early Internet as an experimental many people can learn from artistic medium and distribution collaborating in all walks of life. Media system, as well reflecting upon art and Internet art is just one place activist culture. where such collaborations can occur. During February and March 2007, 90- In respect of your question about 100 people contributed, sending there DIWO. Our experience with the work to the list and remixing other’s project was very positive and other work. Participants worked across time groups from around the world have zones, geographical and cultural taken on the term themselves to distances with digital images, audio, reflect their own creative practice for text, code and software; they worked collaborative, collective or group to create streams of art-data, art- activities, which is a positive outcome surveillance, instructions and that we did not expect to happen. proposals, and in relay to produce threads. All the artists and We wanted to see whether people participants involved in DIWO were were really interested in taking part in also invited to co-curate the collaborating with each other. Not exhibition at Furtherfield’s HTTP only that we wanted to use the gallery. About 15 people participated Internet framework for engaging in in the co-curation of the exhibition. the making of art but also wanted to We invited people to come to the see if it could also materialize and be space and couple did. We also put up physical at the same time. So we a web cam so that he co-curators initiated the (DIWO) E-Mail-Art could share and have a choice in how project to “subscribers” of the the their own and their peers artworks NetBehaviour email list ( were to be presented in the space. www.netbehaviour.org ) and asked The way that the Internet curators the users if they were interested in communicated was via a chat room taking part in the project. About a facility called Gabbly. The exhibition hundred individuals took part. We also itself at the HTTP Gallery invited people from outside the list to ( join and collaborate on the project as http://www.http.uk.net/docs/exhib1 well. ‘Do It With Others (DIWO) E- 2/exhibitions12.shtml ) was a success Mail-Art’ ( with our local audiences. http://www.netbehaviour.org/DIWO. htm ) was playfully We also had a networking party ( developed from the Do-It-Yourself http://www.furtherfield.org/diwo_ne

42 tworking.php ) which worked quite ingredients towards a greater whole. naturally as an extension of the DIWO We are relational thinkers project. called ‘Don’t just Do It understanding everything as shifting Yourself (DIY) Do It With Others places in a scale free network with (DIWO)’ which was held at the space regard to how things connect with October 07. each other. We work with art, technology, social contexts and alternative forms of expression that exists on the edge and between different practices and cultures. We have always reflected upon our processes and this often becomes part of the art work.

We collaborate not just on our own projects but also with many other people. One good example is a rather . large project called NODE.London ( www.nodel.org ) which started out in Marco Mancuso: How do you work on 2006. A collaborative project that a project? Where your ideas come incorporated a festival, conferences from? And do you work with other and events involving any person who artists? You usually follow the artists, wanted be part of a media art activity so how was your experience with around London and beyond. them? And what about the feedback NODE.London was and is an from your on-line users? experiment in structures and tools of Marc Garrett & Ruth Catlow: Our cooperation as invented or adapted shared approaches consist of being by artists, activists and technologists, playful, messing with and challenging many (but not all) of whom are existing hierarchies and top down committed to ideas of social change behaviours. Finding ways around through their practice. It was a things creatively, this kind of thinking “season of media arts” throughout could be on par to March 2006; a distributed festival by a cultural hacking and using the same number of individuals and groups in mental skills. For us the world is our London , England . In March, there medium, not necessarily just the were around 150 media art projects technology. Technology for us is also organized in over 40 locations ranging a medium as one of a collection of from exhibitions, screenings installations, participatory events,

43 performance-based work, to other various projects and some have forms. become part of the organisation. One collaborator is artist/programmer Neil Marco Mancuso: One of your projects Jenkins, who worked with us as the is Visitors Studio. I love it, for the programmer and lead interface exchange of multi-media contents designer on VisitorsStudi . It started in that are remixed and recreated by 2003 and has already had a dynamic artists for their live performances. history online and is used by many Would you tell me something more different users from around the world. about this project, the live events and the communities’ feedback?

Marc Garrett & Ruth Catlow: The mail art projects of the 70s and 80s demonstrated Fluxus artists’ common disregard for the distinctions of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art, and a disdain for what they saw as the elitist gate-keeping of the ‘high’ art world. They often took the form of themed, ‘open calls’, in which all submissions were exhibited . and catalogued. Like mail art, VisitorsStudio It is simple and accessible facility (http://www.visitorsstudio.org) is using a web-based interface allowing concerned with open communication, users to upload, manipulate and between artists, sharing ideas and collage their own audio-visual files experiences from all over the world. with others’, to remix existing media And the communication is not just with their own files. It is an between artists, anyone can use the exploration of collective creativity for tool. both emergent and established artists from a diverse array of geographical It is a real-time, multi-user, online locations and social contexts. arena for creative ‘many to many’ Participants upload sound files and dialogue, interviews, networked still/moving images (jpg, png, mp3, performance and collaborative flv, swf) to a shared database, mixing polemic. Various artists, and responding to each other’s programmers, writers, curators, compositions in real-time. Individuals musicians have worked with can also chat with each other and are Furtherfield in collaborating on located in the interface by their own

44 dancing-cursors. Users are able to NY bars. schedule and promote their own networked performance programmes. Marco Mancuso: From a project like These can be recorded, archived, Furthertext.org to Furtherfield Blog. rated, downloaded and redistributed What is your experience with on-line as screen savers to users’ writing? How did it change in the last own desktops. VS has a large years? How is the blog phenomenon community of users who regularly use changing? And what could be its it, we also have events where people potential? How is the information collaborate and project their activities system and exchange changing?. on the studio at venues. Marc Garrett & Ruth Catlow: These There many examples of notable are interesting questions. In respect of artistic collaborations within the Furtherfield blog VisitorsStudio but one that might be (http://blog.furtherfield.org) we worth mentioning here is, the now wanted to create an online space for well known project that we those who practice in media art to collaborated on in 2004 called reflect upon their ideas without Dissention Convention feeling pressure of coming up with ( official, finished, polished or self- http://www.furtherfield.org/dissensio conscious or promotional texts. We nconvention). Visitorsstudio events realized that there were not many were projected at Postmasters places online where you could just Gallery’s RNC NODE, which served as relax and talk about everyday things a physical node of an ad-hock public as well the latest project that you broadcasting, a system of online, real were working on and the problems time protest performances and people experience around them. It is a alternative news actions. All online relaxed blog that is not trying to streams were also output in local bars impress anyone, it is a place where and projections from windows. you can explore vulnerabilities on your Coinciding with the Republican own terms, it is human. You get a Convention in New York , about 20 mixture of people on there such as international net artists and digital media artists, curators and others. artists broadcasted an art-polemic Collaborative writing on the Internet with a focus on how Bush and the US has been well appropriated by Republicans negatively influence Wikipedia to some degree. Although every locality around the world. This we feel that wikis in general have real-time multimedia protest jam was been an excellent facility for people to projected at RNC NODE and in local

45 work together, in collaborating in re- words and definitions to express and editiing their shared ideas. We declare what they do, their practice. collaborate ourselves when we write In early September 2004 we agreed a press releases, articles about name for the lexicon, and named it Furtherfield projects, which is fun and after Rosalind Franklin and launched it can be quite interesting and to the world to be influenced and challenging, because we question mutated and helped to maturity by all each other regularly. Email lists via who interact with it. We found that discussions are in a way going certain historians were claiming terms through the function or act of for themselves when those who were collaborating. There have also been practicing themselves could not relate some interesting takes and theories to the terms given to them. So we around collaborative text such as thought that it would be great to Florian Cramer‘s idea about free collaborate with others to claim software being collaborative text, territory on the labels and definitions which he discussed in Berlin in 2000. that relates to our own creative Then you’ve free software like Gobby culture. that is a free collaborative editor supporting multiple documents in one session and a multi-user chat. Where you collaborate on writing text in real-time.

