Artistic Mobility in the 21st Century

Organised by CIANT – International Centre for Art and New Technologies in Prague
In collaboration with Pépinieres européenes pour jeunes anistes, mapXXL programme Supported by the City of Prague and Culture 2000 programme of the European Union

Artistic Mobility in the 21st Century
7th – 10th November 2006 Prague, Czech Republic
Presentations, discussions, exhibitions, screenings

This series of cultural events is produced by CIANT in parallel to TransGenesis festival which is part of the Week of Science and Technology programme organised by the Czech Academy of Sciences.

More details: www.ciant.cz/bioart, www.transgenesis.cz, www.cas.cz/tydenvedy,

“A promising generation of young artists throughout Europe who work with dedication and authenticity within the contemporary human, social and economic environments is emerging”, states the mapXXL programme’s description. But how do we evaluate authenticity at the turn of the century? Does young generation share the same values with artists of the past? Or do some of the emerging creative practices change the roles we attribute to artists nowadays? Which roles could these be?

Artistic mobility has become one of the most important driving forces of contemporary culture. Well, artists have always tended to explore new territories, conceived both geographically and intellectually. We have seen artists travelling around the globe to get inspired, to live culturally different experiences while opening space for wide varieties of controversies. We have seen generations of artists dealing with issues of the human, of the social, of the economic. Today we see still more artists who reflect upon media-driven culture of global politics, on culture of new technologies and contemporary techno-scientific discoveries. Some artists have started to feel at home within industrial environments, some other explore diverse extreme environments, including research labs where they contribute to shaping our “biotech” or “nano” future.

Also, never before has artistic mobility gone hand in hand with real-time means of delivering artistic expression on-line. Let us consider the web, for example, its content is now the largest depository of audiovisual materials that artists use in radically innovative ways. We have entered an era of web-jockeys who remind us about the diversity of experiences and influences based on our living with (or on) the web. Some hack-in to subvert the power mechanisms of control the technologies of the state and/or of the corporate put upon one and each of us. Some take hidden and tremendously huge amounts of data to give them transparent audio and visual forms that disclose new realities.

Context has become a crucial word again. The coordinates of time and space are now unpredictable. Our art encounters may occur at any place and day. We thus ought to pay ever more attention to what is really changing the world we live in. Artists will presumably be the first over there to show us.

Tuesday 1 November

BIOART
Venue: Czech Academy of Sciences (Národní 3, Praha 1, room nr. 205), free entry

14.30 INVISIBLE – screening of short videos and animations inspired by science, in cooperation with ZKM
16.00 SYMBIOTICA – presentation of the artistic group, Oron Catts (AU) / produced by C2C, in English
17.30 BIOART exhibition opening
18.30 TRANSMUTATIONS – performance Guy Van Belle (BE) / C2C

BIOART exhibition features projects intersecting art and science. Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau will present an updated version of their world-famous installation Interactive Plant Growing. Louis Bee, French biologist and artist, will exhibit his new project entitled Waiting for Turing, sonifying and transmitting signals of the electric fish over the internet. Pavel Smetana in collaboration with Ivor Diosi are going to show an updated installation Lilith which is using Unreal Tournament game engine in order to render three-dimensional virtual environments based on the analysis of bio-signals of the viewers.

Wednesday 8 November
HOW TO BECOME AN AHTIST IN RESIDENCE
Venue: Academy of Fine Arts (U Akademie 4, Praha 7), in English, free entry

10.00 Opening (Pavel Smetana)
10.05 Mobility programmes (Franco Torriani)
10.30 What is mapXXL? (Patrice Bonaffé)
11.00 Jury experience (Denisa Kera)
11.15 Coffee break
11.30 Legal and social aspects (Jean Reitz)
12.00 Questions and answers
14.00 Artists’ experience (Robert Praxmarer, Stéphane Kyles)
14.30 Ideal portfolio (Yeb Wiersma)
15.00 Questions and answers
15.15 Coffee break
15.45 Trans Artists Foundation (Yeb Wiersma)
16.15 Questions and answers

