International Group Exhibition
O3ONE - Beograd
19 - 24 May 2007
CONTRASTED WORKING WORLDS (CWW)
Participatory Virtual Platforms &
the Shape of Common Experience in a Transitory Economy
http://www.cyberaxe.org/07/tiki-index.php
Produced by:
Haute école d'arts visuels HES - Genève (CH)
École supérieure des beaux-arts
Programme d'études CCC
critical curatorial cybermedia
http://www.ccc-programme.org/
http://www.hesge.ch/
In cooperation with:
O3ONE Art Space - Beograd (SRB)
art-e-conomy program
http://www.o3.co.yu
http://arteconomy.omweb.org
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CONTRASTED WORKING WORLDS (CWW)
Participatory Virtual Platforms and the Shape of Common Experience in a Transitory Economy
ARTISTS:
Alejandra Ballón
Sylvain Froidevaux
Luz Muñoz Rebolledo
Nathalia Rodriguez
Tilo Steireif
Olivier Desvoignes
Vlado Alonso
Gabriella Löffel
Lukas Mettler
Elia Buletti
Manuel Schmalstieg
CURATOR:
Marko Stamenkovic
Contrasted Working Worlds (CWW) is an art-based intermedia project focused on the emergence of sharing as a modality of economic production. Initiated by the Critical Curatorial Cybermedia (CCC) team of professors at the Geneva University of Art and Design, it brings together a group of international artists: Alejandra Ballon, Sylvain Froidevaux, Luz Munoz, Nathalia Rodriguez, Tilo Steireif, Olivier Desvoignes, Vlado Alonso, Gabriella Loeffel, Lukas Mettler, Elia Buletti and Manuel Schmalstieg. The project outlines key issues in media art practices related to critical economics and attempts to question the economical authority in presenting art. The CWW project has two interfaces. One is a set of sixteen "Virtual Wall Papers” done by art students and dedicated to a wide range of participatory platforms. The other one presents core issues in sharing common goods, voluntary decreasing or the concept of basic income under the title “The Shape of Common Experience in a Transitory Economy". The exhibition includes internet-based art, case studies, reportages, video interviews, photos and drawing displays, as well as sound-based interventions and a music-event.
Critical Curatorial Cybermedia (CCC) is an interdisciplinary program at Geneva University of Arts and Design, in which artistic practice is based on political thought, post-colonial and gender theories, the art of exhibition, and the art of the Internet networks and culture. The CCC program develops research on the politics of networks, mobility, and multicultural identities. Multimedia projects take discursive, narrative or visual forms. The CCC Program organizes courses, seminars, lab units, and co-productions for pursuing individual and group projects. The faculty includes nine international professors: Catherine Queloz, Liliane Schneiter, Nils Norman, Ursula Biemann, Moyra Davey, Mark Dion, Christian Holler, Silvia Kolbowski, Christophe D'Hallivillee.
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FRENCH SUMMARY
Le projet interroge les nouvelles formes de l’économie à l’ère du capitalisme mondial intégré et l’émergence du partage des ressources et des savoirs dans une économie de la participation et du don. Par les moyens de l’art, il s’inscrit à l’interface de l’économie critique et des pratiques de l’économie de survie dans différents territoires, pays et continents. Partant de considérations critiques sur une croissance économique fondée sur l’économie des biens immatériels, l’économie des savoirs et des savoir-faire à haute valeur de compétences ajoutées, sur une croissance inégalement répartie et sur la précarisation de l’emploi, les pratiques artistiques observent comment se développent des économies alternatives impliquant d’autres rapports sociaux et d’autres dimensions politiques et esthétiques.