I think that blogs potentially offer the choice and the facility for collaborative writing but it seems that many blogs are much more about individuals declaring their own voices rather than true collaboration. . Although, if we are thinking about Marco Mancuso: You’re also collaborative forms of distribution in interested in the Internet and free respect of openness with information, software. You curated a retrospective delicious seems to be a perfect about Andy Deck and you started the model. One project that we began a project nonTVTV as a reference to while back TVTV by Raindance Group in the 1970s was Rosalind ( in New York. So, how do you think the http://www.furtherfield.org/rosalind Web could be used by contemporary ), an upstart new media art lexicon. artists, in the era of Web 2.0, social Users feed Rosalind with their own

46 networks, blogs, vlogs and free ready to go. software? I think that one of the main positive Marc Garrett & Ruth Catlow: One things about Web 2.0, social networks project that we will be collaborating and blogs is, that everyday people are very soon on is called ‘The zero dollar connecting with each other locally laptop’, James Wallbank from Access through using blogs such as space( http://access-space.org ) Ning.com. I am part of a social came up with the idea first. We met networking blog which is part of a each other and thought that it would Ning network, we get together locally be great to work with each other on after contacting each other on the the project. The zero dollar laptop is blog. Lots of local issues are discussed powered with free, open source on their such as ecology, litter on the software. Users can get involved as streets or sharing information about deeply as they want – the software local farm food and collective bike packages available include easy to use rides. We also challenge the local graphical applications, more complex council on various issues which is very professional applications, and expert empowering for all concerned. level programming languages. Both of our spaces, their venue in Sheffield The proliferation of lateral, digital and our in London will set up centres connection mechanisms associated where people can come along and get with Web2.0 such as SMS, social a free Linux laptop and do workshops bookmarking and RSS, subjects the on how to use the software. Access contemporary networked human- Space uses recycled computers to being to a deluge of information and support a range of creative and expressive culture from all directions, learning activities. They depend on not just from on high or merely donated computers which they then authorized channels for information, restore to life using Free and Open- such as news and culture, but also Source Software. rising up through the grass roots. I think that it is essential that we take We are also setting up a project which on open source materials and ideas to is called ‘Eco Media Art X Change’. progress out of the typical, shallow This will be a 3 year project that and hegemonic frameworks that bind focuses on art and ecology, that will us all. We are more often these days include a kind of friendly activism that managing to incorporate much of allows anyone to be part of it. We are what we have learned from just working on this one, so will get networked culture into our every day back to you another time once it is all lives. We think that many of those

47 who have grown out of making work physical gallery context’? We did not on the Internet, or hacking and similar think that this was a problem at all. processes have an alternative We just did it, it is important to take perspective that can be extremely risks and explore how to make things effective when introduced into work as part of the learning process. physical environments. We also the value of creating a public space where people could meet face to face to experience the artwork and each other’s ideas. The other thing is, we wanted to highlight much of the excellent talent out there that was not being shown in the UK . We tend to always have something physical in the space as well as something which is networked. A good example is our recent exhibition called ‘Open Source Embroidery: Craft and Code’, . facilitated by Ele Carpenter Marco Mancuso: On of the main items ( in the digital art worlds is how to http://www.http.uk.net/exhibitions/O create a link between in the real world SE/index.shtml). This exhibition and the virtual one. In this terms, is explores the connections between the also important the item about how to collaborative characteristics of show the digital art pieces in the real needlework, craft and Open Source world spaces, mainly the ones of software. This project has brought galleries. Would you like to tell me together embroiderers, patch- how do you work on the project of workers, knitters, artists and HTTP gallery? computer programmers, to share their practice and make new work. Marc Garrett & Ruth Catlow: When we first set up the HTTP Gallery, some curators were saying ‘how can you www.furtherfield.org show virtual or Internet related art in a

48 All Rights Reserved. All Wrongs Reversed

Valentina Tanni

exponentially augmented the “reproducibility” of art, complicates more and more the situation, turning the opposition between “original” and “copy” into an impossible data to manage.

In the époque of contents sharing through the Net, in fact, we always find ourselves in a new condition of resources ubiquity, always disposable Being original is a vexata quaestio for in a million of versions all the art critics. Every art studious indistinguishable one to another: an knows that sooner or lather the army of multiples without an original. question will have to be faced, willy- nilly. And, in the majority of cases, the These are some of the theoretical points on which art studious lean on cues that inspires the P2P Art project, are predictable: Walter Benjamin, started by Anders Weberg (1968) in Jean Baudrillard, Rosalind Krauss and 2006 and still running. The Swedish so on artist subdue his works to the same mechanisms of distribution and The territory is slippery and even too fruition (some would call it piracy) of huge: it is possible to create space- commercial movies or music shared time flight, combine philosophical online through P2P nets nowadays. concepts and market analysis, Videos are uploaded and shared, produce conceptual escalations that while original files are deleted forever. points right to the dissolution of the Therefore the work starts its new, art concept itself. This is the autonomous life, surfing the Net importance of the idea of “originality” without any control, in a compressed for a work (that is sometime also low-resolution version. And this related to “origin” and “originality”). means it can also estinguish . The technological development, who

49 always interested in the work process but the finished work is of no value. I just move on to the next thing. So this project is perfect for me.

.

Valentina Tanni: How did you come up with the idea of creating video works distributed only on peer-to peer networks? .

Anders Weberg: For me this has been Valentina Tanni: The project is a clear a slow process growing on me and is a statement about the changing nature result of a couple of observations. of the work of art in the digital era. Is I’ve been online since -92 and the concept of “original” really followed the transformation to where obsolete? we are today where the boundaries between online/offline is blurred and Anders Weberg: I think the “precious” I’m always curious on how new original always will have a place in a technologies are used by the public lot of people hearts but today most of and how that can be transformed into us treat all kinds of media very my own work. ephemeral without that much care about the precious original when Valentina Tanni: In the website you everything is available and free online. talk about “aesthetics of Is there a value in an exact replica as a ephemerality”. Can you explain us this digital copy versus the original? concept a little further? Valentina Tanni: Do you actually Anders Weberg: It’s a way to destroy the original files once they acknowledge the beauty of work that have been shared and downloaded by is existing only briefly. This has been someone else? done many times before in the art world using different media and Anders Weberg: Actually the original methods. For me personally I’m is deleted before uploading and

50 sharing the copy. That since the file is feedback you’re getting. Are you a rendered avi file in the same monitoring the spreading of your files compression (Xvid) most films on the through the networks? p2p networks is distributed as. After that rendering is done all the original Anders Weberg: Since I uploaded the files including raw material, project first work in September 2006 I’ve met files and so on are deleted without a lot of different responses to it. The any delay. So even if I would like a most amazing event that really copy of my own that’s all I can explains how small this world really is download .. a low res digital copy. was then a friend of mines neighbour had some British friends visiting and they where having a few beers in the garden and the neighbour told them about a crazy project with someone making a film and then deleting it .. my friend overheard the conversation and repsponded that – it’s my friend doing that and he is Swedish and lives in this town. There is no way to monitor the spread of the files. The only thing I can see is if the file is alive . and still existing or not. To be honest .. this project has failed since all 3 Valentina Tanni: Do you mean to be released films are still alive. But there critic about the art market, or is it just is still no original. a “side effect”?

