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transmediale.07: Podcast 4: IPE interview Arthur Kroker
Tuesday, 06 February, 2007 - 00:38
Arthur Kroker agreed to speak to us about some of the themes raised in his Keynote at transmediale.07. Kroker is Co-Editor of CTheory, which Le Monde dubbed 'one of the three leading intellectual electronic reviews in the world'. CBC describes Kroker as 'Jack Kerouac meets cyberpunk'.
Hear a podcast of our interview with Kroker...Direct download>
You may also like to listen to the audio recording of Kroker's Keynote 'Born Again Ideology'...Click here to listen>
Kroker's lecture is named after his forthcoming book, Born Again Ideology. An online version of the book is now available on CTheory.net...Click here to read>
To view and listen to IPE's other videos and podcasts of transmediale.07...Click here>
IPE RESEARCH & PRODUCTION TEAM:
CLAUDIA VIEIRA; JOE FLINTHAM; JAMES JORDAN; MARK SHUFFLEBOTTOM
We'd like to thank Andreas Broeckmann, Artistic Director, Transmediale.07 for allowing us to video podcast from the festival directly.
Transmediale exhibition - Podcast 3
Sunday, 04 February, 2007 - 19:42
Our third podcast from Transmediale.07 in Berlin. On the eve of leaving we wrap up some of the video installations and keynotes from the art and digital culture festival.
Proof of Life, Herman Asselberghs
Roots, Roman Kirschner
Against God By Water Pistol, Moon Na
The previous three entries also have some video and descriptions of the pieces we discuss if you want visual stimulation to reinforce the delights of the commentary from Mark, James, Claudia and Joe.
Unfinished Cities: Transmediale.07, Berlin
Saturday, 03 February, 2007 - 23:01
Unfinished Cities: a keynote with presentations from Orhan Esen, author of Self-Service Cities: Istanbul and AbduoMaliq Simone, Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College. In keeping with the premise of this year's Transmediale theme of Unfinish they discussed aspects of the modern city and the tensions between formal and informal space, cities as works in progress or as 'finished' environments, and contrasts between urban cultures in Europe, the near East and Africa.
Orhan Esen presented a history he had constructed about the development of gated communities in Istanbul - specifically the North-Western development at Gokturk. Not only have gated communities arisen as a form of pre-built (and hence pre-finished) environment as a bulwark against the ephemeral nature of the city, but they arise as part of a substitution for failed ideologies. The informal city is rejected by middle classes who wish to aspire, and yet in places like Gokturk, members of gated community nevertheless are forced into contact with the 'old villagers' in order to engage in commerce. Places in gated communities are aggressively marketed using discourses of inner peace and a return to nature to attract those alienated from modernity; meanwhile applicants undergo a mutual interview process - it is not possible just to purchase apartments and houses in these communities - you must be 'negotiated into' the culture of the community you wish to enter, ensuring you find yourself among people who share your values, tastes and aspirations. The "excluding city" is a neo-liberal ideal.
AbdouMaliq Simone did not dwell on detail as did Esen, but spoke rather poetically, in the context of Urban Europe and Urban Africa, about the necessary hybridity of the city, pointing out that people will live anywhere regardless of risk if they have to in a post-colonial world... but against this is the very colonial sense of urban intensification and non-integration. The mobile and the immigrant populations enter into wilful anonymities, where 'misrecognition' is desirable, rather than to be avoided. "The poor and the strange must never stop proving their innocence". Simone talks about the technologies which turn every shop-front into a monument, and which introduce heterogenities into the urban spaces, but which also destabilise the environemnt and the social relationships within. There is a constant process of change, in which temporaneities and instability dominate. We must see possibilities, rather than simply condemn cities for their problems.
Transmediale.07 Jan-Peter Sonntag - Borders and the Infinite
Saturday, 03 February, 2007 - 21:42
Jan-Peter E. R. Sonntag's presentation, Borders and the Infinite, was unusual in that he sat, mostly motionless on stage, and did not speak until the end of the session. Sonntag is an artist and composer, whose recent work concentrates on electricity research, video, installations and performance, but his presentation was profoundly about the sound as a form, phenomenon and 'fluid' medium.
His presentation began with a prerecorded female voice reading, we assume, Sonntag's own words, acknowledging that those words, written one month before, served to draw attention to the gaps in space and time that media open up and close down. Interstices remained a constant theme in a presentation which touched on the relation of sound to the body, Einsteinian relativity (again), and misapprehensions of Walter Benjamin and the Aura, and an acknowledgement of John Cage's attention to the musical pause.
Sonntag's sat for 55 minutes during his presentation, isolated on the panel, occasionally showing his enjoyment of the malaprops his voice artists committed, and which he evidently left in as a pleasure of the nature of human sound and breath, rather than deliver a sanitised production. Significantly his presentation argued that art need have no purpose - has no purpose - can be meant not to mean. An interesting performance.
Transmediale Interactive Art - Podcast 2
Saturday, 03 February, 2007 - 01:42
Our second podcast from Transmediale.07 in Berlin. Even though it's late at night and its been an action-packed day, we've recorded our thoughts on three of the pieces of interactive art we encountered in the exhibition hall.
Taken, David Rokeby
Death Before Disco, Herwig Weiser
Random Screen, Aram Bartholl
The previous three entries also have some video and descriptions of the pieces we discuss if you want visual stimulation to reinforce the delights of the commentary from Mark, James, Claudia and Joe.
Arthur Kroker - Born Again Ideology
Saturday, 03 February, 2007 - 01:02
Arthur Kroker is Canada Research Chair in Technology, Culture and Theory and Professor of Political Science at the University of Victoria, Canada. Co-editor of CTheory and Director of the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture (www.pactac.net).
Today he gave a keynote lecture at Transmediale.07 in Berlin based on his latest book, Born Again Ideology. His talk examined the rise of the technocratic society, and its intersection with the rise of religion and the resurgence of God, notwithstanding His long-proclaimed death.
This podcast records the fascinating talk he gave.
We also managed to interview him after his keynote speech. To hear the podcast of our interview with Kroker...Click here>
We have arrived!
Friday, 02 February, 2007 - 09:50
We arrived in Berlin late afternoon Thursday and decided to go to the aiff.tiff interactive sound and visuals exhibition at M13, in East Berlin.
For the enhanced iTunes podcast...Go To>
