Sencer Vardarman -- presents Berlinerpool at the tmp.deluxe project that is curated by Mathieu Dagorn and Nina Korolewski :: a curatorial platform, and so on.

Sencer has done a great job with this berlinerpool -- a process of collective action -- 100 artists, a web site, an excellent clearing-house mailing list of cultural events and calls for participation, an archive, events, shows, etc. he's a former student of mine from ifkik. we talk about feedback, fundraising, MONEY, and funding for a room.

end of the goddamn month. wouldn't mind it if there were no distinguishing variations in the days of the week, months of the year, days in the month. or maybe just a daily number, sequential, starting from the beginning of the millineum. or so. to day is a waste, stream didn't work to August; testing before that didn't work to Pit; and a trip to HKW doesn't solve anything at all, scheisser!

and 75 years ago, Hitler came to power. doch...

I heavily edited the original English translation of the manifesto for Roman and Alexei back in November, and so, here it is, as unveiled at Transmediale 08...

Electroboutique: Media Art 2.0

Today, when any critical artistic statement is drained of its power within the rigid frameworks of the unilateral capitalist world, a critical artist can no longer create while contemptuously looking down at commercial art and design that is governed exclusively by market laws.

At the same time as it becomes smarter and more refined, capitalism intrudes into most revolutionary, autonomous, and secluded areas of human activity. This is not to suggest that avant-garde art creation always stood in opposition to capitalism. The modernists, taking part in the evolution of design, worked in factories developing furniture and fabrics in order to bring art to the masses. Parallel to the evolution of Dada, the ready-made, and later, pop art, the theory and philosophy of art and culture contemplated the balance between the poles of capitalism and art, unique and mass-produced objects, high and low culture, professional and amateur, practical and dysfunctional. As the newest weapon of capitalism, information technologies dictate new social and cultural contexts and within these, uncover new challenges.

Our answer to the dilemma: Media Art 2.0

Media Art 2.0 goes beyond the limits of new media art

New media art today consists overwhelmingly of one-of-a-kind works presented by the authors themselves at festivals and specialized exhibitions. As a rule, such pieces are high-maintenance and complex in configuration -- and thus are destined to remain in a media art ghetto. We propose all-in-one plug-and-play solutions. Media Art 2.0 presents art objects as technological products that are ready to be consumed here and now by anyone.

Media Art 2.0 is market-friendly art

We produce a limited number of copies (like Ferrari) and sell them at affordable prices (like Sony). This is possible because we develop our own reliable electronic devices and thus do not depend on overly complex multi-functional digital systems. Each piece has a unique edition number and the authentic signatures of its authors. We also offer limited lifetime warranties for our products.

Media Art 2.0 goes beyond the know-how of IT corporations

These corporations are not capable of transcending the pragmatism of their products. While attempting to enrich their products with artistic qualities, corporate designers follow the path of banal adornment -- decoration with gold, Swarowski crystals, and diamonds -- which raises the price and renders the products "exclusive." Such an approach does not make a mobile phone or an MP3 player a work of art. Limited lifetime of electronics contradicts the apparently "eternal" value of the decorative materials.

Media Art 2.0 is the answer to the stagnation of the art market

It proposes a solution when the art market acquiesces to the demands of traditional art forms and is incapable of digesting truly contemporary artistic ideas. Our products harmoniously combine actual art, up-to-date techno-culture, design, and media art. We return to the roots of the avant-garde and occupy our own niche in the system of capitalist production and consumption. We address advanced consumers who are not satisfied by mass products -- whether cool design gadgets or the endlessly reproduced traditional art forms.

Media Art 2.0 is the avant-garde of today

We return to art the things that design borrowed from art at the beginning of the 20th century: the search for new form and content; the artistic experiment as play; and the joy of everyday life. We live in a world of visual interfaces. Televisions, print advertisements, politics, shop-windows, show-business, internet services, bank systems are primarily interfaces whose task is to shape the process of information transfer and the translation of ideas. Working with visual interfaces, we make them visible and tangible. We uncover the structures of today's world. This approach fills our products with a critical charge. In answering the challenges of today, we flush clean the media channels and establish new standards. By infiltrating public spaces and private homes, we bring art and alternative aesthetics into people's everyday lives.

-- Aristarkh Chernyshev, Roman Minaev, Alexei Shulgin.
Moscow, June-September 2007

busy day, at home online all the time -- a performance to check out with Helen Varley Jamieson as hosted by Annie Abrahams' Breaking Solitude project. along with some stream testing with the backyard radio people for the moving forests event later this week (part of Transmediale). meeting Loki for the first time in awhile for a decent conversation. and otherwise haeavy multi-tasking that characterizes a day like this -- sending out to local nodes my new contact info here in Berlin, trying to figure out when to see people where, and on and on. a brief foray out, taking the long way to another grocery store, walking in increasingly long circles to check out the neighborhood. haven't found the organic food store yet. a bakery, but no organic grocers. no Turkish shops either. this is definitely different than other neighborhoods that I've experienced in Berlin -- it is in the former East (ever-lingering eau-de-coal-fired-furnaces in the air) -- although many of the apartment blocks have been re-furbished, there is a different vibe. hope to more specifically explore that in the next weeks.

