[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 107, Issue 13

Dale Hudson dale.hudson at nyu.edu
Fri Oct 18 22:30:59 EST 2013


Thanks, Renate, for the introduction and for the reports from Busan.

New media functions differently in the MENASA region than in South Korea, though there are some similarities, particularly in terms of a fascination with capitalism.

What interests me about convergence is the multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary venues that facilitate collaboration among coders, artists, researchers, and activists.  There are some well-established centers in Delhi and Mumbai that draw upon European (Deleuze and Guattari) and non-European (Subaltern Studies Collective) philosophy and historiography.  

I'm very interested to learn of other initiatives in the region and elsewhere, particularly ones involving students.  I'll share a few events at my institution.

One of my colleagues in Middle Eastern Studies and I hosted the first "Dérive app 2.0" workshop.  Students and faculty designed the Abu Dhabi deck of tasks for the mobile-phone app, which suggests an urban dérive along the lines of what the Situationists did.  It's part performance — only with GPS, which adds an element of surveillance but also an ability to map different types of data onto a commercial basemap. 

One of my colleagues in computer science hosts an annual "Hackathon for Social Good in the Arab World" to bring together faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students mostly from the MENA region.  Some of the work is very practical like mods of Wii consoles to help doctors and patients with monitoring physical therapy from remote locations and mobile-phone apps to help orphanages record data for reports to funders, but other work is more engaged with artistic/cultural concerns, such as arts education and counter-narratives of cultural heritage. 

Very curious to know everyone's thoughts on such projects, as well as other projects.

Best,
Dale

Dale Hudson
Film & New Media
New York University Abu Dhabi

On Oct 18, 2013, at 5:00 AM, <empyre-request at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au> <empyre-request at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au> wrote:

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> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 
> Today's Topics:
> 
>   1. Week 3 on empyre: thoughts about the first two weeks and
>      moving on (Renate Ferro)
>   2. Fwd: Week 3 on -empyre: Dale Hudson, Gabriel Menotti,	and
>      Isak Berbik (Renate Ferro)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2013 12:23:54 -0400
> From: Renate Ferro <rtf9 at cornell.edu>
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: [-empyre-] Week 3 on empyre: thoughts about the first two
> 	weeks and	moving on
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAA2fNoLZntzPUmDELe7XB-5nDKM2naUXG6FC2TKBc8yt=oawzw at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
> 
> Tim and I have returned to the US after an intense and productive time at
> the Busan Film Festival.  It was wonderful to see Youngmin and Alex in real
> time in both Busan and Seoul.  The Asian perspective on convergence is one
> that I feel we have only begun to flush out. Thank you Alex for teasing out
> some of the cultural complications involving this fact.  This was evident
> for me not only at Busan's film festival but in meeting many of my former
> students who despite a critical fine arts education at Cornell have
> transitioned over to their home in Korea where most of them work in very
> large commercial design firms. It appears to me that this spirit in
> celebration of capitalism as opposed to a suspicion (that particularly
> western academics and artists) stems from a desire and necessity for South
> Korea to assert itself from its neighbor to the North,  communist North
> Korea. I am thinking though about how other parts of Asia may weigh in on
> this.
> 
> Week three brings to us three guest moderators:  Dale Hudson, Gabriel
> Menotti and Ken Feingold.  Dale now teaching in the United Arab Emerites
> has been a guest on -empyre previously so many of you may know him.  Dale
> used to teach at our neighboring institution Ithaca College and we do miss
> seeing him around town.  Gabriel Menotti long-time empyreans will
> recognize.  Menotti was a part of a moderating team a few years ago.  We
> welcome him back as a guest and look forward to his contribution.  We also
> welcome Ken Feingold this month a new contributor to -empyre. Biographies
> are below.
> 
> Dale Hudson (UAE/USA) is a media theorist, critic, and curator.  He teaches
> film and new media studies at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD),
> curates online exhibitions for the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival
> (FLEFF), and serves on the preselection committee for the Abu Dhabi Film
> Festival (ADFF).  His work appears in journals including Afterimage,
> American Quarterly, Cinema Journal, French Cultural Studies, Journal of
> Film and Video, Screen, and Studies in Documentary Film, as well as in
> anthologies.  His book-in-progress, ?Blood, Bodies, and Borders,? analyzes
> transnational and postcolonial vectors of U.S. history through the
> political economies of film.  He has also reviewed films, exhibitions, and
> books for journals including Afterimage, African Studies Review, Jadaliyya,
> and Scope.
> 
> Gabriel Menotti (Brazil, 1983) Gabriel Menotti is an independent curator
> and lecturer in Multimedia at the Federal University of Esp?rito Santo
> (UFES). He is the author of Atrav?s da Sala Escura (Intermeios, 2012), a
> history of movie theatres from the perspective of VJing spaces. Menotti
> holds a PhD in Media & Communications from Goldsmiths (University of
> London), and another from the Catholic University from S?o Paulo. He has
> published work in a number of research journals and books, as well as
> contributed to international events such as the S?o Paulo Biennial,
> Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid and the Transmediale
> Festival.
> 
> Ken Feingold (USA, 1952) received his B.F.A. and M.F.A. degrees in
> ?Post-Studio Art? from California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA.  He
> has been recognized as an innovator in the field of interactive art after
> fifteen prior years of making films, video art, objects, and installations.
> His early interactive works include The Surprising Spiral (1991), JCJ
> Junkman (1992), Childhood/Hot & Cold Wars (1993), and where I can see my
> house from here so we are (1993-95) among others.  His work Interior (1997)
> was commissioned for the first ICC Biennale '97, Tokyo; S?ance Box No.1 was
> developed while in residence at the ZKM Karlsruhe during 1998-99, and Head
> (1999-2000) was commissioned by the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art,
> Helsinki for the exhibition "Alien Intelligence" (Feb-May 2000). Since 2000
> he has developed a body of ?cinematic sculptures? - objects and
> installations which include artificially intelligent animatronics and,
> frequently, moving images. He has taught moving image art at Princeton
> University and Cooper Union, among others, and he is also a licensed
> psychoanalyst in private practice. His works are in the permanent
> collections of the Museum of Modern Art, NY; Centre Georges Pompidou,
> Paris; Kiasma, Helsinki; ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, and
> others.
> 
> Renate Ferro
> Visiting Assistant Professor of Art,
> (contracted since 2004)
> Cornell University
> Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office:  306
> Ithaca, NY  14853
> Email:   <rferro at cornell.edu <rtf9 at cornell.edu>>
> URL:  http://www.renateferro.net
>      http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net
> Lab:  http://www.tinkerfactory.net
> 
> Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/
> -------------- next part --------------
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> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2013 16:54:36 -0400
> From: Renate Ferro <rtf9 at cornell.edu>
> To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