PLATES-FORMES PARTICIPATIVES ELECTRONIQUES
Diaporama de seize « Virtual Wall Papers », papiers peints électroniques conçus pour une diffusion sur Internet et offerts à seize plates-formes participatives. Les motifs (pattern) des papiers peints ont été créés en relation aux activités propres à des plates-formes de coopération, actives dans les domaines de l’éducation et de la recherche, de l’écologie critique, des droits humains, de l’information et des médias de communication, des échanges de fichiers musicaux et informatiques. Le concept de plate-forme participative s’est développé dans les années ’90 autour de l’héritage des pionniers de l’Internet et des militants pour un Web libre et démocratique (Richard Barbrook, Richard Stallman) comme une nouvelle construction des savoirs, dans une volonté d’indépendance et de mise en commun des ressources technologiques et des compétences. Les plates-formes participatives sont des constructions de situations collectives d’invention touchant tous les domaines de l’existence, des techniques et des connaissances.
The Shape of Common Experience in a Transitory Economy
Un ensemble de dix travaux et de textes présente un large éventail de situations où des individus et des collectivités réagissent aux conditions de travail et d’existence induites par les mutations économiques de la globalisation, de la diffusion des modèles du néo-libéralisme ou de la libéralisation des marchés dans l’Europe post-socialiste. Ces travaux incluent des études de cas, des reportages, des entretiens vidéographiés, des montages photographiques, des dessins et des installations. Ils touchent à des questions comme celles des marchés ambulants, du recyclage dans ses aspects économiques et sociaux, du revenu universel d’existence, des entreprises de la classe créative, des résistances dans les formes de nouvelles solidarités et la critique de l’information médiatique, de la place de l’innovation dans les stratégies économiques et de la flexibilité dans le monde du travail.
O3ONE
Organisation indépendante et non-gouvernementale fondée à Belgrade (Serbie) en 2004 pour soutenir les arts visuels contemporains et la production culturelle émergeant dans la nouvelle économie de marché. La production de la galerie O3ONE inclut des expositions, des installations, des festivals, des travaux dans les médias électroniques, le design, la photographie, la vidéo, la performance, l’architecture, la mode, la science et les nouvelles technologies. La galerie entretient des relations actives dans la sphère économique, avec le milieu de l’art et de l’académie et avec la société civile.
art-e-conomy
Économie de transition et art – théorie et pratique de la production contemporaine globale. La plate-forme art-e-conomy est dédiée à la recherche internationale interdisciplinaire et à la formation dans le domaine de l’éducation. Elle œuvre à l’intersection des conditions culturelles et économiques dans les processus de globalisation des marchés et plus particulièrement, dans les transformations post-socialistes de l’Europe du Sud Est.
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PROJECT STRUCTURE
PARTICIPATORY VIRTUAL PLATFORMS
Share Widely! Sharing with participatory platforms
“Share Widely! Sharing with participatory platforms” the Virtual Wall Papers project focuses on creative expression and alternative art discourses using digital art for the Web. A broad range of Virtual Wall Papers designed by Fine Arts students is offered to participatory platforms of their choice. Virtual Wall Papers are conceptual/activist works using quite consciously the shared culture in the knowledge economy. Among the knowledge environments, the e-participation environments offer an opportunity to construct shared knowledge on a non-profit base, opening critical perspectives in the field of Internet networks. They deal with a new type of media practice defined as ‘post-media practices’ that offer an alternative to the regime of mass media. Post-media practices are characterized by small, diverse, distributed networks of operators who make use of the new, digital means of production and distribution. Post-media practice relays to a critical attitude towards the media in use, acting in lateral rather vertical configurations, and an acceptance of the processuality and continuous transformation of context and practice. Virtual Wall Papers are a lively and powerful networking tool. They testify to the importance of the desire for sharing knowledge and working together with participatory platforms involved in the critical reflection of culture, economics or living modes in an age strongly influenced by digital technologies and their social repercussions. The chosen participatory platforms provide a large scale of shared common goods from specific Internet vigilance to the free exchange of cooking receipts for a multicultural society, leading people to appreciate the skills and the interests of the multitude. The Virtual Wall Papers offered to participatory platforms enable active participation in the new communities emerging within a networked society in the twenty-first century.
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The Shape of Common Experience in a Transitory Economy
How free cooperation is committed to resist to the merchandizing of immaterial commons goods?
Alejandra Ballón
"Cyber nests, Peru". Work in progress
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Sylvain Froidevaux
"Onesimus Paradox and the Basic Income as A New Economy Alternative". Video.
