Inspired by the innovative thinking of Marshall McLuhan, academics, artists, designers, raconteurs, innovators, and thinkers from around the globe explored the mosaic of the metaphoric Global Village in light of the current scenario. The collectivity of our global thought, actions and generational evolution are the defining principles of the global human condition which we explored.
One year ago, we met at the ZAD near Nantes for the Transborder Summer Camp: more than 500 activists came together for amazing exchange and mutual inspiration. Now, we want to invite you for a digitalTSC from the 15-18.07.2020.
With the digitalTSC we want to provide a space to re-discuss strategies and challenges in (post) Corona times: we want to continue the discussions and networking debates that took place at the TSC, to understand where we are now 1 year later. And importantly, we want to propose a transnational decentralized mobilization for the beginning of September: on the 5th anniversary of the “March of Hope” – and the historic breakthrough against the border regime in 2015 during the long summer of migration along the Balkan route.
The digitalTSC will take place in different online meetings. Below you find a first program. Of course, everybody is welcomed to join as many sessions as they want, however, considering how exhausting online meetings are for many, we hope that people might join the two (bigger) plenary sessions and one or two (smaller) workshops. The digitalTSC will take place in English and French with translations.
A group show on eBay Kleinanzeigen
The students describe the show as follows: (EN) For many of us, the digital platforms became a life-line during the stay home order. With many using their time in lockdown to de-clutter their living spaces, the platform eBay Kleinanzeigen became a place to hang out and see what neighbors were getting rid of. The exhibition Odds Without Ends uses eBay Kleinanzeigen, the largest online platform for classified ads in Germany, as an exhibition space for site-specific works.
Using eBay Kleinanzeigen as an exhibition space brings art directly to bargain hunter’s homes, invading their screens and grabbing their attention. This series of works uses the ad-space as its medium and networked space as its show room. The works unfold over 60 days – the maximum runtime of an ad on eBay Kleinanzeigen – each with its specific mode of exchange and participation.
Odds Without Ends presents works produced specifically for eBay Kleinanzeigen by students of Klasse Brenner/Bitnik @ ABK Stuttgart. Organized by !Mediengruppe Bitnik.
A group show on
eBay Kleinanzeigen
17 July — 19 September 2020
One of our themes for the now-postponed i-Docs conference back in March this year was ‘climate and ecological emergency’, and we had a number of excellent presentations lined up on this topic. To offer an alternate outlet for some of these presentations, we first hosted two climate conversations on Immerse – the first between Lizzie Warren and Michaela French which you can read here, and the second (to be published soon) between Bronwin Patrickson and Tom White. Now, we have invited three more i-Docs speakers for this online panel discussion about i-docs practice and climate crisis, each with an immersive media project to share – Elizabeth Miller, Lena Dobrowolska and Mitch Turnbull.
Elizabeth Miller, Professor of Communication Studies at Concordia University, will present her project Swampscapes: a VR and multi-platform exploration of Florida’s most endangered ecosystem, the Everglades. It aims to reconnect viewers to the beauty of swamps and the vital role they play in filtering water, fostering life, and buffering storms. Through passionate local guides, immersive landscapes, and an interactive Swamp Symphony, the documentary project leads users into the depths of Florida’s swamps and to the people who care about them.
Still image from Imperfect Meshes: Stories from the Hurricane
Artist Lena Dobrowolska will share her project Imperfect Meshes: Stories from the Hurricane, in which she explores the aftermath of Hurricane Michael – a climate intensified category 5 hurricane that made landfall on the Florida panhandle in October 2018. Through a combination of photogrammetry models, field recordings, oral testimonies and a hurricane simulation placed within a VR environment, Imperfect Meshes narrates complex, invisible and long-lasting climate trauma of the hurricane.
EarthSongs
Documentary filmmaker Mitch Turnbull will present her mixed reality experience EarthSongs. Delivered via the Magic Leap One headset, EarthSongs presents an immersive exploration of natural, wild soundscapes utilising spatial computing technology, object based audio and abstract 3D interactive digital imagery. EarthSongs offers an alternative route to understand and connect with nature by deconstructing wild soundscapes and delivering a playful and artistic immersive experience. It utilises the affordances of interactive mixed reality technology to deliver a personal and intimate encounter that taps into an intuitive link with the natural world.