Anders Weberg: It’s a comment and not any critic. www.p2p-art.com/

Valentina Tanni: Tell us a bit about the www.andersweberg.com/

51 Degradarte @ Lpm 2008

Salvatore Iaconesi

proposes the characterization as a meeting with, and not just as a mere performative event, is possibly the only black mark we could notice during our (beautiful and satisfactory) stay at the Mattatoio. The incredible number of participants, almost 250 artists from all over the world, and the consequent need to carefully organise the sequence of performances, were the partially disorienting element for 28th May 2008. On the eve of the fifth both performers and public. The edition of LPM (Live Performers former, at times, were forced to Meeting) , the beautiful pavilion of the present their performances in very former Mattatoio (Slaughterhouse) in short periods of time. The latter were the district Testaccio in Rome, is a bit lost in the attempt to follow the invaded by trolleys, cables, various performances. equipment, people quickly moving from side to side with tools and things On the other hand, the essence and to do, people that, arrived one day in quality of LPM, and the technical and advance, chat and laugh, meeting or organizational preparation of the staff meeting again, looking forward to the contributed pretty well to the creation days of the meeting. of a positive and fascinating experience, which helped forgive LPM is a meeting, a converging point these little imperfections. for experiences and productions of hundreds of visual artists and VJs, who have in common their participation to the international community built around FLxER, an Open Source software for VJing, and live audio and video performances, produced by Flyer Communication. The effectiveness which LPM

52 . audiovisual performances; from late evening to early morning, the club But let’s analyse the course of the setting, with VJ and DJ sets organised meeting: 900 square metres, three to give life to final dancing sessions. full-equipped central consoles, a score of big screens, an area for easily The first day, dedicated to the theme working with computers, an open-air of digital freedoms was characterised exhibition space. LPM ‘s programme by a talk on Degradarte. Visiting developed over 4 days, each one guests: Guido Vetere, Luigi Pagliarini, characterised by a central theme: Luisa Capelli, Gennaro Francione, Digital Freedoms, 8bit and Guido Scorza and Marco Scialdone, Electropop, Carlo Formenti and Massimo Breakbeat/Techno/Electro, Visual Canevacci, debating on the Genders. Each day was divided into philosophical and practical three parts: in the early afternoon, consequences of the “surreal” rule on workshops, conferences and debates; the free use of copyrighted works for later on in the afternoon, and till cultural, didactic and scientific evening, the most conceptual purposes.

53 modified controllers were interesting and amusing. Friday afternoon, dedicated to 8bit, was reserved for workshops on different VJing softwares, from FLxER to Modul8.

In the afternoon, the deconstructed and generative abstract was the focus of EtichettaDiscografica’s performance. VisualLab’s analysis of

. intimate and poetically powerful urban fiction gave rise to an electric Then, in the nonstop flow of atmosphere when introducing performances alternating on the two Pintaycolorea’s contribution, main stages, we noticed the aesthetic accompanied by isocore’s music: features of LaBa’s and Ale Marzo’s expressionism spiced up with trash productions, and of Nangyor’s, and videogame elements, a fully characterised by a wise involvement successful performance both of body in audiovisual performances aesthetically and from the point of and a smart use of setting. We want view of iconographic choices. to point out the good performance of Defetto’s who, interpreting the geometrical tendencies in some renowned audiovisual products of the last few years (one for all, the Ganz Graf video, produced by Alex Rutterford for Autechre), offers a version characterised by an effective use of colour and interesting sound combinations. Following the tendency for the use of footage (shooting clips, both autonomously produced and . recycled from other products or Aude Rose’s retro aesthetics, mixed discarded video materials), the with Emotype’s surreal beats, were beautiful productions of very beautiful. Saturday was NellaTestaGomma’s and Vjazz’s, dedicated to BreakBeat, Techno and MoriShuz’s use of dynamic Electro sonorities and opened with a perspectives, EnjoyVideo’s urban and significant emotional impact, thanks post-industrial visions. Servando’s

54 to PharmaKarma and the powerful elements, typography and video clips. performative analysis of medicine fascination and contemporary UpDate’s audio/video pharmaceutical culture: prescriptions, constitutes a perfect crescendo x-rays and drugs become expressive towards the evening performances. means. Urban landscapes and a broad Sunday, dedicated to the use of footage for VisualGenders theme in collaboration TheBrandyAlexanderproject. Yroyto’s with Phagoff, was characterised by aesthetic and conceptual contribution different focuses of attention: sound is very effective, ranging from reactive LED sculptures by Fabio Di Asteroids -style vector graphics to Salvo, the excellent De-Former, minimal geometrical compositions Infidel’s beautiful and elaborate used to create interesting narrative degraded/degrading inspirations, landscapes. Lab9′s vintage taste, with Polivisini’s intense ( their Caro “hello” , bring a smile back ), the distorted cartoon-style on audience faces, by charmingly narratives by SuperNormals/Action30 mixing Carosello’s animated and Strap-on-Dildos’ social analysis of characters with vector graphics visual fetish and sexual practices.

Drum’nBass

Ero/Sono I was/I am

55 space at DegrADaRTE EXP”, which became a real visual “attracter” for us and an interaction platform for the public. A totem with two 14-inch screens, made of recycled materials and installed on an iron structure, projected all the works in sequence. The lively totem, with a taste and aesthetics that you could find on a Pakistani truck, served as the . entrance to the interactive installation Degradazione per sovrapposizione di All nights at the meeting were filled corpi (Degradation through bodies’ with the stream of more dance-floo- superimposition ): the concepts of -oriented performances and with a remix-culture are exposed and quite choreographic VJClash; the only interpreted thanks to a broom which black mark was the difficulty in the public can use to remix 300 years identifying the author of the different of art history with a physical and audio and video components that almost domestic interaction modality. powerfully pervaded the space. We noticed aesthetic, conceptual and, This clear form of invitation to above all, visceral and sensory interest interaction and communication peaks in the beautiful aesthetics of allowed the audience – often reduced JessicaIncertiTelani’s performance, in to mere passive observer – to lose LanVideoSource’s interesting their usual inhibitions that, thanks to geometries, in DoctorGonzo’s set the possibility to use the body and to dynamics, in n-is’s use of layers, in VJ be creative through familiar objects, Tintin’s organo-hybrid sceneries, in were in all cases disposed to open and paconazim’s distorted views of direct communication. Besides, they normality, in RedNikita’s fetishes, in were a curious audience well- the narratives emerging from Gabb disposed towards the chance to learn Line’s collages. and know new concepts and new realities, open to information and to Our point of view on the LPM was a the dissemination of knowledge, and really privileged one. We intensively willing to have in-depth analysis and lived the four days of the meeting information sources at their disposal. thanks to the permanent installation

56 door events, to supervise the creation of settings in order to create actual public access to culture, art and information. In Rome , we recently had “dissonant” experiences, in this sense. LPM was, in this and other ways, a very pleasant surprise.

. www.degradarte.org/

It is a sign of the growing attention to www.flxer.net/abusers/?id_perf=577 the field of new media and to the &u=16227 main themes connected with it (not www.artisopensource.net/Degradazi least, the free dissemination of onePerSovrapposizioneDiCorpi/ culture, knowledge, and open and equal approaches to urban, social and www.liveperformersmeeting.net/ anthropological realities). On the www.flxer.net/ other side, it is a symptom of the necessity, for the organizers of open- www.flyer.it/

57 A Show On Friendship

Massimo Schiavoni

on ourselves or the other.

Their new show Obwohl ich Dich kenne (Although I know you – Smart friends and better halves) , that opened in Hamburg on the last 6 th of March, will be presented again on the 28 th and 29 th of June at the Inteatro Festival in Polverigi, on the 4 th and 5 th of July at the Festival de Marseille , and then will go back to the Nico and the Navigators are back to Radialsystem in its native Berlin Italy as absolute protagonists of that where it will stage from the 8 th to the Image Theatre able to win spaces of 11 th of October. thought, with reflexions born from the same social drama analysis already examined by Victor Turner in the essay Performance in Postmodern Culture and able to show the public a creative approach half-way between improvisation, and absurd and maniacal rituals.

