[-empyre-] Networked Catastrophe and Artistic Response

[Timothy Murray]

>Hi, everyone,

Well we've mopped up from the election, stashed 
all the signs, and are now eager to return to 
intellectual and artistic work,  with huge smiles 
still plastered on our faces.

We've managed to expand our guest list and have 
added to the fray of our month's guests, Frederic 
Neyrat and Jordan Crandall, in addition to 
Ricardo Dominguez, Steve Redhead, Navjotika 
Kumar, and Verena Andermatt Conley.

Jordan has been an -empyre- guest in the past and 
will join us in a couple of weeks.  An Associate 
Professor in the Visual Arts Department at th 
University of California, San Diego, Jordan is a 
media artist and theorist whose work has been at 
the forefront of reflections on the organization 
and representation of political violence and 
procedures of militarization.  A founding member 
of Blast, Jordan's installations have been at the 
forefront of critical interventions on 
surveillance, networked culture, and violence, 
with his most recent installation, Under Fire, 
having opened at the International Biennal of 
Contemporary Art of Seville (with a 3 volume 
catalogue).  His current installation, Homefront, 
combines live-action video, surveillance footage, 
and military tracking software.

We are enjoying Frederic Neyrat's intellectual 
company this year at Cornell University where he 
is a residential Fellow at the Society for the 
Humanities.  We are thrilled that he has agreed 
to join us this week, promising to delight us 
with his melodious "franglais" (we have invited 
him to write in French if that seems more helpful 
at times).  Frederic is a prolific philosopher, a 
former Director at the College International de 
Philosophie in Paris, and a member of the 
Editorial Board of the inlfuential 
interdisciplinary French journal, Multitudes.  He 
has published books on political imaginary 
(Fantasme de la communauté absolue, 2002) ; the 
function of the images (L'image hors-l'image, 
2003) ; the globalization and the postmodern 
condition (Surexposés, 2005) ; Heidegger 
(L'indemne. Heidegger et la destruction du monde, 
2008) ; the relations between eco-politics, 
immuno-politics and bio-politics (Biopolitique 
des catastrophes, 2008).  His next books will be 
Instructions pour une prise d'âmes. Artaud et 
l'envoûtement occidental 
(http://www.phocide.fr/neyrat.htm) and Le 
terrorisme (Larousse, march 2009). As he puts it, 
he analyzes the logic of the extreme phenomenons 
of our overexposed era Š

Frederic will joined this week by our other 
featured guest, Ricardo Dominguez, who kindly put 
up his first post this morning.  Ricardo  is a 
co-founder of The Electronic Disturbance Theater
(EDT), a group who developed Virtual-Sit-In technologies in 1998 in
solidarity with the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico. He was
co-Director of The Thing  (thing.net) an ISP for artists and activists from
2000 to 2004, as well as Senior Editor from 1996 
to 1999. Ricardo also is a former
member of Critical Art Ensemble. His performances have been
presented in museums, galleries, theater 
festivals, hacker meetings, tactical media events 
and as direct actions on the streets and around 
the world. A net.art project
(turistafronterizo) was developed for the International inSite_05
(insite05.org) Art Interventions Festival in collaboration with Coco
Fusco. Ricardo also collaborated with artist Diane Ludin on (ibiology)
which was presented at ISEA 2004 and at the MadridMedia Lab (2005).
Another of his recent collaborations is (specflic.net) a speculative
distributed cinema project with artist Adriene Jenik (2006). His recent
Electronic Disturbance Theater project with Brett Stabaum, Micha Cárdenas
and Jason Najarro the *Transborder Immigrant Tool* (a GPS cellphone safety
net tool for crossing the Mexico/U.S border was the winner of
"Transnational Communities Award", this award was funded by *Cultural
Contact*, Endowment for Culture Mexico - U.S. and handed out by the U.S.
Embassy in Mexico (bang.calit2.net/xborder). He is an Assistant Professor
at UCSD in the Visual Arts Department and is also a Principal/Principle
Investigator at the new edge technology institute CALIT2 (calit2.net)
where he will be researching and developing a 
performance project in collaboration with artist 
Diane Ludin, Nina Waisman, Amy Sara Carroll on 
nanotechnology entitled
*Particles of Interest: Tales of the Matter Market* (pitmm.net) that has
been presented at the House of World Culture, Berlin (2007), the  San
Diego Museum of Art (2008), O Futuro, Brazil (2008) and Gallery at CALIT2,
UCSD (2008). Also, Ricardo reenacted a César Chávez speech that then was
presented on the Times Square MTV Screen, at the top of every hour, all of
September 2008 in collaboration with artist Mark Tribe's Port Huron
Project, a five minute video can be view here: http://blip.tv/file/1189709.

We are very pleased to be joined by Frederic and 
Ricardo and hope that their presence will result 
in a most lively exchange.

Best,

Renate and Tim

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