I read with interest this reaction from Malawi from Martin Lucas on the recent iDC list discussion about Nicolas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. So I asked Martin if I could permanently host the text on neoscenes:

I have been reading with interest the discussion of the 'hundred-dollar laptop' and the One Laptop per Child initiative as I sit in Malawi, a small landlocked Southern African nation lodged between Mozambique, Zambia, and Tanzania. According to Wikipedia, the OLPC effort has its philosophical base in the idea that children with laptops will be able to do a certain kind of thinking that isn't possible without the computer - exploring certain areas - particularly in math and science where computer access offers a qualitatively superior learning experience. Making such machines available at low prices should allow developing countries to bridge the 'digital divide', and leapfrog learning. Countries that have signed on include Uruguay. India has given a definite no. Either way, the OLPC initiative is an aspect of 'development' even 'IT for Development.' How does the initiative square with the reality of a small African nation? ... more

tmp.deluxe. call for interest. huh? a large empty space inside a renovated neoclassic building with high ceilings and big windows. controlled on the U1 line by two smiling-but-thuggish youngsters merely flashing their KVB identity cards. as a performance or so. fortuitous to have the right ticket. €2.10 normal tariff. not so cheap. I'm committed to a single round-trip maximum per day. how to do this when a typical day might require getting to four destinations or so. anyway, make it to the tmp.space. they are asking for proposals. slowly the space fills. black clothes, I'm no exception other than wearing faded jeans. there are two of us sitting at a raw chip-board table. call for interest. two large stacks of bluish-white A4 paper, two glass ash trays, one with a few pens cradled in it, one empty. the ubiquitous stench of cigarettes. why is that smell the quintessence of stale? somebody changes the music -- electronica for death-metal or so. conversations trip along and don't seem to get through the aesthetic miasma that is anchored in the stacks of paper and the ashtrays. following the reasoning, following the line. and attempting to insert energy into the situation. having seen and been seen. and a child in a pink t-shirt wanders around. Papa! Papa! making space-testing sounds. to locate herself in the space. doing this, she locates all other receivers in themselves. placing them in the stiff reserve of their aesthetic opinions which they trade in measures, lubricated by wine. locative media while Rome Burns. or is this an exaggeration?

most guests are older than I. a few others are younger. one younger fellow sits at the table and opens a PowerBook and puts headphones on. with his Bionade by his side (the aesthetic anti-Coke backlash). with the stack of empty papers setting a slow gravitational pace at the center of the table. so far, I have not spoken. how long will this take? the little girl in pink finds a lime-green tennis ball that she carries around showing people from her grounded point-of-view. no one else has sat down. the pile of papers does not change. while this pen runs down. I'll have to get another. older women come in. or are they younger? I can't tell.

the blank papers keep the slackers away from the table. anti-gravity. good. occasionally searching for meaning or searching for the ultimately meaningful creative statement. finally one lady takes a sheet of the bluish-white bleached paper and sits down.

the little girl in pink is making the best performance: while the kultur-crowd chats loudly over beers and wine (or Bionade), she sings Papa, Papa, Papa, Papa, Papa!

some seriously hacked people. deeply enculturated. and dressed in ... black.

nobody else can cope with the stacks of paper -- too white, too clean, too sterile. the electronica starts up again in the background. the little girl in pink now yowls Paaaaaaaaaaaapaaaaaaaaaaa! in response, she is perfectly in tune with the ambient zeitgeist.

Miga doesn't show up yet. I'll not wait too much longer as more and more people start to smoke. scheisser! I thought the new smoking law came into effect at the beginning of the year that banned smoking in places like this. it stinks.

so, eventually the artist/curator comes up and introduces himself to to me, Mathieu, originally from Marseille, the Papa of the girl, Eloïse, in pink, and explains the situation, inviting me to make a proposal for the space. this is the kind of facilitation that I have been doing for 20 years. does it get old? possibly, when limited to socially selective instances. pure happenstance (indeterminacy) gives some impetus to try it again and again. it is a-historical. how is that? any human encounter has a potential that is defined at least partially by the moment in which it occurs. change is constant, so that two humans meeting at one moment are not the same a moment later. the potential energy of encounter is not bounded.

