[spectre] Brutal Realities. Art, Subjectivity and ‘The News’ | Cool Media Hot Talk Show

[Tania Goryucheva]

COOL MEDIA HOT TALK SHOW
D.I.Y. talk show on art & media
http://www.coolmediahottalk.net/

features:

TOPIC:  Brutal Realities. Art, Subjectivity and ‘The News’
SPEAKERS: Nanette Hoogslag about OOG and Florian Schneider about  
DICTIONARY OF WAR
QUESTIONS: ask-it-yourself now and during the show at http:// 
www.coolmediahottalk.net/

Wednesday June 27, 20.30 CET
video stream and interface for online participation: http:// 
www.coolmediahottalk.net/livepage.jsp
location: De Balie - Centre for Culture and Politics, Amsterdam  
http://www.debalie.nl (bring your laptops and mobiles)

EXTRA: music performance of Nanko http://www.laterax.com/nanko.htm


ABOUT THE TOPIC:

Brutal Realities
Art, Subjectivity and ‘The News’

“In the digital age you cannot stop information” - how many times did  
we hear this hollowed out cliché? Countless for sure. But exactly  
what kind of information? How to judge it? How to develop a personal  
relation to it?

‘The News’ is one of these information flows that in the era of  
digital media seems to become ever more pervasive, inescapable  
really. As it does so it seems to divide itself into a curious  
dichotomy: it (‘the news’) either becomes trivialised, or it reflects  
the perpetual miseries of the brutal realities that apparently  
surround us; disasters, war, famine, oppression, ecological  
devastation, family drama, and a general feeling of estrangement. In  
any case difficult to develop a personal relationship to it, be it  
trivia or conversely our daily portion of misery...

How does art and how do artists relate to this omnipresence of  
suffering in real-time? Can art help us to develop the distance, the  
silence, the space in-between that makes it possible to reflect ‘The  
News’? Can it point a way out of estrangement of the global anxiety  
machine? Can it rekindle our empathy for the pain of others?

And is social reality in any case coextensive with ‘the news’? Or  
should we rather develop and alternative relationship to social  
reality? And how then should this be done?

Can a project such as OOG in the web edition of the Dutch national  
daily newspaper De Volkskrant (www.volkskrant.nl/oog), where a  
different artist is invited every two weeks to comment on the news in  
an on-line art work every two weeks, help us to develop another (a  
more healthy?) subjective relationship to ‘the news’?

Can a project such as the Dictionary of War (http:// 
dictionaryofwar.org) help us to establish an alternative critical  
relationship to social reality? How can it reach a broader audience  
without falling into the same trap of mass-mediation?

Or is the very idea of subjectivity towards ‘the news’ nothing but a  
regressive and reactionary gesture?


ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Nanette Hoogslag (NL) is a visual artist and illustrator. She studied  
graphic design at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and did an  
MA in illustration at Royal College of Art in London in 1990. She  
established herself as an illustrator and designer in Amsterdam,  
working for design and editorial clients worldwide. She has been  
teaching illustration and design at various art colleges in The  
Netherlands, currently she teaches illustration and concept  
development at the Illustration Department at the school of Visual  
Arts, HKU in Utrecht.
In 2005 Nanette Hoogslag developed the idea for OOG ("eye" in Dutch),  
inviting artists to react to the news, their role, function and  
content, in an online environment, which became 'Oog' a weekly online  
page in one of the largest Dutch national newspapers the  
'Volkskrant'. In 2006 the concept of Oog was presented in a live show  
'Ooglive' in the Westergasfabriek and shown as part of Faith in  
Exposure in Montevideo 2007.
Oog: http://extra.volkskrant.nl/oog
Ooglive: www.ooglive.com
illustrations: www.hoogslag.nl

Florian Schneider (DE) is a filmmaker, writer, and developer in the  
fields of new media, networking and open source technologies. In his  
work he focuses on bordercrossings between mainstream and independent  
media, art and activism, theory and technology.
As a filmmaker he directed several award-winning documentaries and  
made theme-evenings for the german-french tv station "arte" on the  
topics of migration and new global movements. He is one of the  
initiators of the KEIN MENSCH IST ILLEGAL campaign at documentaX and  
subsequent projects. He founded, designed and supported countless  
online-projects, such as the European internet platform D-A-S-H and  
the online-network KEIN.ORG. He is the director of the new media  
festivals MAKEWORLD (2001), NEURO (2004) and one of the co-organizers  
of the upcoming FADAIAT2 event in Tarifa/Tangiers, in June 2005. His  
publications include contributions in Der Spiegel and other renowned  
magazines and newspapers. From 2001, he has published Makeworlds  
paper 1-4, a newspaper magazine for theory, art and activism. For  
incommunicado 05, a special issue will be published as well.
DICTIONARY OF WAR, a collaborative platform for creating 100 concepts  
on the issue of war, invented, arranged and presented by scientists,  
artists, theorists and activists. The aim is to create key concepts  
that either play a significant role in current discussions of war,  
have so far been neglected, or have yet to be created.
Dictionary of War: http://dictionaryofwar.org
Summit of Non-Aligned Initiatives in Education and Culture: http:// 
summit.kein.org
Kein.org: http://www.kein.org


SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS & COMMENTS!
VOTE FOR THE PROPOSALS OF OTHERS!
JOIN THE DISCUSSION!
here & now: http://www.coolmediahottalk.net/

SPECIAL: ASK THE BEST QUESTION & win the COOL MEDIA PRIZE!
the winner will be selected through direct and open voting

Tickets: 5 euro
Reservations by telephone: +31.20. 55 35 100  (during opening hours  
of the ticket office)
Or via the Balie website: http:// www.debalie.nl/agenda

De Balie - Centre for Culture and Politics,
Kleine Gartmanplantsoen 10
Amsterdam
http://www.debalie.nl