[-empyre-] POLITICS!

[Patricia Zimmermann]

Thanks, GH and Jim, for sharing your work.  I find it very engaging and
provocative to be sure, especially the idea of infiltrating spaces, site
specificity and responsiveness.  The question of ambient media and its
situatedness is very critical.

Tim raises an excellent point about the "grit of cohabitation" and the
question of non-political/nonabrasive works.  And he suggests the
divide/struggle/problematic between high end technologies which are often
imbedded and invisible and amateur/self-made machinery which often exposes
its inner workings.

It might be time to share with this list a sort of "political awakening"
that Tom and I experienced in programming FLEFF, as an anecdotal way to
get into this labyrinth of politics/ambient/wired sustainability/digital
media forms.

When Ithaca College asked us to take on the programming of FLEFF, we
figured that the only way to do it was to split the job, given that we
have different skill sets and different experiences (short version: Tom is
in politics and writes books about environmental justice issues, broadly
defined, and I am in media, doing work on film/video/new media history and
theory).  We wanted to still teach, and of course, do research and write.

 The first job was to redefine the term "environment" along the lines of a
more international conversation that expanded beyond zen meditations on
preserving the environment as uncontaminated nature, to politicize and
itnernationalize it with a more complex layering of social, political,
technological, aesthetic, social relations.  For three years, we have
been asked "how is this an environmental film festival"--a question that
happens less and less, but a question we relish since we want to provoke
rather than explicate.  We are also asked "how is this a FILM festival"
--another question we relish because we use FILM as a generic term for a
range of media. Our focus is not on FILM  but on FESTIVAL, a gathering of
people outside of the confinees of daily life for communal activities and
engagements.

So, that first year, coming out of academics (writing, teaching,
researching, going to conferences, attending closed symposium with
exciting people) we adopted an idea which we still hold to, which was to
embrace heterogeneity in all ideas we engaged and in all forms of
media--an idea derived from radical ecological movements for diversity and
heterogeneity for sustainability.  This meant screening high end
international art films AND indigeneous low end political media from
Guerrero in Mexico, it meant doing commissions for installations but also
hiring rock bands to play parties, it meant doing a digital art exhibition
(we did this with Tim Murray the first year, btw--a great collaboration!)
of interface art, often abstract but also showing political documentaries
about AIDS in Africa.   Our focus was on changing the festival's
epistemological mode (the festival had been running with another
institution and another programmer, Ithaca College was a partner but then
became the Major Presenting Sponsor) and finding works we found
provocative. Our focus was on the works, the featured guests, and the mix.

And guess what?

We forgot the MAJOR INGREDIENT OF A FESTIVAL:  creating publics!

We had amazing artists here, provocative works, edgy interventions, but
small audiences.  We had spent most of our time conceptualizing and
finding works--a research model from the academy?--and not enough time
figuring out how to create and generate publics.

One of our great successes that year was working with the
conceptual/digital/video artist Tony Cokes.  His works the Evil Series
explores the war in Iraq and the war on terror by combining postconceptual
art strategies, popular culture modalities, postrock music, and design
elements.  We took an idea of "migratory" media and migrated his works in
monitors on a gallery, in a screening hall as an artists presentation, as
trailers before the big feature films in the theaters--and on plasma
screens on campus.  Most plasma screens in institutional settings run
power point to create institutional subjects--lists of meetings, mandatory
training sessions, announcements.

We worked with our engineering staff to get Tony's works up on all the
plasma screens on campus, secretly hoping/thinking that the works would be
shut down.

Instead, the opposite happened. The engineers LOVED the work, because it
turned out they were BORED by the powerpoints.  The people in the
buildings with the plasma loved it because they, too, were sick of
institutionalized powerpoints with directives they no longer paid
attention to.  Some audience members in the theaters asked whether Boxed
Sets were Available for sale!

We then moved into ambient media from our work with Tony--the engineers
were happy since ambient is made for looping and didn't require extra late
night engineering.  We discoverd a whole world of work in this genre
through Joel Bachar at Microcinema, and discovered that people could
purchase it at a consumer rate!

So, we took the work to a symposium were were invited to speak at, a
gathering of programmers and curators in upstate New York, along with a
bunch of other digital online exhibitions we had curated, and along with
our ideas of mixing high end big budget international features with
indigeneous media works from politicized areas like Chiapas Mexico.  By
this time, we had both been so immersed and convinced in this idea of
heterogeneity that we NEVER considered some people might get itchy about
it.

