[-empyre-] Contrapunto en Espiral

[Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet <rfbalanquet@cartodigital.org>]

Heidi, Renee and Ryan;


Perhaps I feel a great sense of time ahead of me, imagining a
post-technological world because, like I expressed before, I live in
a territory where asynchronic temporal relations inform a projection
to the future as it were the past. I do not envision a tech-free
unpolluted corner, but rather a post tech era where mountains of
dischargeable mobile phones, decaying satellites and abandoned
highways compose a very complex mis-en-scene. Next to those piles of
artifacts and decaying structures, there are small sustainable
communities because famine and water scarcity, not oil, fueled the
wars - which I see, inevitable coming in the near future-, where a
lot of people have died. Not a pretty picture.

Heidi,

you are completely right about the nature of Interactiva 03, but Arte
Nuevo InteractivA 05 proposes a deeper analysis of new art and finds
ways to encompass artworks that are interactive, but no necessarily
technological driven. That is the case of subRosa's social
interactive performance. "The International Market of Flesh" evolves
around the audience interaction signifying the production of
knowledge. This work reminds me of ancient oral traditions, allowing
me to understand a communication process "unmediated" by technology,
which in my imagined post tech era will still exist. In the case of
the editorial art, I have recurred to the concept of the art book to
re-interpret the way in which reading is an interactive action. I do
have chosen publications such as bulbo Press//, Locating Afghanistan,
a minima or GUESTROOM because, even though they use technology in
their mode of production, the actual artwork is completely human
centered. We may no have paper in the future, but the action of
marking to express our feelings and communicate will continue living
with us.

One of the biggest headaches I had with InteractivA'03 was with the
funding for equipment. This time I had problems with funding in all
the spheres of the curatorial process. I cannot imagine continue with
the production the biennale confronting these economic issues. I do
not want to fetish poverty or lack of resources. When I am confronted
with the amount of work that I do without financial remuneration
(unluckily, I or the project have not won the lotteries of the art
funding agencies), figuring out how to keep a level of honesty with
the artists so the art market game doesn't sabotage the social
relations we have established, and spending hours negotiating
resources so the project comes to live, I have no choice that
decenter from technology in order to keep me sane.

Renee;

You have reassured me that there a lot of us understanding that the
geometrical complexities of the Cosmo where we live can not be seen
in a binary opposition. There are too many interpretations
circulating knowledge and wisdom, that to fall into the binary
rationale seems an out place resource.

I must confess, that one of my inquiries into new media is the seeded
condition of the 01 algorithm rooted in ancient Arabic math. Please,
don't take me wrong here, I am an Arab descend and truly love the
geometrical grammar that enriches that culture, but questioning the
binary opposition ruling the technological "revolution" always has
been on my mind. There are others mathematics that could help to
break away from that binary opposition and produce technologies that
don't damage the ecosystem. Too bad I have not enough time in my life
to deeper this inquiry.

Ryan,

Agency, there is one of the key, how we enact it is our secret.

Too many human have come to believe that they are more powerful than
nature.  A few weeks ago, I was looking into Christina McPhee's The
Carrizo Diaries. I was working on a poetry book wanting to reclaim
old mythical practices that are connecting the information of the
universe with spirituality and the path of live.

I realized that her investigation was a product of a real experience
and her closeness to the universe has allowed Christina, as women did
in ancient times -Sibylla, Phythonissa-, all prophets who understood
nature and its information, to predict the out coming. She called it
"a generative fictional future," but I saw an experiment involving a
higher level of ecological consciousness to predict, like the way in
which the oracle envision the future, only that she is using a
database of real geological data that employs interaction to predict
the "future" and its outcome via the large prints.

I was mesmerized by how human and geological memories intersect in
Christina's project because it demonstrates that in the khaos, our
human data/wavelength always has been associated with the cosmic
energy that, in numerous ways, inform the earth's transitions -where
we are a small part, an intrinsic part that today is contributing to
ecological damage-, which surfaces in her work as a political
commentary.

A few years back, when I was organizing "Nomadas: Plural Identities
in Traveling Territories", for Chicago's Randolph Street Gallery, I
understood that the dialogue among works of art is deeper that what
the art historians of critics think. The Carrizo Park Field Diaries
showed me the way in which re-assemblaging the data to envision the
future is closer to the process I employ in the making of Arte Nuevo
InteractivA 05, that of producing a third meaning that is not the
actual data or our intention, it is an information that comes out,
naturally, as part of the process/mechanism we have set up for the
artistic practice.

Best to all, Abrazotes,

Raul



--
Raúl Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet MFA
Curador Ejecutivo/ Arte Nuevo InteractivA
http://www.cartodigital.org/interactiva
interactiva@cartodigital.org