[-empyre-] Welcome Ingrid Bachmann and Grace Quintanilla, thanks to Monica Ross

[renate ferro]

As we enter the final week of our month dedicated to Memory Errors in 
the Technosphere, we are grateful to Monica Ross for having taken us 
down a very thoughtful path this week, one whose sites ranged from 
memory to archives to time.   Thanks so much for joining us, Monica. 

We're now happy to introduce our final guests for the month, Ingrid 
Bachmann from Canada and Grace Quintanilla from Mexico.

Ingrid Bachmann is an interdisciplinary artist with interests in the 
complicated relationship between the material and virtual realms. 
Ingrid is Associate Dean, Research and International Relations in the 
Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, and 
is co-editor of Material Matters, a critical anthology on the 
relation of materials to culture.  She is a founding member of the 
Interactive Textiles and Wearable Computing Lab of Hexagram and is 
the Head of The Institute of Everyday Life. She uses redundant, as 
well as new technologies, to create generative and interactive 
artworks, many of which are site-specific.   We anticipate that we'll 
profit from some of the thinking in her texts,  "Intimate Textiles: 
Uncanny Hybrids in Biomedics" (Berg 2004), "Material and the Promise 
of the Immaterial" (Material Matters 1999), and "Hand Labour and 
Digital Capitalism at the Chicago Board of Trade (MIT 2007).  

Ingrid is particularly interested in exploring the complicated 
relationship between the material and virtual realms. We had the 
pleasure in September of visiting Ingrid's studio at Concordia 
University where we marveled at her subtle interactive projects (from 
dancing shoes to creeping snow crabs), not to mention the incredible 
digital gear in her Hexagram studios, from wearable computing 
workshops to robotics and even a digital loom.  She manages a very 
hectic international exhibition schedule and has presented papers at 
ISEA04, the College Art Association Conference, Pauktuutit, The Inuit 
Women's Association of Canada, Kuujuuaq, Nunavik, as well as at The 
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Goldsmiths College, 
University of London, and The Maryland Institute of Art.    She 
received her Masters in Contemporary Art Theory and Criticism from 
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where for three years she 
was Visiting Artist in the Fibers Department. Her thesis entitled 
"Fluid Exchanges and Twitching Automata: Artificial Life as a Model 
for Interactive Artworks" has formed the theoretical base for her 
interactive installations and research into emergence and social 
connectivity.

Joining Ingrid is Grace Quintanilla from Mexico where she is the 
Artistic Director of the International Video and Electronic Art 
Festival, "Transitiomx-02: Nomadic Borders," a Tutor for the Young 
Creators Program of the National Foundation for the Arts in Mexico 
and a part time teacher at the Arts Faculty of  Morelos State 
University.  Thanks to our dear friend Priamo Lozada who died so 
suddenly this summer in Venice, Tim first met Grace in 1999 in Mexico 
City for the opening of his exhibition Contact Zones: The Art of 
CD-Rom at the Centro de la Imagen, which featured Grace's  CD-Rom, 
Vice-Versa, an incredibly innovative piece that incorporates the 
flavor of her award-winning documentary series, Aventurera, about the 
lives of cabaret women in Mexico.   Some -empyreans- from the UK may 
be remember Grace from her days in Scotland, from 1990-96, when she 
studied at the Edinburgh College of Art and the School of Television 
and Imaging, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, University of 
Dundee, and was a member of the Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop and 
the Underwired women artists' group. Grace returned to Mexico in 
1996, the same year that her video  her  Mambo Queen won first prize 
at the Reel to Real Festival in Glasgow.   Since then, Grace has 
continued to shape the path of Mexican video and new media arts with 
awards, fellowships and residencies from the Rockefeller and Ford 
Foundations, Banff Centre for the Arts, the National Arts Council of 
Mexico (FONCA) , and San Carlos Bariloche, Argentina.

Grace's work was one of the inspirations for this month's theme on 
Memory Loss in the Technosphere: Art, Accident, Archive.  It has been 
featured in festivals around Europe, South America and the United 
States such as Video Positive--Liverpool,  AVE Festival--Holland, 
British Short Film Festival--London,  Festival de Cinemá de 
Douarnenez,  Fri Art Festival--Friborg, Switzerland (1996), Mix 
Festival touring exhibition in Mexico, Portugal and Brazil, In Sync 
Festival touring exhibition. New York City, Argentina and Mexico 
City, Festival International de nouveaux cinema et de nouveaux medias 
de Montreal, Festival de Cine de Bogotá, Mexartfest-- Kyoto, Japón, 
among many others.

We're delighted to host such innovative and thoughtful artists and 
thinkers whose work has been at the forefront of our reflections on 
Memory Loss in the Technosphere.

Welcome Ingrid and Grace.

Renate and Tim
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