Please join Not An Alternative, Eyebeam Art & Technology Center, and Upgrade! NY, this Thursday, June 10 for the opening of Re:Group: Beyond Models of Consensus, an exhibition which examines models of participation and participation as a model in art and activism.
During the UN Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen in December 2008, a collaboration venue for artists and climate activist groups was constructed to invite individuals to play “GOOD COP”. With access to the conference site growing increasingly restricted, GOOD COP aimed to make individual voices heard during the critical week of negotiations. The public was invited to come voice their own statements on the GOOD COP stage.
Surajit Sarkar discussed his work with the A Deep Fried Jam trio and the community art initiative in India the Catapult Arts Caravan in relation to the media consumption in India.
Surajit Sarkar lives in New Delhi, India. He has held positions as varied as photocopier salesman, bank officer, primary school teacher and developer of curriculum for primary school children and teachers alike. Since 1991, he has worked with video, at first in mainstream television writing and directing a highly successful weekly science & tech program on Indian national TV network. He moved to documentary film making, and has worked on subjects ranging from agriculture, education and the uneven costs of ‘development’. A number of these have been recognized nationally and internationally and have won prizes in film festivals in India and abroad.
Upgrade! Anniversary Brunch marked the seventh year in graffiti style,
with Evan Roth and James Powderly of the Graffiti Research Lab, and stencil artist Josh MacPhee.
Josh took us on a whirlwind tour through the history of illegal street markings (Street Art 101), with a focus on the history of the street stencil.
Evan and James talked about how the Graffiti Research Lab was formed. They demo’d the tools they’ve developed and gave out materials to make LED Throwies. Some of Evan’s students presented their projects and/or concepts based on the work of James and Evan. We concluded with a little Throwies experiment/happening.
Presenting a discussion and critique with Open City artist Leon Reid IV.
Reid presented his talk “The Call to Duty in the 21st Century”. How has the practice of street art redeemed the position of the Artist in contemporary society? Take a ride through history with street artist Leon Reid (Darius Jones) and explore what art has meant to civilizations of the past, where it got lost in contemporary Western society, and how the street artist is redefining what it means to be an “Artist”.
Eyebeam Resident Michael Mandiberg presented a talk and workshop about his new project Real Costs. Attendees were encouraged to bring a laptop to play along. Programming knowledge was useful.
This hybrid talk/workshop included a 30 minute presentation of the project, and how it related to Michael’s previous work, followed by guided modding of the script. Michael provided a focused walk through of the code, and then set everyone free to make some modifications and provided feedback for the project.
Dr. Steven Kurtz, the artist accused by the US Department of Justice of “bioterrorism” stemming from his use of scientific materials in his award-winning art practice, joins Eugene Thacker and George Annas for a panel discussion on the ethics of scientific and creative research and freedom of speech, moderated by science writer Carl Zimmer, with an introduction by Amanda McDonald Crowley.
As an introduction to this season’s theme for Upgrade! New York, Clay Shirky discussed the concepts of forking and failure in the open source process, and its value to the context of activism and the creative process.
At the previous Upgrade! New York gathering, writer/theorist Clay Shirky suggested that the most successful open source collaborations are those that use recipe-like methods to share information. In order to explore this idea further, this month’s discussion examined recipes, instructions, and open source collaboration. Participants included Eyebeam residents Rebecca Bray and Britta Riley, artist/writer/activist Marisa Jahn, and Instructables community manager Billy Gordon. Presentations by all participants were followed by a discussion and Q&A.