These are the crisis points that Nico is able to extrapolate and reintegrate, and change a condition where a . readjustment of the whole dramatic scheme is needed, so as to point out Nico and the Navigators was founded peculiarities already known by Charles in 1998 by artistic director Nicola Hockett and Goffman, although with Hümpel and set designer Oliver ever-curious irony and everyday life: Proske and immediately praised by artistically constructed pantomimes, the critics. Up until today, the word games, puns, alienating bizarre productions Lucky Days, Fremder! rituals proper of our manifestations, (1999), Eggs on Earth (2000), Lilli in

58 Putgarden (2001), Der Familienrat struggle in order to wake and keep (2002), Kain, Wenn & Aber (2003) and alive the interest of the other. HELden & KleinMUT (2004) have been on worldwide tours. In August 2006, You and me among the others. You Nico and the Navigators started are my ambiguous friend in my collaborating with the Austrian music struggle against third parties. I need band Franui, creating together the you on the right level for a proper task grand production Wo du nich bist and I chose you since you already had (Where you are not) . Franui’s the illness I have now la amo a te composer Andreas Schett and Nicola because the people you like lose the Hümpel are already preparing scepticism about me and lovely speak Anaesthesia , a new musical show about me behind my back. Let them opening in 2009 on the occasion of pardon me your absence for death I the 250 th anniversary of the death of will think of you as my smart enemy G.F. Händels, co-produced with until your final days; because I have Bregenzer Festspiele, the Grand the feeling that we want the very Théâtre Louxembourg and the same that we don’t know. Going alone Händelfestpiele in Halle . is the replaceable – just as you mean it ” (excerpt from dramaturgic text). What happens when individuals fighting together for the same reason end up fighting each other? Does friendship feed on common actions? What if there are no common actions? Which rules do partners follow while playing with one another? And what is their aim? Friendliness without love hides hypocrisy? Are you more at ease with a smart enemy or a dumb friend? And who is going to be impressed on . your mind? On impulse and with a glance on little catastrophes, in As for the dramaturgy, the ensemble Although I know you , Nico and the made use of diverse materials, even Navigators get out the complex world the letters exchanged between of friendly plots and forced renowned couples of friends, such as relationships, plunging in the deepest Goethe and Schiller, Wagner and wounds of our times. In a dialogue Nietzsche, Hermann Hesse and marked by a violin and a keyboard, Thomas Mann. Quotations appear as the characters lavish an unfair

59 monoliths intermingled with linguistic excerpt from dramaturgic text). bewilderment and text improvisation and accompanied by controversial definitions and observations on friendship from different ages, up until our globalised XXI century. “To like and dislike the same things, that is indeed true friendship”, wrote Sallust in 50 BC. Aristotle thinks Friendship is an essential element for the creation of a working society and he places it . above Justice: the State should show The performance has its own more regard for friendship. How are diachronic structure, where is we to achieve friendship in a society highlighted that psychological always on the go? Is it the traditional essence in which all units (actors) interpretation of the concept itself – have their own entity and cognitive taking the shape of constant mapping that can allow a better affection, trust and mutual knowledge of the self and the appreciation – that in our moving, consumer. Here, society is almost fluid, age has declined or is it fragmented in reflections, with their more and more infrequent to find true genres, uncertainties, inconsistencies friendship (Schopenauer)? Doesn’t and naturalness. Thus, we play with Earth look so wide, as when you have one another, we fill places, we play a distant friendship (Gustaf roles until wearing and taking off Gruendgens)? standardized masks. “Thus, the strength of social drama comes from We are two ships, each with its aim it being an experience or sequence of and course, we can meet and experiences that affect the form and celebrate together, as we have function of performative cultural done and then the brave ships rest genres in a meaningful way.” (V. silently in a harbour, under a sun Turner, willing to shine, as if they had reached ). their appointed task and have had a Anthropology of Performance task. But then, the almighty violence once more divided our task, in different seas and sun beams and maybe we will never meet again. (Friederich Nietzsche, on his friendship with Richard Wagner –

60 Confini Ttv

Silvia Scaravaggi

and human contexts.

The places carefully chosen for the festival are different from each other to show the different aspects of the city: an old holiday camp, the rooms of Lodi Fè and Franceschi villas, school rooms, the posh rooms of Hotel Sixty and the Palace of Tourism. The festival events will take place in these significant locations in the whole city Digicult is a media partner of the 19 th of Riccione, creating new sensations edition of Riccione TTV Festival , the and reflections. biennial event of theatre, visual arts and new media, running from June 12 th to June 15 th in Riccione, with unusual and significant locations in the city.

TTV is a unique and world-famous event in Italy, with a twenty-year-old tradition, that since 1985 – when it was created, under the direction of Franco Quadri – stood out for its concern about research and experimenting in . the context of hybrids of theatre, visual arts, videos and television. In To be more precise, in this new the new festival edition, ” Confini “, edition of Riccione TTV there will be: what stands out is the interest in video and photography retrospectives experimenting, different kinds of about Teatro della Valdoca and languages and innovative and Theatre Du Radeau ; Motus , with a heterogeneous works, that are not special section called “Ai margini di new but contemporary, able to Motus”; Nico Vascellari ‘s analyze the different realities of art performances, with a project that was

61 specifically created for TTV; Billy Cowi is like an athlete whose diet is poor: e with his dance and videos and a this is caused by politics, by those special section about Belgium with councillors who don’t know what are Meg Stuart, Antonin De Bemels, their roles and don’t know what is the Thierry De Mey, Karen Vanderborght, difference between managing and Alain Platel e Wim Vandekeybus ; being art director. This year 10,000 video and theatre works by euros have been cut out and two Zapruderfilmakersgroup, Silvia years ago 20,000 euros were cut out, Bottiroli, Carloni & Franceschetti ; to finance entertainment projects in young Italian pathosformel artists; Rimini, but I think this money was television celebrities such as Daniele taken away directly from the young Luttazzi, Enrico Vaime, Franza Di Italian artists. Rosa, Carlo Freccero ; and finally Edouard Levé ‘s photography, an important artist at Riccione TTV with a special exhibition in the rooms of Villa Franceschi, running from May 31 st 2008. o better understand the choices for the new edition, I interviewed the creators of Riccione TTV 2008: Fabio Bruschi, director of Riccione Teatro and curator of the festival since 1995, . and Andrea Nanni , the new art Silvia Scaravaggi: Let’s talk about this director of TTV since 2008. edition, “Confini”. What are the Silvia Scaravaggi: Fabio, how is the themes you chose for it? physical and mental condition of TTV Fabio Bruschi: One of the most in its 19 th edition? important themes are obviously the Fabio Bruschi: Its physical condition is generational differences: Teatro della fine, but its mental condition is great. Valdoca, Levé’s exhibition, Guido TTV has constantly been working for Guidi’s photography together with the 25 years, thanks to the production of 1990s generation representatives, Riccione Teatro. We could choose such as Motus, and the latest who we wanted and, for this reason, generations such as pathosformel our staff, leaded by Elisabetta Ceconi artists with two installations like “La and Antonella Bacchini , is enviable. It timidezza che nasce delle ossa”, that

62 was part of their degree thesis at its works. IUAV. And it’s the same for Belgian part of the festival, with three Moreover a new element is the focus different generations: Thierry De Mey, on a European country, Belgium. TTV 45 years old, who works with the best has always been interested in dance; artists of Belgium; Antonin De Bemels, so we thought it was essential to take 30 years old; and the youngest artists into consideration Belgium, a sort of such as Karen Vanderborght. dance heaven, where institutions helped this kind of activity. Another important theme is the geographical dimension of the title and of the most significant project, “Al margine di Motus”: a borderline between Riccione and Rimini, a geographical and temporal border. In these Marano places, far from the tourist areas, the ill children were isolated. It is also a temporal border, a reflection about architecture ruins: these buildings, once used by . children, were abandoned for decades and used by tramps, rock bands, and Silvia Scaravaggi: In all these years, now they’re becoming wellness which elements made TTV so unique, centres or posh hotels and which elements are always the same and which new, that make the Andrea Nanni: Another essential festival so close to the contemporary theme is the documentary video. In scene? this edition we’re going to present some important retrospectives and Fabio Bruschi: TTV is not an innovative anthological exhibitions. The festival, it is a festival that selects retrospective, with a photo exhibition, contemporary art and chooses the about Theatre Du Radeau is a perfect most significant examples. One of the chance to get to know one of the traditional elements of TTV is the most famous group in Europe, interest, since 1985, in television. because its work is like a constant There is a lot of snobbish festivals, research and there’s no need to show especially in Italy, where television is an old work when there are new ones. seen as a dead dog; generalist This company has no repertory, and television isn’t fashionable, but it for the first time it is possible to see all exists and since 1982 it influences the

