The innovative and critical potential of artistic research lies in its capacity to generate personally situated knowledge, implying that ideas and theory are ultimately the result of practice, and that the emergent process of research methods unfolds through practice. Based on the notion that knowledge is derived from doing and the senses, this ACMlab hands-on workshop led by Maren Richter and Dr Adnan Hadzi will explore collaboration in artistic research and curatorial practice.

Workshop participants will have the opportunity to discuss the necessity of design for such projects from the point of view of the artist engaged in industry partnerships and projects. Whether you are the curious artist who is interested in testing out productive gaps in your practice or thinking of applying for the next call of the Malta Arts Fund – Research Support Grant, this may be the session for you.

This ACMlab is being organized in collaboration with the Department of Digital Arts at the Faculty of Media & Knowledge Sciences, University of Malta.

Maren Richter

Maren Richter is a curator and researcher. She defines her curatorial practice as one that creates space for exchange with, for and on experimental artistic practice based on the production and politics of space and alternative knowledge production. Between 2016 and 2018 she was the curator of the main visual arts exhibition in the Valletta 2018 Cultural Programme. She is the co-initiator of ‘Grammar of Urgencies’ a research-based series of collaborative projects, initiated in 2015. In 2013 she co-curated the first Maldives Pavilion at the 55th Venice Bienniale, which was designed as an ‘eco-aesthetical’ space for international exchange of artists, theorists, campaigners and researchers. Between 2010 and 2013 she was the artistic director of the Regionale, a festival in Styria/Austria, which looked into the question of how rural areas and landscapes could become a model for a new socio-political discourse in times of urban growth and climate change. She was curator at Camouflage Art/Culture/Politics in Johannesburg and at CCASA in Brussels, and the co-curator of a series of researches and exhibition on alternative and informal life between 2003 and 2006 (amongst others “Naked Life” at MOCA Taipei).

Dr Adnan Hadzi

Adnan Hadzi is currently working as resident academic in the Department of Digital Arts, at the Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences, University of Malta. Hadzi has been a regular at Deckspace Media Lab, for the last decade, a period over which he has developed his research at Goldsmiths, University of London, based on his work with Deptford.TV. It is a collaborative video editing service hosted in Deckspace’s racks, based on free and open source software, compiled into a unique suite of blog, cvs, film database and compositing tools. Hadzi is co-editing and producing the after.video video book, exploring video as theory, reflecting upon networked video, as it profoundly re-shapes medial patterns (Youtube, citizen journalism, video surveillance etc.). Hadzi’s documentary film work tracks artist pranksters The Yes Men and ! Mediengruppe Bitnik Collective – a collective of contemporary artists working on and with the Internet. Bitnik’s practice expands from the digital to affect physical spaces, often intentionally applying loss of control to challenge established structures and mechanisms.

Our MFA students put on the exhibition ONE in SIX at Spazju Kreattiv. ONE in SIX is the manifestation of a two-year Master of Fine Art program in Digital Arts, undertaken by six students at the University of Malta. As a graduate show, the body of work is the culmination of practice directed research in areas as diverse as memory, the archive, dystopian realities and ethnography.

The MFA Digital Arts programme is a practice-oriented, postgraduate award in digital art practice and theory. It is an umbrella programme that seeks to develop a learning environment in which historical traditions and new practices confront and influence each other within a contextual, cultural and theoretical framework. This year each MFA student makes use of a variety of technologies combined with multiple materials and processes such as photography, 3D printing, videography, sculpture and mixed media installations in order to communicate the meaning of their artwork.

The exhibition ONE in SIX reflects life in a world increasingly controlled by digital environments. Every day, each of us generates an almost inconceivable amount of interactions in those digital environments. Every action in those environments leaves digital traces. Artistic positions of the ONE in SIX exhibition critically question the ambivalence of such life in a digital world. Such thematic diversity is followed by a transformation in our ways of understanding the art works, moving away from the traditional approach of visual and digital arts, paying more attention to the pretexts, paratexts and contexts that constitute it as such. Therefore, one attains renewed access to increasingly urgent environmental and ontological questions

Maltese students visited the IDFAacademy during the IDFA festival. To stimulate new talent and high level documentary production, IDFAcademy organizes year-round training programs for emerging filmmakers. IDFAcademy Summer School in July and IDFAcademy during IDFA in November are aimed at international participants, while the Kids & Docs Workshop and the IDFAcademy & NPO Fund Workshop are open to Dutch-speaking participants. For international talent in the field of documentary storytelling and interactive media, DocLab Academy offers a five-day program in November during IDFA.