first night out in loud Berlin. ambient sound mix. and so it goes. (make an ambient stream from home. and go from there.) keeping to particular centers, comatose. while this feeding of thought goes on here (there, everywhere) where here this kind of creative action is valued: the artist who prescribes it gets paid at least a small amount. or makes some social currency. along much of my pathway, I practice in a void, without any cultural support. have to make the situations happen in socio-cultural situations that are aggravated by the presence of the autonomous zone. so it goes.

the day spent in busy multi-tasking. feeling how it is to make the first bowl of muesli for breakfast in this place; the first shit; after the first night of transient sleep; the first cut apple, omelet, fried garlic; teeth-brushing and shower; incense burned, video conference, ftp upload (check speed); the first walk around the block; shopping trip to the banal Kaiser grocery, the first peek of sunLight into the kitchen window.

and next, I have to make my budget to see how much I have to scrimp around. how much I can do in the social sphere. how much I need to slack at home and WRITE. well, slack is hardly the word.

this marks a shifting point for the travelog for the next weeks, months likely. landed in Berlin on this effort to focus in place on writing. very unsure of the outcome, but the attempt is necessary to explore whether or not text production is possible, and by social weight of text, whether social viability of the pathway is an illusion or a reality. success or failure will not particularly matter, but will determine future pathways. so, writing will be away from this forum mostly if I can maintain a disciplined way. it will also be away from email and mailing list. teaching will proceed as necessary, but with more limited virtual connection. if you are heading to Berlin, let me know, though, I won't be a total monk.

so, art's birthday is over and done with. for another year. number 1,000,045. broadcast from the basement, not really sure I had any audience anyway, another one of those events. I was using the waag.nl QuickTime server in Amsterdam, and for some reason it kept kicking me out every 9:59, so I have 6 chunks of the stream. can't decide whether just to glue them together into one sixty minute file or keep the pieces as they are. hmmmm. will get that happening later.

I'd rather jump into the share.dj projects, though, at least there are other folks out there online to chat with. the arts birthday crowd is too dispersed and anarchic to manage a single meeting place. pity, though, it would have been nice to chat with some of them. maybe next year. (later) finally tack an edit of the fragments together -- archive stream

no time to catch up with this stuff. in to the City to meet Josephine... we catch a show Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by the performance group 1927 at the PS122 theater/performance space. funky animations, gingerbread men, glittery eyes on stage, piano, singing, the Lodger, and the orange Imagine backpack with peace sign, while the show goes on ...

neoscenes cranks up the sonic streaming for the global 2008 art's birthday party with friends in Austria, Japan, Germany, Canada, France, Australia, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere.

Thursday, 17 January 2008, live web-mix -- this audio stream will be a sonic redux from the neoscenes.net archive of various birthday parties recorded during the last year as well as the travel necessary to get to them.

1800-1900 (GMT) London
10:00-11:00 PM PST (GMT-8) Los Angeles
1:00 - 2:00 PM EST (GMT-5) New York
2000-2100 CET (GMT+2) Helsinki
Friday 0500-0600 (GMT+11) Sydney

--> tune to the live stream -- rtsp://qt2.waag.org/birthday.sdp

ART'S BIRTHDAY is an annual event first proposed on January 17th 1963 by French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou. He suggested that 1,000,000 years ago "A man took a dry sponge and dropped it into a bucket full of water. Who that man was is not important. He is dead but art is alive." Filliou's ideas have inspired many artists until today.

After Filliou's death in 1987, some artists began to celebrate Art's Birthday with mail art, fax and slow scan TV events in the spirit of his concept of "The Eternal Network" or "La Fête permanente". The birthday parties took place in different cities across the world and artists were asked to bring birthday presents for Art -- works that could be shared over the network.

Art's Birthday Party has never been a formal event, but was always organized on an ad hoc basis through the network. Every participating location (and they are different every year) organizes its own party -- from a few friends in a private studio to a performance evening in a museum or gallery. Filliou's invention of Art's Birthday is wonderfully absurd and humorous in the typical Fluxus tradition of serious fun. So the global birthday party for art has always tried to be fun while paying homage to Robert Filliou's dream of The Eternal Network. -- Robert Adrian, 2005

skittles lounging around on the poof: yet another visit to the ski house. a slightly different crowd, but the same nice vibe. a little bit of new snow. and a leisurely day of putzing, and writing.

but then, later, googling boggle? finding that one Alan Allan Turoff was the inventor of the game, and he died in his 40's from some disease.

shit. just goes to show you.

then the task of optimizing Bill's digital office work flow. interesting procedure. keeps me swamped with mental and actual data/device organizing for a week.

can't think of a better place to be than here at the ski house with my godson Simon, my old friend Bill, and a few other folks. chorizo and eggs for breakfast, then everybody else heads out to ski. I stay at the house and do some snow-shoeing through the deep snow in the 'back 40,' and otherwise, chill out.

this is the way I enter the New Year, hat thanks to Zander.