[spectre] symposium imaginary property

[Florian Schneider]

SYMPOSIUM: IMAGINARY PROPERTY

Friday 6 June 2008  16:00 – 20:00
Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht

Florian Schneider, Franco Berardi Bifo, Anselm Franke

The symposium Imaginary Property, introducing the research project by
the same name, explores new potentials for design practices across
various registers at the intersections of design-theory and
image-production. What challenges emerge from the paradoxes that
research into ‘imaginary property’ has given rise to? How could these
potentially generate new rules of production, bearing in mind that
property relations are constantly exchanging meaning? Do we have to
rethink and re-evaluate the notion of ‘design’ against this background?

Programme

16:00  Welcome
16:10  Florian Schneider
16:55  Franco Berardi Bifo
17:40  Anselm Franke
18:25  Break
18:45  round-table discussion

Florian Schneider: “Imaginary Property”

What was formerly known as "information society" has turned into an
image economy based on the techniques of imaging information or turning
information into images. Images act as storage units for framed portions
of psychic realities that can be duplicated without significant loss and
can be distributed almost in real time. Consequently, the image turns
out as both subjected to processes of design and as designing processes
of subjectivation.

Franco Berardi Bifo: “After the Future”

In the 20th century Futurism, in its Italian and Russian variant, has
become the leading force of "Imagination" and "Project", giving rise to
the language of commercial advertising and the language of political
agit propaganda. Cyberculture as the last utopia ended in a clash and it
has left behind a growing system of virtual life and actual death, of
virtual knowledge and actual war. Ever since, the artistic imagination
has seemed unable to do away with fear and despair. How can we find a
path beyond the limits of the "Dystopian Kingdom"?

Anselm Franke: “Animism”

Anselm Franke’s presentation is based on research for two exhibition
projects that deal with the notions of ‘Soul’ and ‘Animism’ – terms that
have figured as the Other in rationalizing modernity, signifying an
ambiguous history in which the relation between the psyche, imagination
and modernity is at stake.



Franco Berardi Bifo is writer, media theorist and media activist. He
founded the magazine A/traverso (1975-1981) and was part of the staff of
Radio Alice, the first free pirate radio station in Italy (1976-1978).
Like others involved in the political movement of Autonomia in Italy
during the 1970s, he fled to Paris, where he worked with Felix Guattari
in the field of schizoanalysis. During the 1980s he contributed to the
magazines Semiotexte (New York), Chimerees (Paris), Metropoli (Rome),
Musica 80 (Milan) and Archipielago (Barcelona). In the 1990s he
published Mutazione e Ciberpunk (Genoa 1993), Cibernauti (Rome 1994),
Felix (Rome, 2001) and Generacion Postalfa (Buenos Aires). He is
currently collaborating on the magazine Derive Approdi and teaches the
social history of communication at the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. He
is the co-founder of the e-zine rekombinant.org and of the telestreet
network.

Anselm Franke is a curator and writer based in Antwerp. He is currently
director of Extra City Center for Contemporary Art in Antwerp, and
co-curator of Manifesta 7 in Trentino-Alto Adige, Italy, taking place in
the Summer of 2008. Recent projects include Mimetisme at Extra City, No
Matter How Bright the Light, the Crossing Occurs at Night at Extra City
and KW Berlin (2006, with Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Ines Schaber and
Judith Hopf). He was the curator of KW Institute for Contemporary Art in
Berlin until 2006, where he curated exhibitions such as Territories.
Islands, Camps and Other States of Utopia (2003); Image Archives
(2001/2002); The Imaginary Number (2005, together with Hila Peleg) and
B-Zone – Becoming Europe and Beyond. He has edited and published
publications with Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König and others and
is a contributor to various magazines. Anselm Franke is currently a PhD
candidate in Visual Cultures/Center for Research Architecture at
Goldsmiths College London, and the co-curator of the Forum Expanded of
the Berlinale/International Film Festival Berlin.

Florian Schneider is a filmmaker, based in Munich. He was one of the
initiators of the campaign Kein Mensch ist illegal (No one is illegal)
at HybridWorkspace/Documenta X (1997) and subsequent projects such as
the Noborder network and the online-platform Kein.org He has published
widely about subjects at the crossing between mainstream and independent
media, art and activism, theory and technology. As a filmmaker he
directed several award-winning documentaries as well as two theme
evenings for the German-French TV station Arte on the topics of
migration and activism. He developed and co-organized events such as
Makeworld (Munich 2001), Neuro-Networking Europe (Munich 2004),
Borderline Academy (Tarifa 2005) and various smaller conferences,
workshops, gatherings. He has been developing and curating the
multimedia performance project Dictionary of War (Frankfurt, Munich,
Graz, Berlin, Novi Sad) and Summit – non-aligned initiatives in
education culture (with Irit Rogoff). Currently he is working on
Imaginary Property, a series of texts, films and video installations
researching the question, "What does it mean to own an image?" He has
lectured at museums, galleries, art academies, conferences worldwide.
Since 2006 he is part of the PhD programme Research Architecture at
Goldsmiths College, London. He teaches art theory at the art academy KIT
of NTNU Trondheim and is advising researcher Design at the Jan van Eyck
Academie, Maastricht.


Application

Candidates interested in this project can apply by submitting a research
proposal. Selected candidates gain the position of researcher at the
Design department of the Jan van Eyck Academie. For more information on
the practical side of your application, financial questions, and other
matters, please consult the website or contact the academy via
Leon Westenberg
leon.westenberg at janvaneyck.nl,
telephone +31 (0)43 350 37 24.


The project will start as of 1 September 2008.

Jan van Eyck Academie
Academieplein 1
6211 KM  Maastricht
Netherlands
http://www.janvaneyck.nl