Thursday 9 November
ART AND SCIENCE: RIVALS OH COLLEAGUES?
Venue: Czech Academy of Sciences (Národni 3, Praha 1), free entry

10.00 Presentation of Mathias Fuchs (GB) / C2C, en
10.30 Presentation of Ákos Maroy, NextLab (HU) / C2C, en
11.00 Lecture on “Bioart”, Denisa Kera (CZ) / C2C, in Czech
13.00 Presentation of Guy Van Belle (BE) / C2C, en
14.00 Presentation of Yuka & Kentaro Shimura (JP) / C2C, en
15.00 Lecture / performance by Virgil Wong (USA) / C2C, en
16.30 Round table on art and biotechnologies (In French, translated into Czech): Louis Bec (FR), Jens Hauser (DE) – a moderator, Louis-Marie Houdebine (FR), Roger Malina (FR), Christa Sommerer (AT), Franco Torriani (IT)

Venue: Doubner Gallery (Václavské námésti 15, Praha 1), free entry

19.00 STRUCTURE 2 exhibition opening

Venue: Communication Space (Školská 28, Praha 1), free entry

20.30 INVISIBLE – screening of short videos and animations inspired by science

STRUCTURE 2 is an exhibition focused on the structure as a concept. Surrounded by Czech painters selected by curator Jaroslav Vancát, there will be young media artists, former artists-in-residence at CIANT, Robert Praxmarer and Stéphane Kylés presenting their interactive works which bring the notion of the structure into the 21st century while highlighting two main contemporary phenomena – the algorithms and the web. Robert’s real-time generated videos explore the nature of microstructures and reveal the beauty of fractal dimensions. The output of the videos is based on mathematical calculations. It’s an algorithmic adventure in structure. Stéphane’s installation uses images, colours, forms, sounds and texts from the internet in a way of a real-time puzzle.

Friday 10 November
MODELS OF ARTISTIC MOBILITY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
Venue: Academy of Arts, Architecture, and Design (námésti Jana Palacha 80, Praha 1), in English, free entry

14.00 Art and weightlessness: a cultural appropriation of space (Annick Bureaud) 15.00 Artists in scientific laboratories (Jens Hauser)
16.30 Mobile Ilmmobile (Louis Bec)
18.00 Round table on contemporary mobility models: Louis Bec (FR), Guy Van Belle (BE), Annick Bureaud (FR), Don Foresta – a moderator (USA/FR), Jens Hauser (DE), Roger Malina (FR), Steina and Woody Vasulka (USA).

PARTICIPANTS OF THE INFO DAY ON THE 8TH OF NOVEMBER (alphabetically): “HOW TO BECOME AN ARTIST IN RESIDENCE”

Patrice Bonaffe
(FR, bonnaffe@art4eu.net) graduated from l’Ecole nationale supérieure des Arts décoratifs, during the first part of his carrier and paralelly with his work of artistic researcher and creator he practiced various activities connected especially with audiovisual media. He entered the newspaper Ie Monde in 1973, and during the 13 years published there drawings and reviews on the cinematic world and news. He cooperated on many editions of Nouvel Observateur, l’Express, l’Expansion, and produced documentaries for Antenne 2. In 1984 he created ESAC, Ecole supérieure des arts et de la communication, associating in one place a creative studio, a publishing house and a contemporary art gallery. Within the framework of his activities, he has also focused implementation of the European Degree in Graphic Design. Since 1999, he has contributed to the development of Pépinières européennes pour jeunes artistes (from 15 to now 27 countries). He has been organizing meetings dedicated to digital technologies and has promoted international artistic mobility in a great variety of ways, including a leadership in the international mobility programmes such as mapXXL All of his actions with Pépinières européennes pour jeunes artistes have for goal to show the motivation of a new generation of active artists on the European artistic stage.