Here's is what happened:  the audience --cognescenti in media arts--asked
us to take it off the screen. Some people said it was just a reinvention
of the sixties with high tech. Others asked us if it was "good art." 
People got itchy and contentious about the online digital media we
showed--"was it good art, what was our standard?"

Tom answered that he was more interested in political ideas and great
ideas than the issue of whether it was good art.  We figured, we did our
job, we disturb people and got them talking.

The point of this story:  the grit of cohabition and the political/the
abrasive requires thinking about the production of publics and the
production of what Barbara Ehrenreich says all festivals must engage--the
production of collective joy, where we become something and someone else
by entering into a liminal zone.  So after a year of focusing on the works
themselves, and getting so excited about creating and generating
heterogeneity, we realized, part of the work of curation and programming
is the creation of publics and the infiltration of publics, getting people
to these spaces to engage with these works.

And so much of our work is considering these publics and how to change the
media/digital arts models--rather than just getting the work (which is
what we might be doing more as researchers and academics and scholars), we
have to make publics for the works.  And this activity goes in MANY
directions.

It means reversing how we think about publics--getting works OUT to the
public like in our ambient media rock shows in the bar on the inlet, it
means getting works on plasma to interrupt the institutional discources
that abound, it means doing live music with archival film projects and
silent film with analog and digital media/music to create spectacles, it
means using text messaging and a hundred interns to create networks to get
people to see and hear artists like Renate Ferro (full disclosure: Renate
did an installation for FLEFF called PANIC HITS HOME, quite gorgeous and
provocative) and Stephanie Rothenberg and Brooke Singer. It means mixing
it up, mixing up the spaces for exhibition and the places for discussion
and creating horizontal networks across many different communities and
publics.

And this is more urgent than ever, because in the current global regimes
of terror that terrify us all into isolation and silence, perhaps one way
to fight back is to rewire our wires for sustaining communities and
collectives--by any means possible, in all ways possible, with all
different kinds of communities.

The grit of cohabitation  means embracing the politics of abrasions, but
also the politics of communal joy.  It means mobilizing and reinventing
the collective, and pushing people to see that popular culture is not what
is mass mediated and commercial, but what is made through interventions of
like minded souls across a range of spaces, places, technologies, and
interactions.

Onward.


Patricia R. Zimmermann, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Cinema and Photography
Codirector, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival
Ithaca College
Ithaca New York 14850 USA
Phone: 607 274 3431    FAX  607 274 7078
http://faculty.ithaca.edu/patty/
http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff


> Dear Jim,
>
>>I'm curious about the four points you list below....and I'd love for
>>Tom , Patty and STephanie to chime in on this.  It apprears from
>>your point of view that the critical/political engagement of the
>>viewer is not important in the viewing process according to your
>>criteria?  IF it must be visually engaging but not require your
>>attention then is it not just like visual "musak" with a twist?  My
>>sense from Patty's post is that she was actually intending to
>>describe a very different kind of work.  Renate
>
>
>
>>Thomas and Patricia -
>>
>>I was very pleased to read about your interest in ambient media.
>>"Ambient Media on Plasma" sounds like a terrific exhibition -
>>congratulations!
>>
>>The new flat-panel displays, in conjunction with HD visual
>>standards, are having a considerable effect on the moving image.
>>The video picture has never been as large, or as sharp, as it is
>>now.  These new displays (and the widespread use of relatively
>>inexpensive yet sophisticated cameras and post-production packages)
>>have transformed the non-theatrical moving image.  As Gene
>>Youngblood said:  "New Tools make for New Images".  One of the
>>directions that is suited to the new display technologies is
>>certainly Ambient Video.
>>
>>I've been working in Ambient Video for several years.   My own
>>variation on this form is representational, not interactive,
>>slow-paced, and based on natural imagery (primarily the Canadian
>>Rockies).  The works have a finite temporal flow, but can loop when
>>seen on a DVD.
>>
>>I think Ambient Video must satisfy the following difficult aesthetic
>>challenges:
>>   * it should be visually engaging the first time you view it
>>   * it must never require your attention
>>   * it must reward your attention at any time with visual interest
>>   * it must sustain over a great number of repeated viewings
>>
>>This is a considerable set of challenges.  I know that some of the
>>artists listed in Tom's message rely on composition and compelling
>>visuals to do this.  Other techniques can include the manipulation
>>of the time base, manipulation of the image itself, and the use of
>>slow transition (in the spirit of HG's work in an earlier post to
>>this thread).
>>
>>I incorporate the above techniques in my work.  You can see my own
>>Ambient Video work at:
>>      www.ambientvideo.ca
>>
>>I also have some papers on Ambient Video on a related website:
>>     http://www.sfu.ca/~bizzocch/ambientvideo.html
>>
>>My colleagues, the NoMig collective from Montreal and Malcolm Levy
>>from Vancouver, are also working on their own variations of this
>>form.  Their preferred term is "Video Painting".   NoMig has led in
>>the building of a website dedicated to the form:
>><www.videopainting.ca>
>>
>>A few of the other artists that work in related areas include
>>Douglas Siefkin <www.translumen.net>. William Kennedy ("Algonquin
>>Autumn"), and "Souvenirs from the Earth"
>><www.souvenirsfromtheearth.com/>.
>>
>>I am very pleased to read here that more and more artists are
>>working in variations on these forms, and that there is curatorial
>>interest in exploring and representing it.  Hope to hear more on
>>this topic.
>>
>>Thanks for your posts!
>>Cheers,
>>Jim
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Thomas wrote:
>>>I would say that the definition of ambient media is
>>>fairly fluid.  The term originally derives, as I
>>>understand it, from advertising, i.e., ambient media as
>>>background images of various kinds signifying products
>>>and brand names.  With the advent of dvds and cheap
>>>projection devices, sound and image artists are
>>>now able to proliferate their work into
>>>previously unavailable public settings.
>>>
>>>G.H., I love the work that you sent. It is truly
>>>spectacular. The material that we have featured in
>>>FLEFF, by artists Simon King  African Skies),
>>>Johanna Vaude (Hybride), Eric Koziol (Ripple in the Eye),
>>>among others, isn't interactive, but involves looped
>>>electronic images, often, though not always, with
>>>sound. While Chevelier's work would seem to necessitate
>>>a museum or large  gallery space for exhibition, the
>>>work that we feature, which is commercially available
>>>(through for example, Microcinema International),
>>>can be screened anywhere that there is an available
>>>plasma screen, which includes hotel lobbies, cancer
>>>treatment centers, hospitals, before cinema screenings,
>>>and in museums and galleries as well. In this sense, it
>>>is a form of popular or populist media.
>>>(Here's a link to our website with the works
>>>that we screened this year, with descriptions-
>>>http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff/exhibitons/ambient/)
>>>
>>>For FLEFF, we project on plasma screens on the
>>>Ithaca College campus, and projected at a downtown
>>>club behind local rock bands doing Tom Petty
>>>covers (as a prefestival benefit to raise money
>>>for a lakefront trail).  The audiences (and the
>>>bands) really respond to it, as it generates a
>>>modernized version of the whole 60s vibe, while
>>>avoiding simple nostalgia.
>>>
>>>Tom
>>>
>>>
>>>HG wrote:
>>>  >> Ambient media occupies the forefront of new media practices.
>>>  >
>>>>  What do you mean "ambient media."   Is it for example sound
>>>art?
>>>  > I've done a series of morph still life that run on flat screens.
>>>  > I called them ambient video. does that fit?
>>>http://nujus.net/gh_04/
>>>>  gallery10.html  Recently I met Miguel Chevalier. he doe large
>>>>  scale
>>>>  projections of computer generated flora--
>>>>  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzuRmpc78PI
>>>>
>>>>  Does his work fit your definition of ambient media?  My friend
>>>&
>>>>  colleague in France - Peter Sinclair has made a sound art work
>>>>  that
>>>>  reacts to the movement of the auto you are driving in an
>>>>  generates
>>>>  sounds  ---
>>>http://nujus.net/peterhomepage/autosync/autosync.html
>>>>
>>>  > Is this ambient media?
>>
>>--
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>jimbiz at sfu.ca     www.dadaprocessing.com    www.ambientvideo.ca
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>empyre forum
>>empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>>http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
> --
> Renate Ferro
> URL:  http://www.renateferro.net
> Email:   <rtf9 at cornell.edu>
> Visiting Assistant Professor of Art
> Cornell University
> Department of Art, Tjaden Hall
> Ithaca, NY  14853
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