63 political life of the sixth economic Premio Tondelli. This year in the country in the world, and it changed under-35 section a videomaker will be the aspect of generations. awarded for his video-theatre production, to make a video inspired This year there will be tv celebrities by the winner work of Premio such as Daniele Luttazzi , awarded for Tondelli . Decameron , Franza di Rosa – who, together with Serena Dandini, invented a new kind of smart entertainment like ” La tv delle ragazze ” –, and Enrico Vaime , who in 1963, when Premio Riccione event was organized by Teatro Stabile in Bologna, won Nettuno d’Oro prize. Vaime was very clear: people takes what you give them…There will be Carlo Freccero , who said that “generalist television is the only . television”, it is a public space, a sort Silvia Scaravaggi: In Italy, which of of common. your partners have been and are the Andrea Nanni: In the program of this most significant? edition there are three innovative Fabio Bruschi: TTV is an anti-fascist elements. First of all, our interest in festival. It means that we pay young artists, thanks to the support of attention to everything is vital. TTV is POGAS, the Ministry for young and a son of Premio Riccione, that in 1947 sport policies; the innovation is in was won by Italo Calvino , when he Concorso Italia , a videomaker was 24; in 1985 Pier Vittorio Tondelli competition, divided in two was awarded and he promoted young categories, under-35 and over-35, artists. My festival policy has always with a production award for the been anti-innovative, but we are section of Nuovi Talenti , that offers always interested in original, the possibility to produce a work for contemporary and up-and-coming the 2010 edition. And finally, the third arts. We have particular relationships innovative element is our attempt to with some companies, such as Motus, create a strong connection between Zapruderfilmakersgroup, Carloni & the two sections of Riccione Teatro Franceschetti, Societas Raffaello TTV and the new dramatic art through Sanzio Premio Riccione per il Teatro and

64 We also work in London, through bands were invited – Octave, Nastro relationships with the Art Council, Mortal, Kam Kassah, Olivetty – that artists, producers, BBC and Channel each night will perform by Four… manipulating the performance sounds. In Emilia Romagna, a polycentric reality, we’ve always had relationships with the city of Bologna, TPO , Zimmer Frei , Link and Anna de Manincor. It is a complete network: from the community center to the university…

Silvia Scaravaggi: I think there are few Italian and creditable festivals that promote young Italian artists. This year you’re going to present two . installations by pathosformel, really important at Premio Scenario 2008. ” Conversazioni ” is an amazing I’d like to talk about the projects of project: five video-conversations with the TTV young Italian artists: Nico the winners of Premio Tondelli past Vascellari’s special event, editions – Mimmo Borelli, Davide Enia, “Conversazioni” by Stefano Massini, Fausto Paradivino, Zapruderfilmakersgroup and Silvia Letizia Russo – in Hotel Sixty, where Bottiroli, set in five hotel rooms with each room is decorated by different the five winners of Premio Tondelli… artists. In this edition the work won’t be presented through videos, but Andrea Nanni: I was really impressed public will enter the decorated rooms by ” Revenge ” by Nico Vascellari, a and will have the possibility to listen sound performance at Venice to the conversations in the next Biennial, with a wall of speakers, and rooms through speakers. The event he interacted with the different will be running from 4 p.m. on June 13 sounds. When I called him, the first th to 4 p.m. on June 14 th , no matter idea was to present just the video, like what time. On June 14 th , in the a video-installation. The images would rooms of Villa Lodi Fé, the whole be projected on a burned wood table project – video and sound – will be of four per three meters. But presented. Vascellari also decided to build a sort of path in the larger festival path: four

65 www.riccioneteatro.it/ttv

66 The Wonderful Ideas Of Theodore Watson

Marco Mancuso

potentialities of the machine code.

The “case” of Theodore Watson, let me say, is a little bit different. I think you could use the word “ingenuous”, if it’s true as it is that lots of his code has been used and brought to the big public by international well-known artists. So, when behind the planetary success of Laser Tag inside Graffiti Research Lab ( hosted on Digimag 30 Theodore Watson is the classical man last December 2007/January 2008) in the shadow. The genie of the lamp, there are codes and generative the one who turns the impossible into interfaces born by studies and possible, that transforms an idea into researches of Theodore for its last reality. No matter how hard or project “Generative Graffiti”, we do ambitious it is. not count international projects developed by artists using his Because of my character, because I’m openFrameworks anymore. People fascinated, I’m always shocked by such as United Visual Artists or Golan those kinds of people: great Levin used his creative open source technique, enormous ability in code library to simplify C++ language, writing, genial ideas among created together with another interaction design and generative art, unrecognized genius such as Zach complex systems for simple Lieberman. interactions, often funny, surely effective. There must be obviously a Moreover, don’t forget the success of reason why they’re not so well known. the exhibition “The science of Sleep” Maybe they’ve a lack in the that accompanied the launch of the conceptual point of view; maybe homonymous film by Michael Gondry. they’re hard to classify both in the It’s been hosted a couple of week in design and art world that barely Milan as well, inside Costume recognize hybrids and ambiguous Nationale spaces. The success of the languages dictated by the movie has been conditioned in such a

67 way by Theodore Watson‘s interactive this integration?. and funny creations and by his software. Theodore Watson: I think the reason I divide my projects as such is because I think I don’t feel comfortable with them being in either category. I think the work I do is often not practical enough to be considered straight design. At the same time I am not beginning these projects from a highly conceptual starting point, they start much more often as ideas like “wouldn’t it be cool if I could do ….”. Then it is a matter of . making it and adjusting the design as you are developing it. I definitely But this is Theodore, maybe even think it is important to have a good better. Maybe his point of view idea to start from but I also place a lot doesn’t talk about ingenuousness. of importance on adjusting your Maybe it is the choice that always design based on feedback you get as keeps faith to the open source ethic. you are making it. I feel that artists Always share useful code, even when who only work with concept and have someone could use its primordial someone else produce their work end spark. Because someone can up with work that is very inflexible. It ameliorate your work, share it, use it. is exactly like their original concept We could debate on this for a long but they miss an opportunity to bring time, but this is not the right space to more life into their work by not being do it. It is better to let Theodore talk, involved in the act of making it. trying to give you the best critic on a splendid artist work.

Marco Mancuso: Looking at your activity, you divide your projects in “artistic” and “design”. I’m interested in work of designers like you. You have an attitude in creating works that can be accepted by both worlds (do you know the Italians Limiteazero?). How do you perceive

68 . how I can make it work. This is the moment you switch over to your Marco Mancuso: Which are the practical half. The first thing in this technologies and software you phase is to break down the project normally use? I mean, how do you into a series of problems that need to follow a new idea, where was it born be solved. Like how to I track a person and how do you develop it and also know the way they are technically? facing? How can I distinguish the laser from the rest of the image? Theodore Watson: Once I have the idea I try and sketch it out on paper to get a sense of how it would look. For most projects I usually have a wish list of things I would like to be able to have working. A lot of them are quite ‘out there’ so not everything makes it into the final design. I think it is good to really go crazy in this stage of the process and not worry too much about practical issues like whether it is feasible, within your budget etc. . This is especially important if you are both the person designing the It is worthwhile to spend time doing concept and also the person building research, looking into other work that and programming it. It really helps to might be similar and how they have think about these two roles as two solved the same issues that you might separate people, so when you are be facing. I usually program in C++ doing conceptual development you which is very powerful but can be don’t think how hard you making quite slow as you can end up writing a things for yourself when you have to lot of code. It is good to spend some program it. The programmer in you extra time in the research phase to will want to make things simple and really pick the best way to tackle your will tell you to make the ideas less problems as you don’t want to waste complicated. It is very important that time heading off in one direction to you don’t listen to the programmer (in later find that it was not the best you) at this stage! approach.