Bellingcat – Truth in a Post-Truth World (Trailer) from Submarine on Vimeo.

The third international interdisciplinary conference “Taboo – Transgression – Transcendence in Art & Science” takes place in 11-13 November 2018 in Mexico City, hosted by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and the Centro de CulturaDigital. Including theoretical and artwork presentations TTT2018 continues to focus: a) on questions about the nature of the forbidden and about the aesthetics of liminality – as expressed in art that uses or is inspired by technology and science, b) in the opening of spaces for creative transformation in the merging of science and art. Coordinated in partnership with the program of the FACTT 2018 – Festival Art & Science Trans-disciplinary and Trans-national the conference is co-organized by the Research and Creation Group  Arte+Ciencia , UNAM (Mexico), Arte Institute (USA),  Cultivamos Cultura  (Portugal) besides the Department
of Audio and Visual Arts, Ionian University (Greece). Art is, in so many ways, a reflection of reality, its glorification as well as its challenger, in an instinctive understanding that nothing is stable despite the effort to keep a balance between the comfort of belief and the delusion of control. Art and science
interrelations are not always clear and one could have the impression that the artist seems more permeable to the influence of science than the scientist to the influence of art. Art’s playfully transgressive nature offers creative bypasses to the grammar of science and expands the dialogue with its openness to a multiplicity towards the new. Nevertheless, art – albeit its originary
affinity with the taboo – is never completely liberated from moral considerations. Deeply involved into this lively discourse on the nature of the taboo, art becomes the very domain of contemporary experimentation with transgression, in order to provoke and sparkle discourse, catalyzing possible forms of transcendence.

Adnan Hadzi presented the paper ‘boattr – towpath as social commons’

This paper discusses the towpath/‘network’ of the British Waterways as a digital social commons, through the researcher’s journey on the narrow boat ‘Quintessence’ and the development of the ‘boattr’ prototype in collaboration with MAZI (for “together” in Greek), a Horizon2020 research project. For three years the researcher joined the community of bargees 1 , travellers 2 , who use the canals to live 3 on them, with a temporary permit 4 to stay for two weeks in one place 5 . The paper will offer a critical view on the housing situation in the UK and EU in general.

The boattr project connects narrow boats to the ‘Internet-of-Things’ and allows for open wireless mesh-networking within the narrow boat community, by using affordable microcomputers. The paper analyses the technology and knowledge that aims to 1) empower those narrow boats who are in physical proximity, to shape their hybrid urban space, together, according to the specificities of the respective local environment, and 2) foster participation, conviviality, and location-based collective awareness of the canals. The paper looks into capabilities offered by Do-It-Yourself networking infrastructures – low-cost off-the-shelf hardware and wireless technologies – and how small communities or individuals can deploy local communication networks that are fully owned by local actors, including all generated data. These DIY networks could cover from a small square (e.g., using a Raspberry Pi) to a city neighborhood (e.g., RedHook initiative) or even a whole city (e.g., guifi.net), and in the case of boattr the towpath of the canal network. Boattr integrates existing Free and Open Source Software software (like those under development by the P2Pvalue project, mobile sensing devices, and recent developments in open data and open hardware), allowing it to be appropriated by different non-expert users according to their respective context and use case. This paper is being proposed in combination with a 360 installation, alongside a running boattr prototype, and the boattr micro-computer book launch (see boattr 360
installation proposal). The conference visitors will be able to experience boattr through a VR headset, and access the boattr prototype and book over any WiFi enabled device. boattr 360 – living on the cut
This 360 video installation lets the conference visitor experience the ‘boattr’ project through a VR headset, and access the boattr micro-computer book over any WiFi enabled device. The installation encompasses a photographic triptych showcasing canal life, a seating representing a narrow boat’s bow on which the viewer can sit and immerse into a journey on the narrow boat Quintessence. With the evolution the moving image inserted itself into broader, everyday use, but also extended its patterns of effect and its aesthetical language. Video has become pervasive, importing the principles of “tele-” and “cine-” into the human and social realm, thereby also propelling “image culture” to new heights and intensities. The boattr 360 installation makes use of video as theory, reflecting the structural and qualitative reevaluation it aims at discussing design and organisational level. In accordance with the qualitatively new situation video is set in, the installation presents a multi-dimensional matrix which constitutes the virtual logical grid of the boattr project. The installation translates online modes into physical matter (micro computer), thereby reflecting on logics of new formats – by rendering a dynamic, open structure, allowing for access to the boattr micro-computer book over the ‘boattr’ WiFi SSID. The boattr DIY infrastructures offer a unique set of special affordances for local services to the narrow boat community, outside the public Internet: the ownership and control of the whole design process that promotes independence and grass-roots innovation rather than fear of data shadows; the de facto physical proximity of those connected without the need for disclosing private location information, such as GPS coordinates, to third parties; the easy and inclusive access through the use of a local captive portal launched automatically when one joins the network; the option for anonymous interactions; and
the materiality of the network itself.