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Luz Muñoz Rebolledo
"Post it Stores" - Micro-Markets on the Move. Photo-archive.
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Nathalia Rodriguez
"Economic Glo-Calization in the Age of Mobility", Video.
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Tilo Steireif
"Madame Carrambar - Independent Kiosk in Lausanne", Photo-installation
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Olivier Desvoignes
"Identifying, sorting, targeting, selling - PHP and E-conomy", text
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Vlado Alonso
"Belgrade", Photo-series
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Gabriella Löffel
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Lukas Mettler
BIGZ
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Elia Buletti
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Manuel Schmalstieg
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Alejandra Ballón
1975 born in Arequipa, Peru, lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland
As a visual artist and cultural researcher co-directed since 2004 to date the “Pie de página” (footnote) project, with art critic Augusto del Valle and visual artist and curator Miguel Lopez (http://arte-nuevo.blogspot.com). An investigation that compiles a set of misled documents of the collective memory, texts of artists and critical texts of the contemporary Peruvian art period held between 1950-2005. A Web platform that allows the interrelation between the Peruvian critics of art,
On 2005 started post grade studies on ALP: practical reflections in the field of intervention on the public space, installations and sonorous installations at HEAD Geneva. And in 2006 joined the CCC post grade program on Critical Curatorial and Cybermedias, HEAD Geneva
http://www.piedepagina.org
Sylvain Froidevaux
1960 born in Porrentruy (Switzerland), lives and works in Geneva
Sylvain Froidevaux is anthropologist, with a psychopedagogy degree and a Ph-D in Social Sciences of Lausanne University. In the 1980’s and 1990’s he lived in Burkina Faso (West Africa) where he led several researches on urban sociability, cultural change, habitat and informal economy. His major thesis concerns african knowledge after a long relationship with an old african healer. From 2001 to 2003, Sylvain Froidevaux initiated researches and cultural projects in Switzerland and Africa. He founded the collective Creageo focused on anthropology, geography and african history. In 2002, he led a survey for the International Red Cross Committee (ICRC) on the question of death and mourning in various religions in the world through the context of war. From 2004 to 2005, he collaborates with the Geneva Museum of Ethnography where he performed several exhibitions and publications. In 2006, he organized a project of “moving libraries” (bibliothèques mobiles) in the popular districts of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) in collaboration with an association of local students and artists. In the frame of CCC program at the Geneva University of art and design (HEAD), he currently collaborates with international artistic projects and leads investigations through publications and video performances on the role of art and fiction in anthropology.
Luz Muñoz Rebolledo
1967 born in Santiago de Chile, lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland.
Works and studies in Chile until 2006, during her professional career she has developed works in cultural management and research in the field of visual arts. Between 1998 and 1999 coordinated the Gallery of Art “Enrico Bucci”, in Santiago Chile, a space to exhibit young emergent Chilean artists. In the year 2000 begins her research in the fields of contemporary Chilean art, integrating the curatorial team of Justo Pastor Mellado for the exhibition “Chile 100 years” which took place at the National Museum of Fine Arts, Santiago de Chile. Later developed an investigation on artists' texts and critical texts between the years 1973-2000 in Chile, a project financed by the government of Chile, the results of this work can be seen in www.textosdearte.cl. In 2004 becomes a member of the Chilean research team for the project “Documents of 20th Century Latin American and Lationa Art” a digital file and publication project held at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA, now directed by the curator Maricarmen Ramirez. The same year takes part in the film production of the Spanish documentary “Switch off”, on the hydroelectric megahead office Ralco constructed by the Endesa Spanish company on thousands of hectares of territory occupied by mapuche-pehuenche indigenous people, www.switchoffmovie.com During 2005, she developed a pasantia in Barcelona city concerning “Projects Culturas de Archivo”, directed by Jorge Blasco, www.culturasdearchivo.org She was also invited to coordinate the files research area, of the first Center of Documentation of the Arts, at the Cultural Center Palace, in Santiago of Chile, www.ccplm.cl until her travel to Geneva city in September, 2006. Now lives in Geneva and studies at HEAD a CCC postgrade on Critical Curatorial and Cybermedias.