Denisa Kera
(CZ, 1974, denisa@c2c.cz) is associate researcher at the Centre for Global Studies in Prague. She lectures at the New Media Studies programme that she helped establish at Charles University in Prague in 2004. She received her MA in Philosophy and Ph.D. in Information Science and lectures on new media, philosophy and art since 1998. Her research focuses upon performativity in language and computer codes and posthumanist philosophy. In 2006 she co-founded c2cCircle of Curators & Critics which runs a Prague-based gallery focusing on interdisciplinary projects.

Stéphane Kylés
(FR, 1979, stephane@ciant.cz) is a new media artist, a digital manipulator working on live multimedia / web installations and performances. His works gave rise to many parts, sometimes unfinished, sometimes arranged, of which the aspects rei eve always of this post-punk radical esthetics which, today still, frightens and fascines at the same time. Parallel to this activity, he continues the development of several data-processing devices whose principle of operation is based on the data flows produced by Internet or all other sources of digital information. His work, based on collective intelligence, tries to analyze the deviating practices likely to develop has great scale since the users of new technologies seem free to divert them. His works have been exhibited in multiple events and places, most recently at Park in Progress (Paris), Skolska galerie & Karlin studios (Prague). He collaborated also on different projects related to virtual reality environments. In 2005 he was selected to be artist-in-residence in the context of MapXXL program at CIANT (Prague).

Hobert Praxmarer
(DE, 1976, cubic@servus.at) was an artist at the reowned Ars Electronica Futurelab for 7 years and now he is a highly educated computer engineer and artist. Currently he teaches at Art University Linz at the institute of Interface Cultures. He is a guest lecturer at Trinity College Dublin, FH Hagenberg for Media Design and art school Aix en Provence. His research interests include interactive art, with a special focus on Interactive Video Manipulation, Realtime Performances, Computer Games and Software Art in general. He received various prizes and grants, including honorary mention from UNESCO Digital Arts Award. He exhibited internationally (ARCO Madrid, Ars Electronica, VIPER, Crossing Europe, Stuttgarter Filmwinter, Cynet Art, Microwave Media Festival, just to name a few). In 2006 he was an Artist in Residence of the “Les pepinieres pour les jeunes artistes” program of the European Union for the most promising talents in Europe at CIANT in Prague. In 2006 he started his work on his PhD in digital performance and video art. His supervisior is Christa Sommerer, a well known and established media artist and pioneer in this field.

Pavel Smetana
(CZ, 1960, smetana@ciant.cz) is an artist working in the field of virtual and mixed reality, interested in the development of interface technologies. He is the author of several renowned video and interactive installations, e.g. “Room of Desires” or “The Mirror”, some of which were awarded prizes such as Grand Prix de Locarno or UNESCO Prize. He is currently heading the department of VR-3D-AL at the Ecole Superieure des Beaux Arts in Aix-en-Provence amd is the director of CIANT (Centre International d’Art et des Nouvelles Technologies) which he founded in Prague in 1998. He has managed European projects supported within CULTURE 2000, MEDIA Training and the 5th and 6th Framework Programmes (1ST). He was an expert on New Technologies and Arts at the Council of Europe. In 1996 he co-organized in Prague a conference entitled “A New Space for Culture and Society” and directed the ENTERmultimediale festival (2000, 2005).

Jean Heitz
(LU, jean.reitz@ci.culture.lu) is a director of the Luxembourgish cultural agency since February 2002. Formerly a head of a regional office of the Ministry of culture he is experienced especially in European and trans-border projects: EFRE, Raphael, INTERREG IIIC, actually plurio.net, cultural portal of the Great Region and trans-border box office network. He is a national coordinator of PEJA Education, holds a Master in history (Nancy, 1984), DESS personal management (Strasbourg, 1987), and European diploma in cultural management (Marcel Hicter Foundation, 1997).

Franco Torriani
(IT, 1942, sohier.f@extramuseum.it) obtained a degree in Economics at Turin University, after studying mainly in the Netherlands the relations between some aspects of the fiscal system and the social context. He is a freelance consultant in human resources and in communication strategies, a cultural organizer and a contributor to several journals and reviews. He has been co-author of works which have been presented and performed also in events such as the Festival of Avignon and Biennale di Venezia. One of his main practical interests in research are the relations among sciences, technologies, new and by chance old media. He has been a fellow of Ars Technica, Paris, he is a member of Ars Lab, Turin, he is a member of ArsLab, Turin, and he is the chairman of the Pépinières Européennes pour Jeunes Artistes, Marly-Ie-Roi (France) (www.art4eu.net). He is advisor of Noema (http://www.noemalab.org).

