[-empyre-] November 2008 on -empyre- : "Networked Catastrophe and Artistic Response"

[Timothy Murray]

November 2008 on -empyre- soft-skinned space
"Networked Catastrophe and Artistic Response"

Moderated by Renate Ferro (US) and Tim Murray 
(US) with Verena Andermatt Conley (US), Ricardo 
Dominguez (US), Navjotika Kumar (US), Steve 
Redhead (UK),

http://www.subtle.net/empyre

How do artists respond to the  networks of 
catastrophe in the age of speed?   Building on 
the  symposium on Paul Virilio,  "Trajectories of 
the Catastrophic,"  October 24-25, 2008,in San 
Francisco, California, 
(http://www.trajectoriesofthecatastrophic.net/index.html), 
which was cosponsored by  -empyre-,  we wish to 
reflect on Virilio's influential theorization of 
the linkage between speed and catastrophe in the 
digital age.  In considering artistic 
alternatives to Virilio's pessimistic account of 
networked culture, from militarized terror to 
economic crash,  we wish to ponder how the 
mechanisms of speed and the  machineries of 
computing  attest to the accidents of catastrophe 
while contritubing to conceptual and political 
alternatives to systems of cultural, political, 
and ecological domination.

==============================================================

Moderated by Renate Ferro (US) media artist, Department of Art, Cornell
University, and Tim Murray (US), Curator of the Rose Goldsen Archive of
New Media Art and Director of the Society for the 
Humanities, Cornell University

with special guests

Verena Andermatt Conley (US) is a theorist of 
technologies, ecopolitics, and feminism.  Her 
writings range from Ecopolitics: The Environment 
in Poststructural Thought and ReThinking 
Technology to translations and analyses of the 
French writer Hélène Cixous.  A Professor of 
Comparative Literature and French Literature at 
Harvard University,  Cambrdige, Massachusetts, 
she  is now a Senior Scholar in Residence at 
Cornell University's Society for the Humanities.

Ricardo Dominguez (US) is an activist artist and 
cultural theorist.   He is co-founder of The 
Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT) and was 
co-Director of The Thing (thing.net). A former 
member of Critical Art Ensemble, his performances 
have been presented in museums, galleries, 
theater festivals, hacker meetings, tactical 
media events, and direct actions on streets 
around the world.  Ricardo is Assistant Professor 
of Visual Arts at the University of California, 
San Diego,  and a Principal/Principle
Investigator at the new edge technology institute CALIT2 (calit2.net).

Navjotika Kumar (US) is an art critic and 
historian of contemporary art.  Emphasizing 
conceptual art, with interests in land and 
ecological interventions, she written on the art 
of catastrophe in Richard Misrach and others. 
She teaches contemporary art at Kent State 
University in Ohio.

Steve Redhead (UK) writes on subculture, popular 
culture, popular music, sport and media cultures. 
The editor of The Jean Baudrillard Reader and The 
Paul Virilio Reader, he is the author of Paul 
Virilio: Theorist for an Accelerated Culture.  He 
is Professor of Sport and Media Cultures in the 
Chelsea School at the University of Brighton.


-- 
Renate Ferro and Tim Murray
CoModerators, -empyre-
Department of Art/Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
Cornell University