> Subject: [-empyre-] Fwd: Week 3 on -empyre: Dale Hudson, Gabriel
> 	Menotti,	and Isak Berbik
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAA2fNo+W-YVWR1syh322Zx-zyu0Y2KkfEpddDNFkmmrOJ3YY7Q at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
> 
> Whoops!  Please disregard the email I sent introducing Ken Feingold for
> Week 3.  I am very jet-lagged and provided you with the wrong line up.
> This week on empyre is indeed Dale Hudson, Gabriel Menotti, and Isak
> Berbik. My apologies to Ken and we will hear from him next week.
> 
> 
> Tim and I have returned to the US after an intense and productive time at
> the Busan Film Festival.  It was wonderful to see Youngmin and Alex in real
> time in both Busan and Seoul.  The Asian perspective on convergence is one
> that I feel we have only begun to flush out. Thank you Alex for teasing out
> some of the cultural complications involving this fact.  This was evident
> for me not only at Busan's film festival but in meeting many of my former
> students who despite a critical fine arts education at Cornell have
> transitioned over to their home in Korea where most of them work in very
> large commercial design firms. It appears to me that this spirit in
> celebration of capitalism as opposed to a suspicion (that particularly
> western academics and artists) stems from a desire and necessity for South
> Korea to assert itself from its neighbor to the North,  communist North
> Korea. I am thinking though about how other parts of Asia may weigh in on
> this.
> 
> Week three brings to us three guest moderators:  Dale Hudson, Gabriel
> Menotti and Ken Feingold.  Dale now teaching in the United Arab Emerites
> has been a guest on -empyre previously so many of you may know him.  Dale
> used to teach at our neighboring institution Ithaca College and we do miss
> seeing him around town.  Gabriel Menotti long-time empyreans will
> recognize.  Menotti was a part of a moderating team a few years ago.  We
> welcome him back as a guest and look forward to his contribution.  We also
> welcome Isak Berbik a friend that Tim and I met in Pesc, Hungary a couple
> of years ago at a conference.  We are so pleased that he has moved and is
> teaching in our state of New York.  Our guest's biographies are below:
> 
> Dale Hudson (UAE/USA) is a media theorist, critic, and curator.  He teaches
> film and new media studies at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD),
> curates online exhibitions for the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival
> (FLEFF), and serves on the preselection committee for the Abu Dhabi Film
> Festival (ADFF).  His work appears in journals including Afterimage,
> American Quarterly, Cinema Journal, French Cultural Studies, Journal of
> Film and Video, Screen, and Studies in Documentary Film, as well as in
> anthologies.  His book-in-progress, ?Blood, Bodies, and Borders,? analyzes
> transnational and postcolonial vectors of U.S. history through the
> political economies of film.  He has also reviewed films, exhibitions, and
> books for journals including Afterimage, African Studies Review, Jadaliyya,
> and Scope.
> 
> Gabriel Menotti (Brazil, 1983) Gabriel Menotti is an independent curator
> and lecturer in Multimedia at the Federal University of Esp?rito Santo
> (UFES). He is the author of Atrav?s da Sala Escura (Intermeios, 2012), a
> history of movie theatres from the perspective of VJing spaces. Menotti
> holds a PhD in Media & Communications from Goldsmiths (University of
> London), and another from the Catholic University from S?o Paulo. He has
> published work in a number of research journals and books, as well as
> contributed to international events such as the S?o Paulo Biennial,
> Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid and the Transmediale
> Festival.
> 
> Isak Berbic (b.1983) is a photography, moving image and performance artist
> from Sarajevo. As Yugoslavia dissolved and Bosnia was under attack, he and
> his family became refugees, moving through Croatia, a refugee camp in
> Denmark, eventually receiving asylum in the United States. Isak Berbic
> studied Photography at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In Chicago,
> he practiced art, worked in theater, and art directed a political community
> magazine. From 2007-2012 he was based in the Middle East, Sharjah, United
> Arab Emirates, where he taught at the University of Sharjah. In 2012 he
> joined the faculty at Stony Brook University (SUNY), Art Department. His
> research deals with social histories, politics, tragedy, memory, humor,
> exile, and the limits of representation. His recent artworks investigate
> the overlaps of documentary and fiction in relation to the visualization of
> contested politics and contested histories. Isak Berbic is now living and
> working in New York. http://www.isakberbic.com/**
> 
> -- 
> 
> Renate Ferro
> Visiting Assistant Professor of Art,
> (contracted since 2004)
> Cornell University
> Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office:  306
> Ithaca, NY  14853
> Email:   <rferro at cornell.edu <rtf9 at cornell.edu>>
> URL:  http://www.renateferro.net
>      http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net
> Lab:  http://www.tinkerfactory.net
> 
> Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Renate Ferro
> Visiting Assistant Professor of Art,
> (contracted since 2004)
> Cornell University
> Department of Art, Tjaden Hall Office:  306
> Ithaca, NY  14853
> Email:   <rferro at cornell.edu <rtf9 at cornell.edu>>
> URL:  http://www.renateferro.net
>      http://www.privatesecretspubliclies.net
> Lab:  http://www.tinkerfactory.net
> 
> Managing Co-moderator of -empyre- soft skinned space
> http://empyre.library.cornell.edu/
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> 
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> End of empyre Digest, Vol 107, Issue 13
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