Re: [-empyre-] February 2006 on -empyre- soft-skinned space

[Aliette <aliette@criticalsecret.org>]

Very interesting 
this debate is welcome.
A.



On 2/02/06 22:02, "traceyb@byte-time.net" <traceyb@byte-time.net> probably
wrote:

> February 2006 on -empyre- soft-skinned space
> 
> 
> Australia's rcently enacted Sedition Act undermines the right of free speech,
> which has "ever been justly
> deemed the only effectual guardian of any other right"  --James Madison
> (Fourth
> President of the United States and an author of the US Constitution)
> 
> This month on -empyre- , the discussion will focus on the legal term sedition,
> and its political impact on global media and culture.
> Our guests this month:  Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) members Lucia Sommer and
> Claire Pentecost (US), Nicholas Ruiz (US), and Ben Saul (AU)
> 
> Please join our guests for conversation on 'sedition'  at
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> 
> 
> On an international scale,  the prosecution of Steve Kurtz from Critical Art
> Ensemble is a case in point. The ongoing court case with the US Justice
> Department has demonstrated the effect that the "war on terror "has had on
> limiting free speech, particularly in the arts.
> 
> 
> In December 2005, the Anti-Terrorism Bill was pushed through the Australian
> Parliament. This legislation has met with much concern from the cultural
> sector
> and human rights and freedom of speech advocates. On 27 October 2005, Chris
> Connolly from the University of New South Wales, in a Submission to the Senate
> Legal and Constitutional Committee, outlined many issues that were raised in
> regard to Sedition. In his appendix regarding "Sedition in the Arts"  he makes
> the comment that the best known use of sedition laws was during the period of
> McCarthyism in the USA in the 1950s.
> 
> 
> Is this where we are headed? -empyre- in February asks the question. as
> artists
> and cultural producers are we losing our right to express ourselves and
> comment
> on the state of our society?
> 
> The discussion will also look at how sedition laws could affect online
> activist
> networks like Indymedia and Znet. As such network operate as open publishing
> systems, will there be limitations in the capacity to publish and disseminate
> content?
> 
> 
> guest bios:
> 
> 
> ----------------------->Lucia Sommer is an artist, writer, and activist whose
> work is concerned with pleasure in everyday life and the creation of critical
> ephemeral publics. Since 1994 she has taught art in various settings from
> public school to museum, and her work has been shown individually and as part
> of the cyberfeminist collective subRosa in Europe and North America. Currently
> she is pursuing a PhD in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of
> Rochester, NY.
> 
> 
> ----------------------->Claire Pentecost is an artist and writer, engaging a
> variety of media to interrogate the imaginative and institutional structures
> that organize divisions of knowledge. Having spent years tinkering in a
> conceptual laboratory for ideas about the natural and the artificial, her most
> recent projects concentrate on industrial and bioengineered agriculture, the
> alternatives and the trade regimes that force one over the other. She has been
> an active member of the Critical Art Ensemble defense fund
> (www.caedefensefund.org).
> 
> 
> ------------------------>Nicholas Ruiz III was born in New York City.  His
> work
> has appeared in Noema Tecnologie e Society, Rhizomes.net,
> Media/Culture.org.au,
> The International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Reconstruction, Public
> Resistance and elsewhere.  He is also the editor of Kritikos:
> http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~nr03/
> 
> 
> ------------------------->Dr Ben Saul is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at
> the
> University of New South Wales, the Director of the Bill of Rights Project at
> the
> Gilbert + Tobin Centre for Public Law, and an Associate of the Australian
> Human
> Rights Centre.
> 
> 
> join us at <http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>