Re: Dodomenta, Diary from Kassel

[Inke Arns]

Thanks, Felix, Jo, and Brian, for your observations —

for those who read German (those who don’t can get it machine translated), 
here’s a very interesting article by Joseph Croitoru, historian, who looks into 
the details of the „Tokyo Reels“ — 

"In Kassel, a well-known snowball effect has just started again. This time it 
concerns the project Tokyo Reels by the Palestinian collective Subversive Film. 
As in previous rounds, in the case of the film series the critics had 
apparently not bothered to find out any background information - nor, it seems, 
had the panel of experts convened to deal with the anti-Semitism scandal. (…)

https://www.hna.de/kultur/documenta/pauschale-vorwuerfe-so-nicht-haltbar-91789526.html
 

 

Also, the interview with Tania Bruguera (again, in German) in the art magazine 
Monopol is worth reading:

https://www.monopol-magazin.de/interview-tanja-bruguera-documenta-kuba-instar-antisemitismus-debatte-wir-kuenstler-wurden-nicht-fair-behandelt
 

 

All the best, Inke

www.hmkv.de 




> Am 15.09.2022 um 22:56 schrieb Felix Stalder :
> 
> 
> 
> On 15.09.22 08:56, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:
> 
>> Folks, for those interested in a look at the discussions around documenta 
>> fifteen from outside the lumbung (dare I say, bubble), one
>> way to start is this interview (in German) with the chairwoman of the
>> scientific committee which is the latest focus of attention:
>> https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/documenta-debakel-wie-gehen-wir-mit-diskussionsverweigerung-um-dlf-kultur-ed86198f-100.html
> 
> It seems like this bridge has already been burned, from both sides.
> 
> The curators certainly made mistakes by not understanding the particular 
> German context and the way the anti-semitism charge has been weaponized by 
> the right (Netanyahu's toxic legacy). Still, I understand that they have 
> little interest in having to submit everything to a German board for approval.
> 
> I'm in Kassel at the moment and I happened to see the films that kicked off 
> this latest round of recriminations. I didn't think they needed 
> "contextualization" because the context has been made really clear. They are 
> historical documents from the international solidarity movement, particularly 
> from a solidarity group in Tokyo. They do not represent an impartial 
> historical analysis, but (mostly) voices of people in pain.
> 
> If you read German and want to get an impression of how the weaponization of 
> anti-semitism works, just see how the HWK's very considered, very 
> sophisticated conference "hijacking memory" (June 2022) was attacked. This is 
> not about finding common ground, or better arguments. This is about silencing 
> your opponent no matter how.
> 
> https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/kultur-vergnuegen/hijacking-memory-wie-eine-konferenz-die-engpaesse-deutscher-debatten-aufzeigt-li.245534
> 
> While this has dominated the media sphere, on the ground, the exhibition is 
> very impressive and truly a break from the template of the "global art show".
> 
> Problems that have kept the art system and theory busy for decades -- the 
> relationship between art and life, or between engaged content and alienated 
> form -- have turned out to be largely irrelevant. And a very different notion 
> of art emerges, doing art, with a small 'a', as a necessity for collective 
> survival, for inventing and constructing a different world, as a way of 
> seeing a world after its breakdown, a way of relating to the history, 
> present, and the future.
> 
> What also struck me is that many of the works, and the overall concept, are 
> very sophisticated, but not in a theoretical way. As far as theory is 
> concerned, I reached the lumbung overdose quite quickly, but then again, this 
> concept is so vague, general, and ubiquitous that it manages to integrate 
> very disparate practices into a common framework centered around open-ended 
> processes and the values of collaboration.
> 
> So there is a strong common thread -- a hands-on way of thinking, a rough 
> workshop aesthetic -- that runs through the entire show, and, for me, it 
> works quite well. The wealth of detail and contexts, of histories that are 
> not familiar to a western art audience (or, at least not to me), is totally 
> overwhelming, but that is the world outside the globalized duty-free zones.
> 
> I couldn't relate to everything and the lack of engagement with technology 
> and industry felt a bit retro, but the focus was clearly the artistic 
> production of local solidarity movements and minority groups.
> 
> Still, a lot of works that are really moving. I cannot speak much to 
> discussions, workshops, and other more engaging formats, as it seems the 
> energy of the show has dissipa

House of Mirrors: Artificial Intelligence as Phantasm, 09 April – 31 July 2022, HMKV, Dortmund/Germany

[Inke Arns]

Dear Nettime,

I realise that I have been silent for such a long time here on this list - and 
decided to change this. This is also thanks to the great live discussion we had 
yesterday with Adrian Daub (Stanford University, author of “What Tech Calls 
Thinking. An Inquiry into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley”, 2020) 
and Jonas Lüscher (author of “Kraft”, 2017) on the occasion of the exhibition 
"House of Mirrors: Artificial Intelligence as Phantasm”. 