Yeb Wiersma
(NL, 1973, y.wiersma@transartists.org) graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam at the fine arts department in 2001. She continued her study at the Cooper Union Academy for the Advancement of Science and Arts in New York City from 2001 until 2002. Since then she has been exhibiting frequently in The Netherlands and beyond. In 2003 she was selected as an artist-in-residence at the ‘Art in Engiadina Bassa’ programme in Switzerland and in 2004 she attended the artist-in-residence programme at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces in Melbourne, Australia. Furthermore she writes articles on art for the Dutch contemporary art magazine Mister Motley (www.mistermotley.nl) and since 2002 she is active for the Dutch based Trans Artists Foundation (www.transartists.org), which is also the secretary of the Dutch ‘Pépinières Européennes pour Jeunes Artists’ Programme.

PARTICIPANTS OF THE ROUNDTABLE ON THE 9TH OF NOVEMBER (alphabetically): “ART AND SCIENCE: RIVALS OR COLLEAGUES?”

Louis Bec
(FR, 1936, louis.bec.isrp@wanadoo.fr) lives and works in Sorgues. For several decades, Bec’s artistic work has revolved around the interlocking of art and science. He became known through his efforts related to extending biological evolution and simulating new life forms, emphasizing in particular how these bring forth evolution. His search for new zoomorphic types and forms of communication between artificial and natural species led to his founding a fictitious institute named “Scientifique de Recherche Paranaturaliste”, with Louis Bec as its presiding director. Bee was first introduced to artistic research on artificial life through his collaborating with the philosopher Vilém Flusser, who wrote about Bec’s «Vampyroteuthis infernal is» in his book of the same name.

Jens Hauser
(DE/FR, 1969, jhauser@c1ub-internet.fr) is a Paris based independent curator, writer, cultural journalist and video maker focussing on the interactions between art and technology, and on transgenre and contextual aesthetics. His papers have been published in ten langages. As a curator Hauser has organised a huge show on biotechnological art at the National Arts and Culture Centre Le Lieu Unique, Nantes, “L’Art Biotech'” (2003), and published a book with the same title. His forthcoming exhibitions are “Bio Stillness” (2007), and “Sk-Interfaces” (2008), dealing with the paradigm of skin as a technological interface. In 2005 Hauser received the Fund for Arts Research Grant from the American Center Foundation. He is also, and has been a guest lecturer internationally, such as at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Hochschule fUr Gestaltung und Kunst Zurich, Ruhr Universität Bochum, Tbilissi University Georgia. As a speaker he has been invited to festivals, conferences and universities worldwide, such as Ars Electronica Linz, Transmediale Berlin, Arco Madrid, Quadriennale Dusseldorf, Invideo Milano, European Media Art Festival Osnabruck, UCLA, UC Irvine, School of Visual Arts NY, Goldsmiths College University of London, Bauhaus Universität Weimar, Musée d’Art Contemporain Montreal, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Edinburgh etc. His teaching and conference activities have been supported by the Goethe Institut. Hauser also is a director of creative radio pieces, sound environments and documentary films which have been shown in festivals and as video installations in museums. Since 1992 he has collaborated regularly with the European culture television Arte, as well as with the cultural programs of the German broadcasting stations WDR, NDR, SWR, Deutschlandfunk, Deutschlandradio and ZDF. Hauser has also been engaged in projects helping visually disabled people to access art and cinema, including audiodescription of film, theoretical universitary workshops and professional training on behalf of the german association of the blind. After studies in media and film theory, psychology and scientific journalism (Munster, Bochum, Tours) Hauser is actually a PhD candidate in media studies at Ruhr Universität Bochum.

