[-empyre-] March 2006 on -empyre- : Is Modernity our Antiquity?

[Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net>]

dear -empyreans-

Thanks to Tracey Benson, the Asia-Pacific moderator for -empyre-, for  
organizing and facilitating the topic, "Sedition" for February 2006.  
The generous participation of  guests from both Australia and the  
States, including Lucia Sommer and Claire Pentecost of Critical Art  
Ensemble, Dr. Ben Saul, Nicholas Ruiz, and David Vaile -- in a  
critical dialog including legal professionals,  activist-artists, and  
list members -- is very  much appreciated.

I'm really pleased that we have a special event this month, in fact  
one of three this year, coordinating with Documenta 12.  A special  
thanks to Alessandro Ludovico of http://neural.it. Alessandro is an  
empyre list member and former featured guest (2003), who has honored  
us by  bringing -empyre- into the Documenta magazine project.


Please welcome our new guests

Christoph Bruno (FR), Erik Kluitenberg (NL), Christiane Paul (US),  
Dirk Vekemans (BE), and (for a change) myself as moderator/guest,  
Christina McPhee (US)

for

"Is modernity our antiquity?"



"It is fairly obvious that modernity, or modernity’s fate, exerts a  
profound influence on contemporary artists. Part of that attraction  
may stem from the fact that no one really knows if modernity is dead  
or alive. It seems to be in ruins after the totalitarian catastrophes  
of the 20th century (the very same catastrophes to which it somehow  
gave rise). It seems utterly compromised by the brutally partial  
application of its universal demands (liberté, égalité, fraternité)  
or by the simple fact that modernity and coloniality went, and  
probably still go, hand in hand. Still, people’s imaginations are  
full of modernity’s visions and forms (and I mean not only Bauhaus  
but also arch-modernist mind-sets transformed into contemporary  
catchwords like “identity” or “culture”). In short, it seems that we  
are both outside and inside modernity, both repelled by its deadly  
violence and seduced by its most immodest aspiration or potential:  
that there might, after all, be a common planetary horizon for all  
the living and the dead."

-Roger Beurgel, artistic director, Documenta 12




This topic is one of three leitmotifs to be brought into a world wide  
discussion that will occur throughout 2006 in advance of Documenta  
12, in 2007. Documenta, the festival of art that occurs every five  
years in Kassel, has invited all of us at the -empyre- list to  
participate in a formal discussion around

three questions, or leitmotifs,  throughout this year.  This month is  
the launch of our participation in this project, which will continue  
in July and November 2006, again with topics selected by the  
Documenta team.   All over the world, some seventy online and print  
journals will initiate dialogue around three core questions; the  
results will integrate into Documenta 12 itself next year in Kassel  
( 2007).  -empyre- 's archives for this month will find their place  
in print and / or online with the Documenta Magazine project in 2007  
when the festival opens.

  FMI  http://www.documenta12.de/documenta12/english/leitmotifs.html



more details to follow, but here are some short bios of our guests.

Thanks again to all who read and participate on whatever level in our  
networked community. Whether lurking or writing your support matters  
and helps all of us keep our minds and spirits alive.

-cm




------------------------------------------------>Christophe Bruno  
(FR) lives and works in Paris. Awarded with an Honorary Mention at  
the Prix Ars Electronica 2003, he’s been exhibited internationally in  
many places: Transmediale, ICC, galerie Sollertis, Nuit Blanche, File  
Festival, Modern Art Museum of the city of Paris, Tirana Biennale,  
ReJoyce Festival, Microwave International Media Art Festival in Honk- 
Kong, P0es1s.net in Berlin, Read_Me, Vidarte in Mexico City....
http://www.christophebruno.com

----------------------------------------------->Erik Kluitenberg   
(NL) is a  theorist, writer, and organiser on culture, media and  
technology. He is head of the media program at De Balie - Centre for  
Culture and Politics in Amsterdam, and teaches at the Institute for  
Interactive Media at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam.  He's contributed  
to organization and content at  the International Symposium on  
Electronic Art (ISEA), Interstanding I, II, & III (Tallinn, Estonia),  
The P2P - New Media Culture in Europe conference,   "Tulipomania  
DotCom - A Critique of the New Economy" for Next 5 Minutes,  
"net.congestion - International Festival of Streaming Media" (2000),  
"Debates & Credits - Media Art in the Public Domain" in Moscow,  
Amsterdam and Ekaterinburg (2002), the Amsterdam edition of World- 
Information.Org (2002),  and the mini-festival "An Archaeology of  
Imaginary Media" (2004).


--------------------------------------------->Christiane Paul (US) is  
the Adjunct Curator of New Media Arts at the Whitney Museum of  
American Art and the director of Intelligent Agent, a service  
organization and information resource dedicated to digital art. She  
has written and lectured extensively on new media arts and her book  
Digital Art (part of the World of Art Series by Thames & Hudson, UK)  
was published in July 2003. At the Whitney Museum, she curated the  
show “Data Dynamics” (2001); the net art selection for the 2002  
Whitney Biennial; the online exhibition "CODeDOC" (2002) for artport,  
the Whitney Museum’s online portal to Internet art for which she is  
responsible; as well as "Follow Through" by Scott Paterson and  
Jennifer Crowe (2005).

---------------------------------------------->Dirk Vekemans (BE) is  
a digital poet and multimedia artist in Lueven.  He  invented and co- 
organised ‘Leuven Per Vers’ an event of poetry, protest and  
performance in 1996, and until 2004 has published literary works and  
multimedia experiments in Dutch through ‘Nederlandse Literatuur @  
ViltNet’ a ‘small-scale marginal distribution of cultural goods’ at  
http://www.vilt.net In September 2004 Dirk initiated the ‘Neue  
Kathedrale des erotischen Elends’ (NkdeE) registered as a linked art- 
object in Rhizome’s Art Database.  The NkdeE was also part of the  
‘Mostra Internacional de Poesia Visual e Eletronica’, category  
Electronic Poetry, Sao Paulo, November. The three part work ‘MU’ was  
admitted to Regina Pinto’s ‘Museum of the Essential and Beyond’  
http://arteonline.arq.br/

------------------------------------------->Christina McPhee (US) is  
a multimedia artist working with landscapes of scientific  
visualization and cinematic image through a performance based use of  
video, installation, digital photography, data base net art  and  
drawing.  Based in California, she is currently working att the  
margins of cities investigating the seismic landscape, and the  
aftermath of debris flow, in the wake of global warming. Upcoming  
exhibitions in 2006 will include a solo installation, "La Conchita  
mon amour,' at Sara Tecchia New York in October; and, at Cartes  
Centre for Art and Technology, Espoo, Finland, a five year  
retrospective of her work will be on from May to September. In 2005,  
a solo exhibition at Bildmuseet, Umea, Sweden, followed participation  
in Groundworks: Environmental Collaboration and Contemporary Art at  
Carnegie Mellon University, Regina Goucher Gallery, and two  
exhibitions in San Francisco and LA.. Her perfomances and net art  
have been part of many new media festivals since 2001 including  
Cybersonica at the ICA London (2002), FILE 2002 Sao Paulo, Digital  
Arts and Culture Melbourne (2003), and is online in the Whitney  
Museum of American Art artport, ctheorymultimedia at Cornell  
University Electronic Media Archives, and chairetmetal (Montreal).   
www.christinamcphee.net, www.naxsmash.net