Filtering the panel discussion Flux and Becoming: Identity, Self, Love, Other between Gaby Cepeda, Rachel Dedman, Andrea Spaziani and Ruth Novaczek through a Deleuzian framework, this response looks at the Internet as a hyperbole of reality and explores the possibilities of hyperbolic love as a reaction.
Read MoreMinus Ego is an exhibition addressing universal and timeless questions of “ego”, focusing on the challenging aspects of its reduction as well as on a search for the contemplative essence. A preview showed at the Transart Triennale at Ufer Studios in Berlin in August 2016, and a full mount of the exhibition was at the Goethe Institut Barcelona in Oct 2016 - Jan 2017. In this essay, the exhibition curator Herman B. Mendolicchio reflects on the themes and works encompassed by his research around ideas of 'Minus Ego'.
Read MoreThis is the third post on ThIS blog from the Midpointness Project.
“Ceaselessly the river flows, and yet the water is never the same, while in the still pools the shifting foam gathers and is gone, never staying for a moment. Even so is man and his habitation”.
- Kamo no Chomei, The Hojoki [1]
[1] Kamo no Chomei, “The Hojoki”, The Ten Square Foot Hut and Tales of the Heike, tr. A.L. Sadler (Tokyo:Tuttle, 1972): p1 [2]
[2] Mami Kataoka, “Transient Encounters: Connecting Points and Invisible Forces Linking Changes, Recurrence, Continuity and Experiences”, Roundtable:Gwangju Biennale 2012, eds. Sunjung Kim, Suki Kim, Eunyoung Kim, Hyungjin Kim, Eunha Lee (Gwangju: Gwangju Bienniale Foundation, 2012): p145 [3]
[3] Andrew Bracey and Steve Dutton, “Towards Metanoia: Future Speculations on Midpointness from the planet Deneb”, Unknown, eds. Unknown (Unknown: Unknown, 2017): p25 [4]
[4] Lee Hassall, “ Unknown”, Unknown, eds. Unknown (Unknown: Unknown, Unknown ): Unknown [5]
[5] Unknown, “ Unknown”, Unknown, eds. Unknown (Unknown: Unknown, Unknown ): Unknown
Read MoreThese are the full and combined texts written and performed at Zones of Sensitivity for the Transart Triennale, 2016.
Read MoreThe “I” that “Feels” is the second episode of the collaborative writing project associated with Zones Of Sensitivity. The idea is that we dissolve the singularity of authorship, in keeping with the Triennale theme of The Imperceptible Self:
She/He travels feverishly, constantly and inevitably between the "I think" concept and the "it thinks" of the body. So fast she/he moves between the two, that she/he can not gather all of her/him Self before leaving for the other shore. And so it is that she/he dissolves. Yet something remains. What is it?
Authors were invited to add a sentence to a text that we wrote together betweenJune 24 - July 20 in continuation of the first episode: The “I” that “Thinks”.
Read MoreThis is the second entry from Alexandra Ross and Gayle Meikle relating to their project ‘A Polyphonic Essay on Intimacy and Distance’ for the Transart Triennale. For this entry, they explore the concept of distance through a timed email exchange unfolding over three days. Taking the form of an Exquisite Corpse, it is another experiment with possible methods of exchange and conversation through time and space, allowing for notions of trust, friendship and the ebb and flow of life to surface.
Read MoreArabic Science Fiction: a Frontier of (Im)Possibilities is a roundtable conversation that took place between Darine Hotait, Fadi Baqi, Yazan al-Saadi and Rachel Dedman at Ashkal Alwan, Beirut, in May 2015. The conversation was organised as part of the public program of Space Between Our Fingers, an apexart exhibition curated by Rachel Dedman that brought together artists imagining and challenging outer space and science fiction, from Lebanon, Palestine, Algeria, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan. Halcyon, the expanded research exhibition concerning science fiction that Rachel is curating for the Transart Triennale, is an extension of this project.
The discussion attempted to go beyond questions such as 'does science fiction exist in the Arab world?' and considered instead issues surrounding sci-fi’s critical potential, its experimentation with Arabic as a language, and the power of the genre's marginal status, within a regional context.
Read More"In a world full of chaos we must search inside ourselves for orientation."
To illustrate the concepts in Rosi Braidotti’s essay, Imperceptible Self, media artist Stephanie Reid has selected the photographic works of three photographers, Raphael Umscheid, George Angelovski, and Ani Sirabonian. As Braidotti states, our true desire is to lose our individual identities to non-human forces, and meld with the endless potential of becoming that embodies the essence of life. Our project captures moments of those interconnections through faceless beings with invisible edges who walk the borderlands between consciousness and the inner realms.
Read More“Becoming-imperceptible is the ultimate stage that marks our transition into a larger, "natural" cosmic order.”
Ramdom's ongoing research on the Extreme Lands is a study aimed at analysing localities identified as edges of the world. The extremeness of such places is most and foremost associated with an idea of finis terrae, a concept of land's end that evokes images of capes and headlands as terrestrial borders confronting the sea.
Within the perspective that extreme landscapes can become culturally productive, during the past two years the Extreme Lands Research has orchestrated residencies and workshops, inviting international artists to react to the area surrounding the Cape of Leuca, a territory considered finibus terrae since the Roman Empire.
Read MoreThe midpoint is fraught, it is neither an in-between past and future, or near and far. It suggests that there can be no a priori relationship to the work of art. It feels like starting from the beginning every time. It is exhausting. This is the dilemma, to start again by not starting again. The flicker is fetish of the latent. This is why we critically obsess over it. It appears to release us from a commitment that serves to embed the teleological grip that fails the potential of an Other way. The midpoint is also very ordinary.
This is the second post on ThIS Blog from the Midpointness project.
Read MoreThe “I” that Thinks is a collaborative writing project. The idea is that we dissolve the singularity of authorship, in keeping with the Triennale theme of The Imperceptible Self.
Authors were invited to add a sentence to a text that we wrote together in the span of twelve days between Friday June 3 - Friday June 15 in response to the following text:
She/He travels feverishly, constantly and inevitably between the "I think" concept and the "it thinks" of the body. So fast she/he moves between the two, that she/he can not gather all of her/him Self before leaving for the other shore. And so it is that she/he dissolves. Yet something remains. What is it?
Read MoreThe selection process, or curation of online information is both direct and indirect. It is related to movement, and how it is tracked though online space. What are you looking for, and what do you get? What do you get that you didn’t know you were looking for, and what do you do with it? This piece is an experiment in the choreography of virtual space, and expression as mediated by technology.
Read MoreIn line with elements of the project ‘Polyphonic Essay on Intimacy and Distance’ whereby the artworks shall be revealed at the Transart Triennale on the 6th of August triggering an unrehearsed sonic conversation, this text has been written in two parts and with no consultation between the curators. Despite this, on joining them together, it is clear there are interlacing concerns and fascinations, although with one curator taking a distinctly haptic approach and one focusing on the voice. Both curators have practices which have aligned for almost a decade and as such have developed a great bond of professional trust and associated friendship.
Read MoreMidpointness is part of an evolving project exploring how works of art can be seen to be in a state of ‘being in the midst’, a place W. T. J. Mitchell has termed an “inescapable zone of transaction”. This element of the project focusses on the ‘work’ of artistic knowledge as a process of becoming, as opposed to a process of advancement towards finitude. In this way, it may orientate itself around Braidotti’s questions concerning the expression of one's “innermost and constitutive freedom”; in short, how a continual process of becoming may be kept alive in the transformation of self.
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