[-empyre-] goodbye to Making Sense, Welcome Melinda Rackam

[Renate Ferro]

Many thanks to Misha, Steve and Kelena for finishing out the last week of
Contextualizing Making Sense.  I think all three of your posts brought out
the incredibly delicate balance that cross-disciplinary collaboration
requires. In any collaboration,  given a set of participants, each one must
bring his\ her own expertise and engaged critical voice to the process.

In merging our practical and theoretical interests, Tim and I have
collaborated in  both creative and curatorial endeavors each bringing a
different perspective to our joint ventures.  While I tend to envision the
practical as an artist, Tim's work as a writer and theoretician brings to
the mix a more theoretical voice. What this merger allows for is a
relational space where  theory and practice conjoin at times and at others
resist.

*As artist, writer, curator, teachers our practices often originate in the
seeds of instinct, whim, and hunch and then proceed through  play and work
via research, reading, discussion, investigation, often ending up in
reflective critical analysis only to return to the fold of our instincts
again. It is our collective observation that the  process of  “Making
Sense”  enfolds pleats of uneasiness, questioning, and restlessness. The
destabilization of this process incites and excites us to flow through the
momentum and energy at certain junctures NOT Making Sense that push us
through the flow of productive processes.*

**
*

Our collaborative work has long been influenced by broad reflection on
matters of performativity especially as it relates to politics, philosophy,
psychoanalysis, memory and fantasy, as well as the broader social paradigms
of technology, culture, and art.
What’s been exciting to both of us to realize how each of our various
interdisciplinary interfaces combining practice and theory has led us to do
such projects as moderators of  -empyre soft-skinned space.
*

This month on empyre, In examining the collective notion of Sense, our
mission was to provide an  opportunity where the virtual space of empyre and
the real spaces of the Pompidou, Paris and the participants of the Making
Sense Colloquium would collectively consider the possibilities of the act of
making sense through an inclusive understanding and the broader
notion/translation making sensorium a space where practice and theory
converge as performance and space (both virtual and real). Through this
inclusive reflection that was simultaneously  practical and theoretical we
attempted to collectively move between making and thinking art and
philosophy. We thank all of our guests who participated in our discussion
this month for their generosity in sharing their ideas.
This morning as we close our discussion we are writing from Berkeley,
California where we have been enjoying a visit with Ashley Ferro-Murray.  We
travelled to the West coast to see her collaborative performance with CNMAT
musicians, David Coll and Rama Godfried who worked with six performers to
create a relational space where movement and sound, real-time interaction
via sensors with networked information made Noisense. The mediatized space
of Noisesense, enabled a sensorium of spectacle, sound, movement, and
theoretical thought that presented to the audience spaces where critical
thought and engagement could network out from the performance.  Informed and
carefully crafted collaborations will generate the fruit of theoretical
thinking and from our point of view that is when these sorts of experiments
do lend themselves to successful marriages of practice and theory.

With that both Tim and I sign off for the month and welcome Melinda Rackam
who will introduce the November discussion on empyre.  Our apologies to her
in closing a bit late.  We look forward to her upcoming discussion.

Renate and Tim
___
empyre forum
empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre

[-empyre-] Welcome to Manifest Dynasty

[Melinda Rackham]

hello -empyre-

Great to be back here with this month's online discussion on Producing  
Exhibiting and Curating New Media Arts in China and delighted to have  
as a guest facilitator Edward Sanderson, a writer and cultural  
producer from the UK now living and working in Beijing. Edward was co- 
founder and curator of Beijing's CPU:798, and is currently undertaking  
a series of interviews and articles about artists working on  
alternative strategies in the Beijing art world.


We will have a diversity of guests from China and beyond joining us  
this month - artists, curators and scholars - some already named in  
the publicity, and several other surprise guests. Our discussants will  
be introduced over the first two weeks of November to share with the  
list their particular knowledge and experience of China's media art  
scene – such as issues of intercultural translation, eg artists and  
curators working in and out of China; the development of the media art  
networks, exhibitions and discussions; and their perspective on and of  
the place of new media in the Chinese context.


While our discussants have been asked to formally post to the list, we  
are also interrested in your experiences, questions and perspectives.  
This is an open discussion so please contribute your thoughts,  
theories and things. We have a limited facility to translate between  
Mandarin and English.


This months discussion grew from a project I curated in Beijing  
earlier this year - DreamWorlds: Australian Moving Image http://www.dreamworlds.com.au 
. It was commissioned as  part of The Year of Australian Culture in  
China - a cultural exchange model strategically used in most nations'  
foreign relations. Dreamworlds introduced diverse genres of Australian  
Media Art to Chinese audiences outside the art gallery context,  
exhibiting throughout the day and evening on massive urban screens in  
Beijing and Xi’an. During this time in Beijing I met our guest  
facilitator Edward Sanderson who was a great supporter and promoter of  
Dreamworlds within China, and I got a sense of the immensity of China,  
its technical sophistication, and the plethora of cultural activity.  
However I didnt feel like I had really even touched the tip of the  
great Media Art iceberg.


A common question I received from journalists was around the lack of  
high profile media arts and the conservative nature of Chinese  
contemporary art. If its true that a new Gallery or Museum opens in  
China every 3 days, and as Chinese Art currently commands the global  
market, where are the internationally well known and shown Media  
Artists? Over the last decade we have seen a trickle of Chinese Media  
Art in Western Europe, the Americas and Australia, the most widely  
known artist perhaps being Feng Mengbo. However in the last few years  
the media art and artists flourishing in China are increasingly  
present in arenas like Transmediale Festival in Berlin and featured in  
the Italian Neural Magazine's Digital China Issue.


As this simultaneous Chinese infux and out pouring of Chinese Media  
Art accelerates it is timely on -empyre- to look at how (or how not)  
exhibitions, symposia or publications decode across cultural, gender  
and political bounds to both Chinese and Non-Chinese audiences. We  
hope to explore, amongst other topics, how digital practices operate  
in a regulated exhibition system; and the emergences, frictions and  
dialogues between artists and curators within contemporary Chinese  
distributed and digital practices.


I would also like to introduce our first guest - Michael Yuen, an  
Australian born artist who works and lives between Australia and  
China. Michael was instrumental in this discussion as he initiated and  
produced the Dreamworlds exhibition, while continuing his busy  
practice as an artist and art interventionist. Michael is also the co- 
founder of the Donkey Institute of Contemporary Art, an art space  
travelling Beijing's streets on the back of a donkey!


Thank you for joining us at -empyre- in November to engage in critical  
inquiry of the complexity of media art production, curation,  
exhibition and networks in China.


warm regards,
   Melinda

--Melinda Rackham
--Adelaide, Australia
--http://www.subtle.net


--Edward Sanderson
--Beijing, China
--http://blog.escdotdot.com

Edward is a writer and cultural producer living in Beijing. Since  
moving to China in 2007, he has worked with many Chinese and  
international artists and arts-related organizations on exhibitions  
and events. Edward was co-founder and curator of Beijing's CPU:798 (a  
photography and new media project space in the 798 Art District). In  
2009, Edward and his partners closed the gallery space and re-launched  
as CPU:PRO, an arts consultancy acting as an extension and replacement  
to a gallery space. CPU:PRO is designed to work around the  
restrictions of a physical gallery space giving freedom to