Louis-Marie Houdebine
(FR, 1942, louis.houdebine@jouy.inra.fr) is a biologist working in INRA Jouy-en-Josas, France, (National Institute for Research in Agronomy) since 1968. He is the head of a group working on animal gene expression and involved in different biotechnological projects implementing animal transgenesis: basic study of gene expression, generation of animals models to study human diseases (atherosclerosis, obesity, xenografting) preparation of pharmaceuticals in milk and more recently generation of transgenic farm animals to improve breeding. L.M. Houdebine and his collaborators are involved in the development of a start-up the activity of which is to produce pharmaceuticals in milk and to generate animal models for medical and pharmaceutical research. He has written two books and edited an 82 author’s book on animal transgenesis. He is a member of the French commission of biosafety for experimental work (Commission de génie génétique) since 1991 and of the French commission of food biosafety (Agence Française de la Santé et de la Sécurité Alimentaire) since 2000. He was for 4 years the member of a French commission supported by the National Institute of Medical Research (INSERM) for the identification of biosafety problems of the new biotechnological medical treatment. He participated in the Bioethical Meeting of Oviedo (1999) organised by the European Council and to a meeting organized by EVCAM (Nottingham 1998) and supported by the EU, aiming at defining ethical rules for the use of transgenic animals. He participated in a teaching on bioethics in 2000 at the University of Sceaux (France).

Roger Malina
(USA, rmalina@alum.mit.edu) is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in space instrumentation and optics. Previously he was Director of the NASA EUVE Observatory at the University of California, Berkeley, and more recently director of the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille CNRS. He currently serves on the Comite National of the French CNRS for astronomy and on the French National Commission on Cosmology. His current research interests are in observational cosmology and the SNAP Consortium project for a space observatory dedicated to elucidating the nature of dark energy and dark matter. He is a co-investigator member of the science teams of the NASA GALEX and FUSE space observatories. Also, he is Chairman of the Board of Leonardo/lnternational Society for the Arts/Sciences and Technology in San Francisco and President of the sister Association Leonardo in Paris. These organizations are dedicated to creating links between artists, scientists and engineers. He is executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press, an elected member of Section IV the International Academy of Astronautics, currently serves as Chair of Commission VI on Space Activities and Society, a member of the IAF committees on Education and Space and the Comite on Space Exploration. He is the eldest son of Frank J Malina, astronautics pioneer, who was the first director of JPL, a co founder of Aerojet General Corporation and a founder and President of the International Academy of Astronautics.

Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau
Have jointly created around 15 interactive artworks, which can be found at: http://www.iamas.ac.jp/?christa. These works have been shown in around 150 exhibitions world-wide and are installed in media museums and media collections around the world, including the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, the Museum of Science and Industries in Tokyo, the Media Museum of the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Mignonneau (FR) and Sommerer (AT) also published extensively on Artificial Life, Complexity, interactivity and interface design and they lectured extensively at universities, international conferences, and symposia. They completed their PhD degrees at CAiiA-STAR, University of Wales College of Art, Newport, UK and the University of Kobe, respectively. They previously taught at the lAMAS International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences in Gifu, Japan (www.iamas.ac.jp) and worked as researchers at the ATR Advanced Telecommunications Research Laboratories in Kyoto (www.atr.co.jp). Japan. They also were Visiting Researchers at the MIT CAVS in Cambridge USA, the Beckmann Institute in Champaign Urbana, IL, USA and the NTT-InterCommunication Center in Tokyo. In 1998 they edited a book on the collaboration of art and science called “Art@Science,” published by Springer Verlag Vienna/New York. Currently they are heading the Interface Cultures department at the University of Art and Design in Linz, Austria. http://www.interface.ufg.ac.at/christa-laurent

PARTICIPANTS OF THE ROUNDTABLE ON THE 10TH OF NOVEMBER (alphabetically): “MODELS OF ARTISTIC MOBILITY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY”