Nathalia Rodriguez
1977 born in Bogota (Colombia), lives and works in Geneva.
Ten years of musical formation, five years in the field of printmaking techniques (Colombia) and two years in the intervention in the public space (Geneva), constitute the reasons that have allowed me to develop my work around the one question: how people perceive their daily space, which are the categories of classification that they settle down with, given that these are created in concomitance with the political, economic, social and cultural realities of the context.
Tilo Steireif
1969, born in Lausanne lives and works in Lausanne, Switzerland
In my work, I try to highlight social and cultural contemporary stakes on the basis of local realities. Up to now, I was interested in movements of populations, the ideology and the policy of patrimony, the economic changes of the minors’ lives in Europe, the modes of representation of the political actors and also in the question of the institutionalization of the artist. After having established a photographic inventory of the housing of exiled war migrants, I did researchwork on the ideology and the policy of patrimony (2001 and 2003, with Nicolas Savary). Between 2003 and 2006, I carried out an photographic investigation on the question of worker’s housing of the new Alpine transversal in Switzerland (the new Gotthard tunnel will be the longest tunnel in the world with 57 km). Since 2005, my interest has been devoted to the modes of representations of Swiss politicians (also with Nicolas Savary) and the green border as a space of desires, desires of earthly paradise, of a free constitutionnal sphere and of evasion.
Gabriella Löffel
1972 Born in Bern, Lives and works in Geneva and Bern Switzerland
With the " millimétré " drawings project, Gabriela Loeffel continues her investigation on the space given to journalistic photographs. This field was already the starting point of her work “oreiller sur écoute ” in 2003. These pillows invite the viewer to nestle close to hear news sounds of the world actuality. On them are embroidered press images transformed through the esthetics of stitching thereby questioning styles and domains usually linked to gender related codes. Deconstructing the roles and duties attributed to gender is a recurring theme in the artist’s videos.
Lukas Mettler
1979 born in Langnau (Bern), Switzerland. Lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland
Apprenticeship as a architecture design drawer at Atelier Oï, La Neuveville, Switzerland (1998-2002), followed by the graphic design preparatory course at École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (2002-2003). Since 2003 has studied multimedia art at ESBA - École supérieure des beaux-arts de Genève. Member of Cellule GmbH, a design and architecture collective in Zürich.
Elia Buletti
1974 Born in Lugano, lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland
In 1996 I lived for a little less than one year in Italy, in Bologna. I lived in a street called Zamboni dividing my room with Andrea, an Italian boy whose father had made resistance with the partisans and appeared between the characters of a book of Calvino under his name of battle, which was Tritolo. My love for the electronic music, and the idea to produce some, start in this room, the head lost in the vinyls of Andrea, by listening to English IDM published by labels like Warp or Rephlex. One day I bought my first sampler and I started the production of a remarkable number of cassettes which did have the only goal to be given to the friends like “report” of my afternoon passed between the cables. The sampler had only 16 seconds of recording, after some time I added a computer to my tools, that also enabled me to surf on the Internet and to reinforce the soft feeling of freely being able to be locked up in a room by producing odd noises and in the same time to belong to a generous community of friends with the same slope. I like this idea of a loneliness which is finalized to others people. I leave sometimes the room to play my sounds into public, sometimes like pure music others like element of an installation or performance. With Jonathan Frigeri and other friends I am now starting the netlabel “Das Andere Selbst” (www.zonoff.net/jukebox).
Manuel Schmalstieg
1976 born in Geneva, lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland.
Manuel Schmalstieg operates on the borderline between video, performance and software art. After experimentation in the fields of graphic novel, animation film and audio production that he carried out during his studies in Geneva (ESBA/atelier zero1) and Krakow (Academy of fine arts/animated film department), he turns at the end of the nineties towards realtime video. Through his performances and installations, he explores issues of surveillance, control and censorship, confronting the viewer with uncomfortable truths and concealed motivations. URLS: www.bzzp.biz | www.x-xx---x.info | www.n3krozoft.com
