[-empyre-] introduction

[iarvers@free.fr]

Hello everybody,

I am pleased to be an empyre guest and I apologize in advance for my
imperfections in English. To introduce myself quickly, I am a French new media
curator and event organizer, now based in Switzerland.

My background is in Political Sciences. After my studies, I decided to act
politically in the cultural field. Very early, I began to interest myself to
digital art because I thought it would be a better way to touch new types of
audiences. Because media arts are more related to perception and action, the
idea of artwork experimentation by the audience seduced me.

As the theme of the month is dedicated to control issues, I will try to focus on
it. As a curator, I work mainly around the idea of meeting: encounter of
different audiences, mix of artistic disciplines. I try as much as I can to
work against ?mind ghettos? and to open up frontiers. (Theory only for the
academics, artworks for curators and artists only?)

For instance, during the first edition of Villette Numérique, I curated a gaming
room to attract people from the suburbs and from the real gaming rooms inside a
new media festival. During the electronic music nights, we presented a network
performance introducing the Neen art movement to party timers. I am currently
thinking about organizing machinima workshops in the suburbs to transform a
mass consumption object into a way of expression.

Control and violence are the main essence of power. To escape control, it is
thus necessary to diffuse initiatives that rise consciousness over the masses
and not let it to an elite. Hacking games, to my point of view represent a good
strategy for critical entertainment.

Isabelle Arvers