Professor Liz Miller
Elizabeth (Liz) Miller is a documentary maker and professor who uses collaboration and interactivity as a way to connect personal stories to larger social concerns. Her films and interactive multi-platform projects on timely issues such as water privatization, refugee rights, gender issues and environmental justice have won awards and influenced decision makers. Her work has been broadcast on international television, streamed on Netflix and featured in galleries, climate conferences and at festivals including Hot Docs and SXSX.edu. Liz is a Full Professor in Communications Studies at Concordia University in Montreal and her book “Going Public: The Art of Participatory Practice (2017) has been integrated into educational curricula. She has partnered with organizations including UNESCO, International Association with Women and Radio and Television, Witness and Wapikoni on human rights, new media and advocacy training.
Lena Dobrowolska
Lena Dobrowolska is an artist working with a combination of documentary photography, artist film, installation, room size virtual reality experiences and research. Since 2012, she has been working in collaboration with Teo Ormond-Skeaping on projects relating to climate change and the Anthropocene or what she prefers to call the Capitalocene. Her works document vulnerability to, and responsibility for climate change as well as the resilience and adaptation efforts of marginalised communities in an attempt to imagine and make possible a climate just future. Her recent research has investigated the link between climate change and displacement, non-economic Loss & Damage and the moral and climate leadership of the Global South. Lena is the recipient of the 2019 Coalition for Art and Sustainable Development Prize (COAL) and the 2016 Culture and Climate Change: Future Scenarios Networked Residency prize. In 2019 she presented her work at UNFCCC COP25 in Madrid to climate negotiators and displacement experts.
Mitch TurnbullMitch Turnbull is a multi-nominated and award-winning natural history and conservation documentary filmmaker and XR creator with over twenty years experience in the UK & US. She has made films, live shows, media and XR content for a variety of broadcasters, studios and organisations including, BBC Studios, Oculus, Disneynature, Discovery, National Geographic, UN, RYOT and The Royal Foundation. Mitch has acted as a BAFTA VR Advisory Associate, contributed to UK Digital Catapult industry papers and is a South West Creative Technology Network Immersion Fellow with a research focus on how immersive technology can influence opinion and change behaviour.
Common Bond Society is a web-based digital artwork that takes the form of a series of Internet Relay Chat (IRC) rooms, built in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The project explores the implications of our increased dependence on the Internet as public space and investigates the Internet’s potential to offer safe spaces to discuss, disseminate and carry out acts of mutual aid. It is brought to you by artist Larisa Blazic for UP Project’s digital commissioning strand, This is Public Space.
Common Bond Society takes as its starting point the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects of which have been felt simultaneously on a global and intensely local scale. Almost overnight the pandemic resulted in a dramatic shift away from real world interactions to an increased reliance and dependence upon the digital realm as our predominant public space for dialogue and exchange. At the same time, a proliferation of mutual aid groups sprung up world-wide – set up to help those most vulnerable in this time of uncertainty. Chat groups and websites were created, phones were distributed, and posters emerged in the streets.
“The delayed beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown in the UK brought about an amazing wave of community organising, a sort of self-assembly for the protection of self and others, a beautiful act of solidarity where neighbours reached out to each other for help and support.” – Larisa Blazic
Through her artwork, Common Bond Society, artist Larisa Blazic reflects on the very origins of mutual aid as an act of solidarity not charity and suggests that understanding its political origins could lead us to rethink new ways of working post COVID-19. The work uses anarchist philosopher, Peter Kropotkin’s essay Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902) as a starting point to spark debate about how acts of mutual aid carried out today could be harnessed to bring about longer-term changes in the way we as a society operate tomorrow and in the future both on and off line. Kropotkin suggests that charity “bears a character of inspiration from above, and, accordingly, implies a certain superiority of the giver upon the receiver.”