Please have a look at HMKV’s exhibition that was curated by Marie Lechner, 
Francis Hunger and me. I am including the detailed concept below.

You can download the entire 200+ page publication as a free PDF via 
https://www.hmkv.de/shop-en/shop-detail/house-of-mirrors-artificial-intelligence-as-phantasm-magazin-en.html

Here you can find more information 
https://www.hmkv.de/exhibition/exhibition-detail/house-of-mirrors-artificial-intelligence-as-phantasm.html
 

And here’s Kaput's 12 min. video about the show with the curators as talking 
heads https://youtu.be/StfAcV1H1Vs 

On view until 31 July 2022! Enjoy.

All the best,
Inke

PS: Please join us for the online symposium on “AI Infrastructures for Civil 
Society and the Arts“ on Friday, 24 June 2022, 09:00 – 12:00, 13:00 – 15:00 
(Berlin time) - 
https://www.hmkv.de/events/events-details/symposium-ai-infrastructures-for-civil-society-and-the-arts.html
 
<https://www.hmkv.de/events/events-details/symposium-ai-infrastructures-for-civil-society-and-the-arts.html>
 


+++


House of Mirrors:
Artificial Intelligence as Phantasm

09 April – 31 July 2022

HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein
at the Dortmunder U, level 3
Dortmund, Germany
www.hmkv.de


ABSTRACT

The exhibition House of Mirrors: Artificial Intelligence as Phantasm takes the 
common clichés about AI as an opportunity to talk about issues such as hidden 
human labor, algorithmic bias/discrimination, the problem of categorization and 
classification, and our fantasies about AI. It asks whether (and how) it is 
possible for us to reclaim agency in this context. Featuring more than 20 
artistic works by international artists, the exhibition is divided into seven 
thematic chapters. The scenography of the exhibition is reminiscent of a giant 
house of mirrors.

— “Enter the hall of mirrors, which reflects human reality, sometimes in direct 
reflections, sometimes in a distorting mirror, sometimes through a glass pane 
that promises transparency or a semi-transparent mirror that reflects on one 
side and is translucent on the other.” (Inke Arns, Marie Lechner, Francis 
Hunger – curators) —

ARTISTS: Aram Bartholl, Pierre Cassou-Noguès, Stéphane Degoutin, Sean Dockray, 
Jake Elwes, Anna Engelhardt, Nicolas Gourault, Adam Harvey + Jules LaPlace, 
Libby Heaney, Lauren Huret, Zheng Mahler, Lauren Lee McCarthy, Simone C 
Niquille, Elisa Giardina Papa, Julien Prévieux, Anna Ridler, RYBN, Sebastian 
Schmieg, Gwenola Wagon, Conrad Weise, Mushon Zer-Aviv

CURATORS: Inke Arns, Francis Hunger, Marie Lechner

PUBLICATION: Inke Arns, Francis Hunger, Marie Lechner (eds.), House of Mirrors: 
Artificial Intelligence as Phantasm, HMKV exhibition magazine 2022/1, with 
texts by Inke Arns, Adam Harvey, Francis Hunger and Marie Lechner (design: e o 
t, Berlin), Dortmund: Kettler, 2022, available as a free PDF download via 

PROGRAMME OF EVENTS: Between April and July 2022, numerous film screenings, 
lectures, panel discussions, workshops and a symposium will take place as part 
of the exhibition House of Mirrors: Artificial Intelligence as Phantasm. (See 
page 12)


An exhibition by the HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein

The exhibition is funded by:
Kulturstiftung des Bundes

Funded by:
Die Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien

The exhibition is funded by:
Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen

The HMKV is funded by:
Dortmunder U - Zentrum für Kunst und Kreativität
Stadt Dortmund
Ministerium für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen

The event programme is funded by:
Stiftung Kunstfonds
Neustart Kultur

Media partners:
Kaput Magazin für Insolvenz und Pop
jungle.world


+++


PRESS RELEASE

House of Mirrors:
Artificial Intelligence as Phantasm

09 April – 31 July 2022

HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein
at the Dortmunder U, level 3
Dortmund, Germany
www.hmkv.de


DETAILED CONCEPT

In the popular imagination, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is frequently 
misunderstood as a God-like entity that makes “just” and “objective” decisions. 
However, the term Artificial Intelligence is misleading. Neither are the 
systems "intelligent" (the artist Hito Steyerl therefore speaks of "artificial 
stupidity"), nor are they "artificial" in many cases. The term "pattern 
recognition" is more appropriate – not only because it avoids the notion of 
“intelligence”, but because it describes more precisely what AI is. Because 
like a sniffer 

Digital Folklore, exhibition at HMKV, Dortmund (Germany), until 1 November 2015

[Inke Arns]

Dear Nettime,

our exhibition ?Digital Folklore?, curated by Olia Lialina (Stuttgart)
and Dragan Espenschied (New York), has been extended until 1 November
2015! If you happen to be in the region, please come by and check out
this amazing project.

All the best,
Inke

--


DIGITAL FOLKLORE
HMKV Dortmund (Germany)
25 July - 1 November 2015
http://www.hmkv.de

`Computer and net culture are only marginally determined by technological 
innovation. After all, it is irrelevant who has invented the microchip, the 
mouse, the TCP/IP protocol or the World Wide Web, or what was the rationale 
behind them. What matters, rather, is who is using them, and to what avail. If 
computer technology has any cultural significance, it is indeed solely owed to 
its users. Yet their own creative efforts, from shiny-stars live wallpapers to 
pictures of cute cats or rainbow gradients, are mostly derided as kitsch or 
general cultural waste. Digital Folklore argues that this apparent aesthetic 
clutter, created by users for users, is the most important, beautiful and 
widely misunderstood language of New Media.?
http://digitalfolklore.org/

The world?s first exhibition around ?digital folklore? is based on the archive 
One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age, which comprises the remains of 381,934 GeoCities 
homepages made by amateurs in the pre-industrial era of the World Wide Web. 
GeoCities, the first free web hosting service, was created in 1994. Only five 
years later, it sold to Yahoo!, then an Internet giant, which eventually shut 
it down in 2009. Although GeoCities holds an eminent place in the short history 
of the WWW as one of its most visited servers at one point, it was short-lived 
and has already fallen into oblivion. All that is left are the legends and 
rituals surrounding it.

Among the 28 million+ files ? which were hastily copied a few days before total 
deletion ? are user-built personal websites, fan, mourning, recipe, arts and 
crafts, computer game and domestic pet pages, rotating ?Welcome To My Homepage? 
and ?Under Construction? signs, shiny-stars wallpapers and jittery animated 
characters. For the purpose of this exhibition, these and many other 
manifestations have been digitally restored and reinterpreted by artists.

An exhibition by the GeoCities Research Institute and HMKV.

Digital Folklore is a sequel to the immensely popular exhibition ?Jetzt helfe 
ich mir selbst? (Now I Can Help Myself) - The 100 best Internet video tutorials 
shown at HMKV in 2014:
http://www.hmkv.de/_en/programm/programmpunkte/2014/Ausstellungen/2014_Jetzt_helfe_ich_mir_selbst.php

Digital Folklore gathers for the first time works inspired by GeoCities by the 
net artist and folklorist 
Olia Lialina (@GIFmodel), 
the artist and digital conservator Dragan Espenschied (@despens), 
and their students from Merz Akademie. 
They are supported by the head of the Archive Team 
Jason Scott (@textfiles), 
the US artist Joel Holmberg (@dotkalm) 
and the expert for Chinese net culture Gabriele de Seta (@SanNuvola).

CURATORS: 
Prof. Olia Lialina (Stuttgart) and Dragan Espenschied (New York)

Admission to the exhibition is free - as AOL-free minutes!

MORE INFORMATION:
http://www.hmkv.de/_en/programm/programmpunkte/2015/Ausstellungen/2015_DIGI_Digitale_Folklore.php

IN COOPERATION WITH:
Merz Akademie - Hochschule f?r Gestaltung, Kunst und Medien, Stuttgart

MAIN SPONSORS OF HMKV:
Dortmunder U ? Center for Art and Creativity
Cultural Department of the City of Dortmund
Ministry for Family, Children, Youth, Culture and Sport of the State of North 
Rhine-Westphalia

CULTURAL PARTNER:
WDR 3

MEDIA PARTNERS:
ARTE Creative
bodo
Ruhrgestalten



--
Dr. Inke Arns
Artistic Director
Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV) at the Dortmunder U
Leonie-Reygers-Terrasse, 44137 Dortmund 
Office: Hoher Wall 15, 44137 Dortmund, Germany
T + 49 - 231 - 496642-0
F + 49 - 231 - 496642-29
www.hmkv.de
www.facebook.com/hartwaremedienkunstverein
twitter.com/hmkv_de

HMKV's Video of the Month
NEOZOON: Buck Fever (2012)
1 - 31 October 2015

Digital Folklore
HMKV, Dortmund
25 July - 1 November 2015 (extended!)


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Save the Date: Conference "Every Step You T

[Inke Arns]

   Dear Nettime,

   here's some information about our upcoming conference in Dortmund (Ruhr
   area, Germany) - perhaps some of you might be interested in joining us!
   Dortmund is easy to reach from most European cities ...