Once I have hammered out the Often I build small tests that deal with concept, interaction etc I then look at just the individual problems. Then

69 once I am confident they are the best I’d like to know how your approach I put them all together into collaboration got started and what do the final software. you think about the invitation from Moma of New York the same month. The last stage is the most important as it is when you install the work in Theodore Watson: I had already the actual space. This is the time the worked with James and Evan project is in the actual context that it (GraffitiResearchLab) before when I will be seen in and so it is when the was at Eyebeam, I had made the theory of how your imagine it would Generative Graffiti project and we work can really get tested to see if it were always bouncing ideas around. works in practice. As this point you We first discussed the Laser Tag are also testing the interaction, fine project after I had left New York and tuning parameters to get the behavior had moved to Amsterdam. The Atelier and response just right. A lot of time Rijksbouwmeesterin the Netherlands in shows/festivals there are a lot of had contacted GRL and offered them other people setting up, lighting a grant to produce some work in crews etc so the best time to work is Rotterdam. Evan and James came at night when you are the only one in over and we discussed some ideas of the space. possible things to do. One of the ideas was based around using a Laser Pointer to write graffiti on a building. Evan had done some tests on a small scale at his house and it worked pretty well but we had no idea if it would work on a building that was 80m high and 40m wide. So for a month I set about researching the hardware, developing the software, trying to solve as many problems ahead of time as possible. When Evan . and James arrived in Rotterdam with Marco Mancuso: I’d like to talk about the projectors it was the first moment the code you wrote for Laser Tag of where we could actually see if it was Graffiti Research Lab. We interviewed going to work. After setting the them for Digimag and I had the cameras and projectors up we tested opportunity to invite them personally it and it worked almost perfectly. It at Enzimi in Rome in December 2007. was a real shock and also a relief because up until that point it was

70 completely theoretical. Over the next an improved interface and can even few days we tested it with graffiti send the tracking data over the writers and made improvements to internet to be visualized by other the software based on their feedback. applications (Flash, Processing, Features like dripping paint and bevel Max/Msp etc). tip brushes were a direct result of their feedback. When we do run Laser Tag we like to do it outside as it is really meant to be Since those cold nights in Rotterdam a tool for the urban space. The reason last year, Laser Tag has been shown all we agreed to do it indoors at MoMA over the world including, Mexico, was because we thought that if we Hong Kong, Italy, Australia, Taipei, could invite some of New York’s most Switerland, Austria, London, Sweden, wanted graffiti writers, next time they Spain, New York, Canada…. Also with are standing before a judge trying to some time now to work on the project defend their graffiti as art they can say I could put out a 2.0 version which is that they have been shown in the Mac, Windows and also recently Linux MoMA which should add a lot of compatible. It has new brush styles, weight to their defense.

71 window, mouse and keyboard input and a collection of very useful code. So for example instead of having to write 90 lines of code to load and play a movie file you write two lines. This leads you to spend more time on writing the creative parts of your application and makes it a very quick system for developing new projects in. openFrameworks is also cross . platform so you don’t have to change anything in your code in order to turn Marco Mancuso: You worked with it into a Windows application, a Mac Open Frameworks libraries both for application or a Linux application. Laser Tag and Generative Graffiti. Did you directly work on this project of openFrameworks is closest to the library together with Zach Processing in terms of how you Lieberman? Could you tell me program and we took a lot of something about the principal inspiration from Processing. Where it functions of this tool and which are made sense to, we tried to keep the the differences with other generative the API the same – so what is tools such as Processing or VVVV? beginShape(); in Processing is ofBeginShape(); in openFrameworks. Theodore Watson: openFrameworks is A lot of the people using what I primarily use for my work. It is openFrameworks have come from a a C++ library that I have been Processing background so this makes developing alongside Zachary it easier for people to go back and Lieberman. The idea with forth between the two. The main openFrameworks was to provide a advantage to openFrameworks over collection of useful code for making Processing is really to do with the creative applications. As artists programming language it is using. ourselves we wanted to develop openFrameworks being C++ can run a better tools so that we could make great deal faster especially when it better work. comes to intensive applications that C++ is a very powerful and flexible have to process a lot of data. This language but it can be quite difficult gives openFrameworks a big to get started. We created an advantage in areas like signal environment that provides you with a processing and computer vision. Another big difference is that we

72 provide the source code of groups/people in the world in being openFrameworks uncompiled inside active with the technologies inside your project. So you can always look their urban landscapes. How do you at the code for say loading a movie, connect with the international open see how it works and change it if you source scene and which one is your need it to work in a different way. approach to free software and technologies in general? Even though openFrameworks is still in private beta there are more than Theodore Watson: Eyebeam definitely 3000 people worldwide using it for had a big impact on the way I looked their projects. Already we have seen at open source. The Eyebeam large scale installations being made openLab which is where the with it from people like GraffitiResearchLab came out of had a UnitedVisualArtists, Jonathan Harris, requirement for the people Chris O’Shea and Golan Levin. participating in the program that all openFrameworks will soon be projects made their had to be open released to the public and we are very source. At that point I had been keen excited to see what new things on open source but only really in the people will make and how OF will sense of sharing useful code. I had grow. written a video capture library for windows over the Christmas break which must have taken weeks to develop and there was no question that I would release it open source. But now there was this idea that the creative code you wrote should be shared too and that was a bit more of a challenge for me to feel comfortable with. I remember after Generative Graffiti Evan was pushing me to release the source and I was . hesitant, not so much because I didn’t Marco Mancuso: The code you use want people to copy my code but and the technology used for Laser Tag actually because I was ashamed at are completely free, open source and how messy it was. But as Evan put it, publicized only on the Net. You “messy code is better than no code”. collaborated with Eyebeam in New So that was the end of that. York . Your ideas inspired many In terms of open source we are not

73 hardcore GPL or license nerds, we just wanted to have some of the elements put the code out there and let people be interactive to help immerse the use it. For Laser Tag the only person into the space and the world restriction was that it couldn’t be used of the film. for advertising, marketing or promotion and we are very tough I remember when Michel Gondry was about that. The software was explaining what he wanted and then designed as a reaction against he asked if it was possible, I advertising so it would be quite remember thinking “jesus, I think so” perverted if someone used it to sell a and so I said “yes”. In the end it all product. worked out but I was working night and day as the schedule was incredibly tight. The evening of the opening there was people lining up 3 sides around a Manhattan block to get it in, it was crazy! The show was incredibly popular and since then I have also installed it in Paris and Milan.

There were four pieces that I worked on for the show. There was a piano

. that had a screen in it and when you pressed the keys it would play a video Marco Mancuso: I didn’t know, but I of someone else playing the same key saw on your website that you on a different piano. You could have collaborated with Michael Gondry for up to eight notes at a time and you the exhibition “Science of Sleep” that I would then see eight people playing saw here in Milan last year at Costume those eight notes. Michel Gondry Nationale spaces. Can you tell me managed to sneak himself in there, I something about this experience and think he is on the highest ‘A’ key of the the projects you developed for it? piano.

