[-empyre-] Farewell to "Whispering in the Dark" and the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

dear -empyreans-


As November draws to an end,    "Whispering in  in the Dark,  
conspiratorial incantations"  have conjured  a thousand and one  
jhinnis who will magically transport the reader, like Aladdin, to...   
where? To the next adventure,

" embracing resistances where they may be found"

 (Deborah Kelly,  <https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/ 
2005-November/msg00012.html>


Thanks to the American artists, editors and writers involved in the  
Los Angeles-based Journal of Aesthetics and Protest.

http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/

Bookmark the  archive of the complete discussion from this url:


> https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2005-November/ 
> subject.html


The Journal's remit -- and the focus of this month's discussion --  
has been to ask,

"How can a discourse not be tied to the expression or promotion of  
particular industrial technologies? How has and how can we reframe  
the category of new media? How does new media and new media discourse  
impact communities and social justice? How does the commodification  
of discourse influence understandings of tactical media's  
possibilities?"



Thanks to Christina Ulke, Marc Herbst, Cara Baldwin, Robby Herbst,  
Ryan Griffis and Nato Thompson for generously giving of their time,  
thought and writing craft for -empyre- soft-skinned space.  And not  
least to list readers who challenged and supported the discourse  
throughout, including,  Frederic Madre, jonCates, Alex Killough,  
James Barrett, Deborah Kelly, Edmar, Christine Goldbeck, Kenneth  
Newby, Henry Warwick, Elizabeth Day, and Simon Taylor.


Stay in touch for next month on -empyre- soft-skinned space, as we  
turn to questions of art and cognition.



-cm

----------------------------->Cara Baldwin was born on a military  
base at the end of the Vietnam War and has since returned to the  
sound of helicopter blades rattling her crib. She received her MFA at  
CalArts in 2000 and has since organized several projects that deal  
with public space. She's an independent curator, editor, artist and  
writer living in Los Angeles.

----------------------------->Ryan Griffis is an artist whose work  
takes the forms of writing, curating and otherwise performative  
activities, often in collaborative situations. Focusing on the social  
problematics of technology, he writes regular reviews of art and  
culture for Rhizome, ArtUS and other on and offline publications.  
"YOUgenics," a traveling series of exhibitions and events about  
genetic technologies curated by Ryan since 2001, was recently  
exhibited at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is a  
member of the Journal of Aesthetics & Protest collective and also  
moonlights as a part-time travel agent for the Temporary Travel  
Office - an ongoing investigation into the sub-rational desires for  
mobility.
<http://www.temporarytraveloffice.net/>

----------------------------->Marc Herbst is currently completing is  
a site-specific photo collage project involving neighborhood  
demographic statistics aimed at communicating cold economic realities  
to distinct homes. He works with pirate radio, diy and grassroots  
media . He currently is beginning a group of abstract biomorphic  
monuments to extinct or endangered community institutions such as  
historical memory, telephone trees, and shared values. He teaches web  
design, performance art and sculpture at UC San Diego and American  
Intercontinental University LA.
sparkle[at]c-level.cc

----------------------------->Robby Herbst is interested in the  
networks of visual media that foster the development of  
intersubjective power. His new-genres practice explores, initiates,  
and enacts democratic negotiations with culture. Since 1996 Robby has  
been around the creation of several autonomously run media  
collectives (Radio Dumbo, Indymedia Seattle and Los Angeles, Journal  
of Aesthetics and Protest). Currently he is excited about the Journal  
of Aesthetics and Protest’s slide library. The library attempts to  
address the many problems of LA’s gallery and academic art systems by  
unveiling “dark matter”, accomplished through the creation of a  
publicly accessible archive.
<http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/projects/library/  
slidearchive.html>
<http://www.journalofaestheticsandprotest.org/new3/index.php?  
page=sholette>
<http://www.theoctobersurprise.org>
rherbst@journalofaestheticsandprotest.org


----------------------------->Christina Ulke lives and works as an  
artist in Los Angeles. Her site-specific and often collaborative  
public art practice revolves around questions of globalization’s  
aftermath, the deconstruction of normalized racist technological  
hegemonies and the articulation of a radically local iconography. In  
an attempt to create locally meaningful discursive sites, Ulke co-  
founded c-level (now beta-level) in LA’s Chinatown and is also a co-  
editor of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest. Ulke currently  
teaches at UCSD's Visual Arts Department. http:// 
www.ulkeprojects.com/ closeencounters.html

----------------------------->Nato Thompson is a writer, activist,  
and Assistant Curator at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts.  
Recent curatorial projects there include "The Interventionists: Art  
in the Social Sphere," a survey of interventionist political art  
practices of the 90s, and edited a related book, "The  
Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of  
Everyday Life," MIT Press 2004. He is a co-organizor at the  
Department of Space and Land Reclamation and strong believer in  
radical practice. His writings on art and politics have been  
published in tema celeste, Parkett, New Art Examiner, the College Art  
Association Art Journal and In These Times. Nato is a contributing  
writer to the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest.