[spectre] URGENT - BEK: Call for support

[Trond Lossius]

BEK - Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts might be forced to close down early
next year due to lack of governmental support. For this reason we call for
your support. If you believe that BEK should continue to exist, please
express your support at our web page:

http://www.bek.no

or by sending a mail to demo at bek.no.

HISTORY

BEK - Bergen Centre of Electronic Arts, was found while Bergen, Norway, was
one of 9 cultural cities of Europe 2000. The founding of BEK was part of a
national strategy initiated by The Norwegian Council for Cultural Affairs to
better working conditions for artists working within the field of new media
arts in Norway. BEK is part of the Norwegian Production Network for
Electronic Arts (www.pnek.no). So far The Norwegian Council for Cultural
Affairs has provided most of the financial support for BEK. The Norwegian
Council for Cultural Affairs is not permitted to support organizations for
extended periods, and will not be able to support BEK in the future. For
this reason, we've applied for Governmental support from 2004. The proposed
National Budget does not include future support for BEK. For this reason we
now fear that we will be forced to close down early next year. If so, we
believe that one of the strongest current Norwegian voices on the
international art scene will be silenced, causing a severe setback to
artistic exchange between the art community in Norway and abroad.

ACTIVITY AND INTERNATIONAL PROFILE

BEK hosted the first international workshop dealing with Nato.0+55 in the
summer of 2000, and has been profiled as a valuable resource for artists in
Norway and abroad using live technologies such as Max, MSP, Nato.0+55,
streaming technology, Keystroke/Keyworx, etc. The mailing list /55\ was
established when Netochka Nezvanova was thrown of the Max-MSP mailing list.
HC Gilje and Kurt Ralske of 242.pilots first met during the workshop at BEK.
242.pilots has toured the world as pioneers of real time based video
performance, and the received the Image Award at Transmediale.03
International Media Art Festival in Berlin, February 2003.

The development of "MøB", Linux GNU software for real-time video processing
(mob.bek.no) has been a major project for the last two years. In November
2003 BEK will host an international conference and festival, Piksel, of
artists/developers working with real-time video on Linux (www.piksel.no).
Piksel will be a valuable opportunity to coordinate current development of
real time video software for Linux around the world. The workshop was
overbooked before we got the opportunity to do a call for participation.

BEK has been an important part of the Bergen electronic music and
electronica community. Torbjørn Brundtland of Röyksopp was doing civil
service at BEK when Röyksopp hit the British pop charts in 2001. Underground
artists such as Kaptein Kaliber, Jazzkammer, Alog and Phonophani have been
collaborating with BEK at a number of projects. Pilota.fm started out as a
net radio focusing on electronic and contemporary music. The Trollofon
concerts on a vintage trolley bus has hosted artists such as Phonophani,
Oval, Alog, Pita, Kim Hiortøy, Tujiko Noriko, Maja Ratkje, Massimo and
Fennesz. The concerts are available for download as mp3 at Pilota.fm. The
Pilota project also caused the Municipality of Bergen to continue supporting
the use of trolley buses in Bergen two years ago. BEK also hosts another net
radio focusing on the local music scene (www.radiofetthode.no) and the
mailing list CsoundTekno.

BEK has been affiliated with the most important Norwegian contemporary
theatre companies, such as BAK-truppen (www.baktruppen.org) and
Verdensteatret (www.verdensteatret.com). BEK has been involved in the
production of a number of short movies. The short movie "Love is the Law"
was presented as part of Semaine Internationale de la Critique at the Cannes
Film Festival 2003 and received "Prix Canal + du Meilleur court métrage" and
" Prix de la (Toute) Jeune Critique".

This year BEK is hosting 6 artists and students from abroad, participating
in the NIFCA Media Artist in Residence, Fulbright program, Leonardo da Vinci
EU training programme and other exchange programmes.