Theodore Watson: Working on the Science of Sleep exhibition was a really amazing experience. It was also a ton of work! The idea was that they were recreating sets from the film into the Deitch gallery space and

74 . and technology. How much this attitude is important and which is the Another installation that was very possible dialogue between the two? popular was the ‘rope controlled eyes’ which allowed you to pull on two Theodore Watson: I think mostly I like ropes hanging from the ceiling which for people to have fun with my then would pull open the installations, that is why they are not corresponding eye of the actor (Gael really art because I am building them García Bernal) on a large screen in from the perspective of what I would front of you. The sensors I used for like to play with if I was a kid again. To that installation had some inherent me science and nature are fascinating noise in them so there was always a and by using them as subjects to build small flicker or twitch in the eyes, but my work around it gives me an excuse this actually leant itself really well to to try and understand them in more increasing the realism of the piece. depth. Funky Forest was a project I worked on with Emily Gobeille ( I also built a lighting system that could zanyparade.com ), we used the react to what was happening in the metaphor of a forest but the design scenes playing on two 90″ LCD was very different from what a real displays. The displays were positioned forest would look like. Instead we behind a window frame so it created created our version of a forest that the impression that what you were still used the common elements that seeing was outside. When the sun children would know but instead gave would rise in the scene through the it a fantastical twist that made it very windows the lights would change unique. I don’t think we were trying to color to reflect that. When the supplant nature but instead take volcano erupts the lights flash red and inspiration from it. orange and it really feels directly related to what you are seeing. It was a nice way to create a stronger connection between the space and the world of the film.

Marco Mancuso: Last but not least, some of your projects such as Funky Forest or Daises (but Vinyl Workout as well) are absolutely funny and create immediate interactions, working on the poetry of passage between nature .

75 The natural world is actually a world these rules to create a new reality. of systems and interaction and so I think it is a perfect theme to explore within the medium of interactive http://muonics.net/ installations, where we can play with

76 I’m Not David Lynch. Charlemagne Palestine In Milan

Alessio Galbiati

you? You should complain to your Institutions, to the Triennial, that is your space… I tell you this because it is your city”.

These were the words of Charlemagne Palestine at the presentation of his video exhibition on Sunday May 25 th 2008 (that was preceded by a concert, at the Triennial, on May 23 rd ) organized by O’ (now O’artoteca) during “I’m not David Lynch… but I think I inContemporanea numero due, a deserve a better space… I’ve been (polymorphic, polythematic and working for forty years in the polyphonically dystonic) event, underground… I am an underground promoted by Milan Province, that artist!… but since some years I’m “gather in the same place and for considered an important artist. Why three days the projects of those Triennial Design Museum of Milan Associations that constitute this doesn’t even meet me? Nobody network. Thanks to the collaboration greeted me, nobody welcomed me… of the Triennial, the support from my video exhibition, and it is really Milan Academy of fine arts and the art rare, is relegated in a marginal room direction of Gabi Scardi , the 15 of this fucking structure, with too associations, members of Milan non- much light and in one hour’s time… profit network interested in art and What can I do in one hour? Thirty five experimenting in the context of years ago I started to film my contemporary visual culture performances in Italy… in the 1970s we (aMAZElab, AR.RI.VI, Assab One, came here from the U.S.A. because Atelier Spazio Xpò, Careof, you had a fertile ground, a really Connecting Cultures, FreeUndo, Isola interesting cultural excitement… you Art Center, Museo Teo, Neon>FDV, O’, were in the lead: what’s happening to Reporting System, Viafarini, Wurmkos,

77 Xing)”, could take advantage of this audiovisual aperitif. In the program event in order to become more and there were six videos, selected by the more known in a potentially author, of his 1970s works, but, for interesting context. lack of time and for the incredible improvisation of the artist, everything It is an explicit effort to bring joy to changed: the number of videos everyone in a city that is unfortunately (abridged versions) was cut, and more accustomed to a really different importance was given to the Letizia (in Italian it means joy, but it is presentation of the author who, as also the name of Milan mayor). you will have understood, expressed his opinions about the condition of art in Milan.

Charlemagne Palestine is considered the rebellious son of musical minimalism and, in his artistic career, he often used moving images to create his own style. Since the 1970s up to present days, he created some documentaries and shorts, homogeneous from a technical and . thematic point of view. Charlemagne Palestine came to Milan and turned the knife in the wound of a city, of a country, where culture has become (as Loos would say) just mere appearance. Milan Triennial represent the era in which we live; Milan Triennial hosts but snubs, contains but isn’t: Gabibbo teaches! (don’t forget that the worst “exhibition”, organized by an Institution born during the Fascism, was “Venti di . Striscia”, that lasted for one month!!!). In Body Music I (1973) what is filmed A video retrospective introduced by is Palestine himself who, in a sterile the author in just one hour time is like room without any decoration, sings a a Guinness world record, it seems to mantra in a trance. In this be impossible and infeasible: an

78 performance what resonates in the complex work; it lasts for 40 minutes, room is the body of the artist/subject but in this case the artist showed just through voice and sounds produced five minutes. In this video you can with his own body. It was filmed in understand his aesthetics through Florence in 1973, Charlemagne images. Palestine paid just to develop the film but earned 100,000 dollars, and in 1974 its sequel was filmed, Body Music II , where sounds and images reverberate in the hallways of a villa in Tuscany.

In this work the hand-held camera follows the artist’s movements and the sound, produced through the improvisation technique we already saw in the preceding video. The sound . physicality becomes real with many It seems that in these works there are details and, in this way, the public can all the elements of his style. In a huge understand how much sound can be New York loft, Charlemagne Palestine concrete: sound is the main active follows a path in quite a idolatrous character in this space made real way, in front of a sort of altar with two through images. of his loved stuffed animals (a bear In both videos we can find what and an elephant, that were at the Palestine called “les animaux” , stuffed Triennial in a suitcase with other 30 animals that are always with him, fellows). So, the elements are always even during his exhibitions. Then, the same, what changes is the Charlemagne Palestine showed two running time, but, there, this wasn’t excerpts from two recent videos, evident. Sonorious Lariat (2003) , Rituel dans le So, this video retrospective about Vide (2001) , filmed with better Charlemagne Palestine was like a techniques and less worn out than the taste of his work, it intrigued the preceding works, but with the same public, but it would deserve to be aesthetic features. The first one more analysed. shows, in a few minutes, an Andean cowboy using a luminous lasso; its And now (just to be paradoxical), a soundtrack is the usual ancestral preface. O‘ curators (Sara Serighelli dirge. Rituel dans le Vide is a more and Angelo Colombo) were really

79 important because they brought to colore, Stereo, 2000. Milan a remarkable and interesting artist that, otherwise, would never be Retour à nos racines, produzione seen and known. Milan is still a small Monades Light, Montpelier, 480′, and provincial city; it is not its fault, colore, Stereo, 1989. but it is joy (Letizia) and similar Preservation of old soul at the end of feelings fault. the forgetful century, produzione Netherlands media art institute- MonteVidéo, Amsterdam , 60′, colore, Stereo, 1989.

Dark into Dark, produzione Jude Quintiere & composer Forum, New York , 19’28”, colore, Stereo, 1979.

Where it’s Coming From, produzione De Appel, Amsterdam , 56’50”, b/n, sonoro, 1977. . Island Monologue, produzione To know more about Charlemagne Castelli-Sonnabend , New York , Palestine read the interesting 15’05”, b/n, sonoro, 1976. article/interview on last month DigiMag: “L’estasi dissonante di Island Song, Castelli-Sonnabend , Charlemagne Palestine” by Giuseppe New York , 16’29”, b/n, sonoro, 1976. Cordaro in DigiMag34/May 2008 . Andros; an escapist primer, Castelli- Charlemagne Palestine. Filmography Sonnabend , New York , 57’13”, b/n, sonoro, 1975-76. Rituel dans le Vide, produzione Centre International de Création Vidéo-Pierre Internal Tantrum , produzione Schaeffer, Hérimoncourt, 44′-40′, Castelli-Sonnabend, New York, 7’35”, colore, Stereo, 2001. b/n, sonoro, 1975.

Sacré Asnieres, produzione CICV- Running Outburst, produzione Pierre Schaeffer, Hérimoncourt, 19′, Castelli-Sonnabend , New York , 5’56”, colore, Stereo, 2000. b/n, sonoro, 1975.