GUY Van Belle
(BE, 1959, g@13m3.sk) is experimental- and mediamusician, AN-jockey and netartist. “[He] is an internationally recognised sound and network streaming artist. He has been working across Europe, with a primary focus on ‘areas of transition’ in South, Central and Eastern Europe. His streaming workshops have resulted in the establishment of active new networks among artists, institutions, and cultural activists, the resultant works featuring innovative collaborative pieces created by young sound and media artists from across the region.” (Steve Kovats, V2 Rotterdam) Guy presently lives / works in Bratislava, Amsterdam and Brussels. He has been involved with developing multimedia technology for artistic applications since 1990. As an independent ‘art worker’ he worked with the Amsterdam Waag Society for Old and New Media (waag.org) on creative tools for integrated installations and performances. In projects such as An’a*tom”ic, mXHz and Society of Algorithm he investigated, with changing partners, different forms of collaborative work on audiovisual artefacts.

Annick Bureaud
(FR, annick@nunc.com) is a new media art critic and researcher. She works and lives in Paris, France. She is the director of Leonardo/Olats, the French branch of Leonardo/Isast which is primarily doing online publishing (www.olats.org). As an art critic she collaborates regularly to the French contemporary art magazine Art Press. She taught at the Art School of Aix-en-Provence. She has been guest lecturer at the School of the Art Institute Chicago/SAIC in 1999 and at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) in 2001. In 2002, she co-edited the book Connexions : art, réseaux, media published by the Press of Ensba ; she co-organized the International Symposium “Artmedia VIII: From the Aesthetics of Communication to Net art”, in Paris and edited the online proceedings published by Leonardo/Olats. Her article “Typologie des interfaces artistiques” (For a Typology of Artistic Interfaces), has been published in the collective book Interfaces et sensorialité (Interfaces and Sensoriality), edited by Louise Poissant, Sainte-Foy, Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2003. In 2003, she organised the Symposium “Visibility – Legibility of Space Art. Art and Zero G.: the Experience of Parabolic Flight” within the @rts Outsider Festival in Paris, the proceedings are available (in French and English) on the Leonardo/Olats web site.

Don Foresta
(FR/USA, don@donforesta.net) is a research artist and theoretician in art using new technologies as creative tools. He is a specialist in art and science. Foresta is a Senior Research Fellow at the Wimbledon School of art in London and professor at the Ecole Nationale Supèrieure d’Arts – Paris/Cergy. He has been working for over 20 years in developing the network as an artistic tool and is presently building a permanent high band-width network, MARCEL, for artistic, educational and cultural experimentation. He holds a doctorate degree from the Sorbonne in Information Science. He was named “Chevalier” of the Order of Arts and Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.

Steina and Woody Vasulka
(Iceland/USA, CZ/USA, vasulka@vasulka.org) are two key artists in the development of video technology and its use in the creation of moving image artworks. Steina is a classically trained violinist who played with the Iceland National Orchestra. In her earliest works she synthesised an intuitive, atmospheric musical approach to video with a desire to test and expand the limits of the medium. Steina (1940) and Woody (1937) are responsible for some key developments in electronic imaging technologies, and in their early video experiments in the renowned New York artists’ venue, The Kitchen, they created spatial and interactive audio and video installations such as Machine Vision (1975) and All Vision (1975) that can be considered key works in contemporary art.

With Louis Bec, Jens Hauser, Hoger Malina and more Quests…

Pavel Sedlak, project co-ordinator, curator
(CZ, 1977, sedlak@ciant.cz) is the Deputy Director of CIANT (International Centre for Art and Technologies) in charge of development and documentation. He is active as an art critic and a curator. He initiated several European cultural activities and projects. He was the chief curator of the ENTERmuitimediale2 festival of digital art held in Prague in May 2005 (www.entermultimediale.cz). He publishes in the field of new media art and culture. After his residencies at the ZKM – Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe and the internship at New Media Dept. of the National Gallery in Prague he worked at the Centre for Science, Technology, Society Studies of the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Recently, he was a member of the Prague Mayor’s Committee on the city cultural strategy, a jury member of the CYNETart_06 festival held in Dresden, and an invited speaker at the 40th congress of AICA (International Association of Art Critics).

Website: http://www.ciant.cz/bioart