[-empyre-] -empyre- distribution

Fri Feb 25 06:16:43 EST 2011

thanks laura.  i agree.  in this light i would like to share a  
sobering note of my friend angela harutyunyan, who teaches at the  
american university in cairo.

http://www.facebook.com/notes/angela-harutyunyan/capitalizing-on-the-revolution-post-revolutionary-knowledge-economies/128327733907796

cheers/nat

On Feb 24, 2011, at 17:44, Laura Marks wrote:

> Horit, I don't have much of an answer for you. We've had some  
> focused discussion on this list about activist art, on one hand, and  
> the politics of access by artists from the middle east, on the  
> other. They're different issues. My point about media art  
> distribution addresses the second issue. Yes, it pales in light of  
> the sublime political acts happening across the Arab world now.
>
> One more point before I make myself thoroughly unpopular on this  
> list: I wouldn't call what has happened in Tunisia and Egypt (let  
> alone Bahrain and Libya) "Twitter revolutions" or "facebook  
> revolutions." Decentralized media are just one ingredient in  
> revolution.
>
> Laura
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "horit herman peled" <horithp at gmail.com>
> To: "soft_skinned_space" <empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2011 10:53:25 AM
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] -empyre- distribution
>
>
>
>
> "It seems to me the problem is balancing access to the work and  
> compensation to the artist"
>
>
> Please explain, if you can, refereeing to the unbelievable  
> historical events unfolding in the ME empowered by media technologies.
>
> Horit
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 12:00 PM, Laura Marks < lmarks at sfu.ca > wrote:
>
>
> On the distribution issue I've mentioned: It's very difficult to get  
> access to "films" and videos from the Middle East, as all of us  
> complain who write on the subject (e.g. Lina Khatib in her recent  
> book on Lebanese cinema). This is especially so in the case of  
> experimental works that are on the border between cinema and gallery  
> venues.
>
> A few such artists distribute their work with Heure Exquise!,  
> Lowave, Arab Image Foundation, Arab Film Distribution, Third World  
> Newsreel, and Video Data Bank. Others self-distribute (this includes  
> placing works for sale at the Virgin Megastore in Beirut). Others  
> publish their work on YouTube and Vimeo. Others through galleries.  
> Then there are those great compilation DVDs such as the Résistances  
> series from Lowave--though I note, old-fashionedly perhaps, that  
> these are so cheap because they don't include public performance  
> rights.
>
> It seems to me the problem is balancing access to the work and  
> compensation to the artist. Though maybe most people now believe all  
> media art should be free? I hope you can help me out here.
>
> Laura
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Timothy Murray" < tcm1 at cornell.edu >
> To: "soft_skinned_space" < empyre at gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au >
> Sent: Monday, February 21, 2011 8:13:39 PM
> Subject: Re: [-empyre-] -empyre- Introducing Laura Marks, Jennifer  
> and Kevin McCoy, and Tarek Elhaik
>
> We've again finished a fabulously informative
> week on -empyre-. Thanks ever so much to Mirene
> Arsanios, Mayssa Fattough, and Sharuq Harb for
> sharing your thoughts, expertise, and vision.
> We have found your projects and discussion of the
> layered function of screen arts to be very
> inspiring.
>
> We are happy to include our final group of
> featured guests for this month's discussion of
> "New Media and the Middle East," Laura Marks,
> Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, and Tarek Elhaik.
> Unfortunately, Tarek will be unable to join us
> this week in order to address a sudden medical
> issue, but we want to introduce him nevertheless,
> and include his name on our list of featured
> interlocutors, since he was especially helpful in
> the planning of this month's discussion and
> expressed his deep regrets about being unable to
> join us.
>
> We have known Laura and Kevin and Jenn for many
> years, with Laura and Jenn having strong ties to
> our home, Ithaca, New York. Recently we enjoyed
> sharing time in Pècs, Hungary, with Laura who
> spoke about her exciting thoughts on the fold and
> its relation to Islamic thought. And we happened
> to bump into Kevin three weeks ago at the opening
> of Kevin and Jenn's new show at Postmasters in
> New York , which provides a stunning visual/video
> intervention of their artistic experience in Abu
> Dhabi. Welcome all!
>
> ==================
>
> TAREK ELHAIK
> Tarek Elhaik (US) is an anthropologist, film
> curator, and Assistant Professor of Cinema
> Studies at San Francisco State University. He situates his conceptual,
> sensorial and ethnographic investigations of Modernity at the frontier
> of anthropology, trans-cultural cinema, contemporary media arts and
> curatorial work. Keeping with the clinical etymology of the word
> Curare, Curatorial Work is understood not only as the practice of film
> or art programming but also as both a form of field-work and a
> Deleuzian form of 'symptomatology' in contemporary regimes of living.
> Tarek Elhaiks is particularly interested in the intersection between
> the history of clinical concepts, political culture, curatorial
> practice, and new media practices in both Latin America and the Middle
> East. He has been thinking and writing about those new media artists
> and curatorial laboratories who act as contemporary diagnosticians and
> symptomatologists of contemporary culture. He frames his own concept
> of Curatorial Work as something that exceeds the profession associated
> with curatorial practice and thinks of it more in the sense assigned
> to it by the philosopher Gilles Deleuze: as a vocation of thinking and
> reorganizing symptoms of contemporary cultures through a 'critical and
> clinical' method. He has zoomed in on, for instance, on the complex
> work of Moroccan artist Mounir Fatmi who draws extensively from
> medical and neuroscientific visual culture to comment on the political
> dimension of Islamic iconography, and has conducted fieldwork among
> the Mexico City based curatorial laboratories Teratoma and Curare who
> deploy oncological metaphors to activate forms of disorganization
> within the sovereign national body politic of contemporary Mexico. He
> is now working on a manuscript titled: Curatorial Work: Errant &
> Incurable forms of life where he explores these affinities.
>
> Laura U. Marks (Canada) is the Dena Wosk
> University Professor of Art and Culture Studies
> at Simon Fraser University. A scholar, theorist,
> and curator of independent and experimental media
> arts, she is the author of The Skin of the Film:
> Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses
> (Duke University Press, 2000),Touch: Sensuous
> Theory and Multisensory Media (Minnesota
> University Press, 2002). Several years of
> research in Islamic art history and philosophy
> gave rise to her new book Enfoldment and
> Infinity: An Islamic Genealogy of New Media Art
> (MIT Press, 2010). She has curated programs of
> experimental media for venues around the world.
> Her current research interests are the media arts
> of the Arab and Muslim world, intercultural
> perspectives on new media art, and philosophical
> approaches to materiality and information culture.
>
> Kevin and Jennifer McCoy (US/UAE) are a Brooklyn,
> New York couple who make art together, and are
> now located in Abu Dhabi while Kevin launches the
> art program at the Persian Gulf campus of New
> York University. Their current exhibition at
> Postmasters in New York, "Abu Dhabi is Love
> Forever" explores their experiences in the media
> rich environment of the UAE. They work with
> interactive media, film, performance and
> installation to explore personal experience in
> relation to new technology, the mass media, and
> global commerce. They often re-examine classic
> genres and works of cinema, science fiction or
> television narrative, creating sculptural
> objects, net art, robotic movies or live
> performance.
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Timothy Murray
> Director, Society for the Humanities
> http://www.arts.cornell.edu/sochum/
> Curator, The Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art, Cornell Library
> http://goldsen.library.cornell.edu
> Professor of Comparative Literature and English
> A. D. White House
> 27 East Avenue
> Cornell University
> Ithaca, New York 14853
> _______________________________________________
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> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
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> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
>
> -- 
> http://www.horit.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>

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