Satyre du parking, produzione CICV- Snake, 11′, b/n, soro, 1974. Pierre Schaeffer, Hérimoncourt, 3′,

80 Four Motion, 13′ , b/n, sonoro, 1974. www.charlemagnepalestine.org Body Music II, produzione Art/Tapes/22., Firenze , 8′ , b/n, www.o-artoteca.org/ sonoro, 1974. www.incontemporanea.it/ Body Music I, produzione Art/Tapes/22., Firenze , 13′ , b/n, www.triennale.it/ sonoro, 1973. www.provincia.milano.it/cultura

81 The Last Supper: Souvenir From Milan

Claudia D'Alonzo

artist wanted to give life and voice to Leonardo’s wall painting again.

Not to belie the rotten habits of the Italian institutions, the intervention was the occasion to vivify more a “theatre” of disputes rather than Leonardo’s work. The cultural turmoil about which Sgarbi talks is in fact a “theatre” of comments and denying among the Government office for Art, “Behind the scenes there is a cultural the Councillor and the Ministry, where turmoil of anxiety, trouble, phone everybody played their role, calls, institutional activism (which defending the innovative charge of characterizes me and has involved me Greenaway’s project rather than the a lot) to obtain from the Ministry the necessity to preserve the delicate already granted and then revoked preciousness of “Italy’s cultural authorization to Greenaway to heritage”! This finally brought to a elaborate his reading, animated with cloning of the original work to allow lights and sounds, of Leonardo da the artistic intervention (which was Vinci’s Last Supper, exactly like he not invasive at all) of the director. admirably did with Rembrandt’s Night Watch and he is going to do with Picasso’s Guernica.”

With these words, Vittorio Sgarbi, who at that time was the Milan culture councillor, presented the reading of Leonardo’s Last Supper by Welsh director Peter Greenaway. It is an installation of lights and sounds, which was inaugurated last 16 th April in Milan , in the week of the Furniture . Fair; through his interpretation, the

82 It is a very faithful reproduction of the painting. Last Supper, made by Adam Lowe for Factum Arte thanks to a high- resolution panoramic photographic image and the 3D scanning by the Istituto Centrale del Restauro (central institute for restoration), an exceptional screen located in the Sala delle Cariatidi in Palazzo Reale in Milan, which has become, together with the account of disputes and excuses on the preservation of . Leonardo’s painting, the true protagonist of the event. Greenaway’s work on Leonardo’s Last Supper is part of a project that the Like it often happens in the artist started in 2006 with an discussions involving the chaos of the audiovisual remaking of Rembrandt’s Italian cultural workers, the dispute Night Watch at the Rijksmuseum in becomes the true piece of news and Amsterdam, beginning a series of very little or nothing is linked to interventions on masterpieces of something really important, in this international modern and case Greenaway‘s work, presented in contemporary art among which the brochure as a cue to talk well or Velasquez’s Las Meninas (The Ladies bad about the state of conservation of in Waiting), Veronese’s Le nozze di the Last Supper and the problems Cana (The Wedding at Cana), Picasso’s concerning its preservation. Guernica, Monet’s Water Lilies, The catalogue edited by Charta says Pollock’s One: Number 31 and literally nothing: it is a tome of Michelangelo’s Giudizio Universale photographic reproductions of the (The Last Judgement). painting, if it should be still necessary, The concept of the project is to create which does not talk neither about a connection between painting and Greenaway’s project nor about the cinema, between the painted work refined techniques through which the and a set of projections and sounds, director and Reiner Van Brummelen, which is prepared directly on the the director of photography and work. From this interpenetration to special effects and the steady create then a new creation, an collaborator of the Welsh artist, evolution starting from the original, elaborated the structure of the

83 underlying and developing the cinema empty perceptive charm that strengths, hidden in the painted work. disappears almost immediately. While other visitors and I, mostly bored and And we had wanted people to talk puzzled, were putting up with the about this attempt, about highly cheered Greenaway’s work, I Greenaway’s challenge to interact not was wondering where the reading only with the painting as a technique, was. As a matter of fact, Greenaway medium and method, but with the does not read the expressive power of painting as an instrument of the Last Supper, nor the tension of the expression, the field of art icons and narration, but he uses Leonardo’s symbols of cultural traditions of these work as it were a background, a countries. And, in fact, the director surface of shapes, lights and colours, interacted with the Italian culture, or an environment on which he can test better, with the representatives of the a series of beautiful special effects. cultural panorama and the media that should deal with culture and that in It is aesthetic perfection which is an this challenge saw and lived only on end in itself and does not interact an apparent threat against Italy’s most with the original; it is made even more important cultural symbols, without paradoxical by the baroque dramatic taking the trouble to consider or to force of Marco Robino‘s music. The comment on the real validity of intervention does not extract the Greenaway’s intervention. dramatic features from the painting, it does not let the visitor in the scene and above all turns the situation narrated by Leonardo into a crèche of motionless statuettes, except for a short moment in which the dance of the characters’ hands becomes the protagonist in the light.

Greenaway does not penetrate and does not investigate the composition of the figures, the lively gestural . expressiveness and the tension of the Apostles’ postures, a structure of And maybe it would have become hands, heads, mouths, eyes and clear that the highly acclaimed voices that, alone, speaks more than reading of the artist is actually only a the multimedia effects that the artist show of technical spectacularity, put on, creating a dumb screen on

84 which to show useless pompousness. .

Maybe this is the only merit of Greenaway’s huge work: to have represented in an exemplary way a souvenir of the redundant and empty show of the Italian cultural situation.

85 Link index

Koan01+ootchio: Landscapes From A Past Future http://www.festivalfuturopresente.it/interne/home.aspx?ID=4336 http://www.koan01.net/video_db/scifi_landscapes_demo.mov http://www.koan01.net/ http://www.myspace.com/ootchio

The Cinematic Experience Of Boris Debackere http://www.rotorscoop.net/

Marianne Weems: Digital Divide And Theatre http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=jlTpsTAKDGY

Offf In Lisbon: Post-digital Saudade http://www.offf.ws

Sonar 2008: Advanced Music & Cinema Beyond http://www.sonar.es

Militant Art, Cultural Subversion http://www.globalproject.info/art-16007.html http://sale-docks.org/gui/

We Are Not Alone – Part 2 http://www.artisopensource.net/dosl/ http://www.biodollsmouse.org/ http://www.bloki.tv/ http://www.artisopensource.net/talker_mind/index.html%20

86 http://www.artisopensource.net/ecom/ http://www.beyourbrowser.com/ablog/ http://europia.org/CAC2/

Marc Garret & Ruth Catlow: Net Visions http://bak.spc.org http://www.netbehaviour.org http://www.netbehaviour.org/DIWO.htm http://www.http.uk.net/docs/exhib12/exhibitions12.shtml http://www.furtherfield.org/diwo_networking.php http://www.nodel.org http://www.visitorsstudio.org http://www.furtherfield.org/dissensionconvention http://blog.furtherfield.org http://www.furtherfield.org/rosalind http://access-space.org http://www.http.uk.net/exhibitions/OSE/index.shtml http://%20www.furtherfield.org

All Rights Reserved. All Wrongs Reversed http://www.p2p-art.com/ http://www.andersweberg.com/

Degradarte @ Lpm 2008 http://www.degradarte.org

87 http://www.flxer.net/abusers/?id_perf=577&u=16227 http://www.artisopensource.net/DegradazionePerSovrapposizioneDiCorpi/ http://www.liveperformersmeeting.net/ http://www.flxer.net/ http://www.flyer.it/

A Show On Friendship Confini Ttv http://www.riccioneteatro.it/ttv

The Wonderful Ideas Of Theodore Watson http://muonics.net/

I’m Not David Lynch. Charlemagne Palestine In Milan http://www.charlemagnepalestine.org http://www.o-artoteca.org/ http://www.incontemporanea.it/%20 http://www.triennale.it/ http://www.provincia.milano.it/cultura

The Last Supper: Souvenir From Milan

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