Common Bond Society is a virtual platform that questions how mutual aid groups can become sustainable in the long term. Are there ways of sustaining, supporting, encouraging or even rewarding acts of mutual aid? The platform invites audiences to engage in this conversation through three distinct chatrooms for exchange.
Common Bond Society is also inspired by the very foundations of the Internet as public space and its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee’s vision to create a place for the germination and proliferation of new ideas. Through the creation of “old school” IRC chat rooms, Blazic’s work reuses communication tools of the Internet before web 2.0 (see definition below) to provide safe and collaborative spaces for people to come together to formulate new ideas for how co-operative working can be harnessed and even institutionalised in order to ensure our “society’s safety, progress and existence” both in the real world and in the digital domain. Tim Berners-Lee once stated “Had the technology been proprietary, and in my total control, it would probably not have taken off. You can’t propose that something be a universal space and at the same time keep control of it.”
By using the IRC format Blazic invites us, the audience, to question the platforms we are currently using to carry out our interactions online and to think twice about our own safety and security when operating in the digital domain. Who owns the platforms we are using? What is happening to our data? And is anyone listening into the conversations we are having? Are we ever truly safe online?
We invite you to step inside the Common Bond Society IRC chat rooms to learn, reflect and discuss. Please read our code of conduct before entering.
Learn about the historical principles behind mutual aid by chatting with a Kropotkin-bot, where you can use key words associated with mutual aid to prompt relevant quotes from Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution.
Join us on 14 July at 18:30 BST for a curated IRC chat on mutual aid now and in the future, chaired by artist theorist and curator, Ruth Catlow. If you are unavailable to join the conversation we will present a live recording of the event in this chat room once it has happened.
This chat room is a platform to facilitate conversations around notions of safety within the digital realm, uncertainty and public space. A curated conversation on these topics will be hosted by UP Projects on 18 August at 18:30 BST. Further details coming soon.
This room provides a space for further reading through access to mutual aid related resources.
Date: 14 July 2020
Time: 18:30 – 20:00 BST
Join us for a curated conversation about the role mutual aid has played in these times of uncertainty and a discussion on how we can harness mutual aid practices as we move forward into tomorrow. The conversation will be chaired by artist theorist and curator, Ruth Catlow with participation from Larisa Blazic.
Agenda:
Date: 18 August 2020
Time: 18:30 – 20:00 BST
Join us for a curated discussion that explores safety within the digital realm, uncertainty and public space. Hosted by UP Projects, further details coming soon.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) is a network of Internet servers through which individuals can hold real time online conversations via electronic devices. Internet Relay Chat facilitates conversation in the form of an online written chats. IRC operates on a client/server model where individuals use a client programme to connect to an IRC server.
Web 2.0 also commonly referred to as Participative and Social Web refers to websites that contain user-generated content, ease of use and foster a participatory culture and interoperability. It is a term to describe today’s interactive Internet.
#Dance – ROOF
Join dance artist Rochelle Gatt and musician Luc Houtkamp as they meet on a rooftop in Senglea in this challenge of artistic boundaries.
Credits:Video filmed and edited by Sam Chetcuti – Cyberspace AVA conversation between Sandra Gaudenzi (i-Docs), Sandra Tabares Duque (audiovisual producer), Francesca Panetta (MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality) and Halsey Burgund (sound artist) about their collaborative projects Corona Haikus and Corona Diaries. Joining the discussion will also be two active participants of the Corona Haikus project: Edith Sierra Montaño (director and new media consultant) and Valentine Goddard (AI ethics expert).
Sandra Gaudenzi
During the time of COVID-19 lockdown we have seen an explosion of social media and collaborative projects, aimed at making social isolation more bearable. Some were a way to reach out and feel connected, others to document unprecedented times. The thin line between the subject and the observer has never been so blurred… who is co-creating with whom, and who is in control of what?
Sandra Tabares Duque
In this conversation, the authors of two collaborative corona projects will be joined by participants to question together: What makes a project that asks for very personal sharing, work? What makes us choose to participate in one project rather than another? What pushes us to come back?
And ultimately: how is the potential gap between the author’s initial proposition and what is really received by the participants being negotiated and steered?
