[-empyre-] Reclaiming creativity as agent of change

[Simon Biggs]

We would like to welcome our two colleagues for the first week's discussion
for July on empyre, Shu Lea Cheang and Paolo Cirio. Each is an artist who
engages themes and employs methods that directly address issues of
authorship, intellectual property, sharing and open access.

Shu Lea Cheang (Taiwan/USA/France) works with net-based installation, social
interface, networked performance and film/digital production. Her work
traverses hard and soft, sex and polities, fiction and reality, fantasia and
earth-bound.  Cheang co-initiated Kingdom of Piracy (since 2002), an online,
open work space which explores piracy as the net's ultimate art form. For
KOP, she created BURN (2003), commissioned by FACT, Liverpool and shown as
part of Zone of Urgency at Venice Biennale 2003.  Currently she is working
on UKI, (2009-2012), a viral performance/game project which merges corporal
virus, viral codes and bio-hack in a scenario of code-sexing frenzy.
http://kop.kein.org , http://kop.kein.org/burn , http://www.u-k-i.co

Paolo Cirio (Italy) works as media artist in various fields: net-art,
street-art, video-art, software-art and and experimental fiction. He has won
prestigious art awards and his controversial works have been sustained by
research grants, collaborations and residencies. He has exhibited in museums
and art institutions worldwide. As public speaker he delivers lectures and
workshops on media tactics.

The July edition of empyre " Reclaiming creativity as agent of change" is
co-moderated by Simon Biggs (UK/Aus) and Magnus Lawrie (UK).


Simon Biggs | simon at littlepig.org.uk | www.littlepig.org.uk

s.biggs at eca.ac.uk | Edinburgh College of Art
www.eca.ac.uk/circle | www.elmcip.net | www.movingtargets.net



Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201