   All the best,

   Inke

   ///
   Conference
   >EVERY STEP YOU TAKE< - ART AND SOCIETY IN THE DATA AGE
   12-15 November 2015, Dortmund, Germany
   A project by medienwerk.nrw, office located at HMKV
   - Lectures / Panel Discussions / Film Screenings / Performances /
   Workshops -
   12/13 November, 2015: Dortmunder U - Centre for Art and Creativity
   (U-Cinema & Foyer)
   14/15 November, 2015: Schauspiel Dortmund / Municipal Theatre of
   Dortmund (Theatre bar "Institut" & Studio)
   The international conference >Every Step You Take< - Art and Society in
   the Data Age deals with the utopias and dystopias interconnected with
   new technologies of automated collection, storage and analysis of vast
   amounts of data. A feeling of uneasiness is being articulated in
   numerous scientific and artistic positions in view of current
   developments in our digital and networked media reality. The public
   debate on >Big Data<, surveillance, transparency and data protection,
   as well as individual user behaviour in social networks are deeply
   ambivalent: the promises and temptations of technological progress --
   safety, predictability, optimisation, convenience -- come with societal
   and personal consequences. In all their complexity, these consequences
   often remain intangible and abstract.
   The conference >Every Step You Take< presents positions of media art,
   theory and digital culture reacting to these current technological and
   societal developments. A central question is how current artistic
   strategies are able to visualise invisible, immaterial and highly
   complex processes, thereby describing the present technological changes
   and making their consequences comprehensible. A second focus will be
   the societal, economic and political ideas that have inscribed
   themselves in the way new media functions: How do these ideas and
   rationale reproduce in everyday use? And how much space is there for a
   critical analysis and emancipation in the digital realm?
   The conference programme includes lectures, panel discussions, a film
   programme curated by Florian Wüst, a performance of the live film
   "Minority Report" at Schauspiel Dortmund (14 November, 19:30 h), a
   literary reading by German novelist Leif Randt (15 November, Schauspiel
   Dortmund), and a Maker Lounge with workshops e.g. on e-mail encryption
   in the Dortmunder U foyer.
   Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV) presents in parallel with the
   conference the exhibition >(Artificial Intelligence) Digitale Demenz<,
   curated by Thibaut de Ruyter, at Dortmunder U.
   Confirmed conference speakers: Inke Arns, Dirk Baecker, Alain Bieber,
   Mercedes Bunz, Cécile B. Evans, Paul Feigelfeld, Matthew Fuller, Louis
   Henderson, Constanze Kurz, Boaz Levin, Joanne McNeil, Jennifer Lyn
   Morone, Luciana Parisi, Matteo Pasquinelli, Peng! Collective, Maral
   Pourkazemi, Leif Randt, Hans Ulrich Reck, Manfred Schneider, Jennifer
   Whitson, Florian Wüst, Pinar Yoldas, and others
   Film programme with contributions by: Nadav Assor, Jürgen Brügger &
   Jörg Haaßengier, Bureau of Inverse Technology, Emma Charles, Hellmuth
   Costard & Jürgen Ebert, Norman Cowie, Stéphane Degoutin & Gwenola
   Wagon, Omer Fast, Harun Farocki, Walter Koch, Steffen Köhn, Jen Liu,
   Christian Niccoli, Ridley Scott
   Film programme curated by Florian Wüst.
   Conference Topics:
   Why Look at Algorithms? Agency in the Data Stack
   "Evil Media?" (Keynote)
   The Quantified Self and the Future of Labour
   The Materiality of the Cloud and Planetary Computation
   Transparency
   Sensitive Machines and Affective Computing
   Nobody knows you're a dog. The future of the digital identity
   Digital Border Control
   Liquid Surveillance
   FURTHER INFORMATION AND DETAILED PROGRAMME soon at:
   http://www.medienwerk-nrw.de/en/event/everystepyoutake
   FREE ADMISSION to the conference (lectures, panel discussions, film
   programme).
   EXCEPTION: Theatre production "Minority Report" at Schauspiel Dortmund
   (November 14). Further information & tickets: www.theaterdo.de
   OPENING RECEPTION on Thursday, November 12, 2015, 18:00 h, Dortmunder U
   (Cinema/ground floor):
   Welcoming address
   Keynote lecture by Hans Ulrich Reck (Rector Academy of Media Arts
   Cologne)
   Film programme I: Living Data, introduction by Florian Wüst
   The opening lecture will be held in German. All other conference events
   are in English language.
   ADDRESSES:
   Dortmunder U
   Leonie-Reygers-Terrasse
   44137 Dortmund
   Schauspiel Dortmund
   Hiltropwall 15
   44137 Dortmund
   DIRECTIONS:
   www.dortmunder-u.de/anfahrt
   w