The boattr.uk project was presented at the Radical Networks conference in Berlin.

Poetry on Film is an initiative that beautifully merges the visual art of film with Malta’s rich literature. Each year, Maltese poems are selected to be adapted into a short film which then premieres at the Malta Mediterranean Literature Film Festival.

This year’s edition of the Festival will be happening between the 24th and the 26th of August at Fort Saint Elmo, starting at 8.00PM, with the two selected poetry films being premiered on Thursday 24th August and on Friday 25th August.

The first poetry film is an adaptation of Maria Grech Ganado’s poem Relazzjoni, by Nicky Aquilina and Lyanne Mifsud, which will be premiered on Thursday 24th.

The second is a poetry film of Victor Fenech’s work Fuq Għoljiet Dingli, by artist and academic Trevor Borg, which will be premiered on Friday 25th.

Both films will include an introduction by film director and lecturer Kenneth Scicluna.

We took our students to see the Cabinet of Futures exhibition and to take part in a workshop organised by our friends the Time’s Up collective. Photos.

The Austrian art and culture group Time’s Up engages the public in playful experiences designed to explore alternative, preferable futures.

Over the course of their stay on the Maltese Islands, this radical team have brought internationally renowned futurists, local experts and everyday citizens together through communal workshops; during these creative meetings, participants have shared imaginative scenarios, dreams and concerns that explore diverse visions of the local future.The year 2018 sees people’s ideas come to life through the resulting site-specific exhibition, Cabinet of Futures. This immersive, walk-through exhibition creates a ‘proto-scientific’ laboratory atmosphere, inviting local individuals and communities to add their own touch to the scenario. With constant creative exchange from all walks of life, the hypothetical futures presented become sites that are continuously evolving into richer and ever-more tangible worlds.

The current issue “Unmapping Infrastructures” deals with the idea of “mapping” as a process of becoming aware and then acquiring a critical position about the current landscape of technological infrastructures.

This conglomerate of machines, human and non-human actors, nation-states and borderless companies is increasingly complex to observe and describe. Nevertheless, we believe that there is more to be seen than a hyper-commercialized structure of interlaced technological layers. Cartographic mapping consists of a series of practices of observing, analyzing and representing a territory to be able to move through it. How can art and activism appropriate the methods of cartographic mapping to produce new, critical and alternative views of the current landscape shaped by different players?

The festival aims at deepening the thematic areas of digital geopolitics, alternative design methods, activist practices and autonomous infrastructures, themes that offer directions for localizing areas of intervention. Throughout the festival, these topics will be further explored through discussion panels, workshops, and performances.

Contributors:
Abelardo Gil-Fournier, Adnan Hadzi, Alina Krobok / Sea-Watch e.V. – Zivile Seenotrettung von Flüchtenden, Alison Killing, Antti Pussinen, beepblip, BridA/Tom Kerševan, Sendi Mango, Jurij Pavlica, César Escudero Andaluz, Christina Gruber, Christo Petkov, Cristina Cochior, Davide Bevilacqua, Emily Buzzo, Felipe Castelblanco, Fieke Jansen, Florian Voggeneder, Franc González, Franz Xaver, Giulia de Giovanelli, Hansi Raber, IOhannes m zmölnig, Jakub Pišek, Jens Vetter, Joana Chicau, Joana Moll, Julia del Río, Julia Nüßlein, Katalin Hausel, Marloes de Valk, Martín Nadal, Martina Schönbauer, Martina_K, Martino Morandi, Nicolas Maigret / DISNOVATION.ORG, Nicolas Zemke / Sea-Watch e.V. – Zivile Seenotrettung von Flüchtenden, Pablo DeSoto, Patrice Riemens, Roelof Roscam Abbing, Sabina Hyoju Ahn, Sam Bunn, States of Clay, Stefan Tiefengraber, Taro Knopp, The AMROgraphers / Art Education Department – University of Art and Design, Linz, TinTin Patrone, Us(c)hi Reiter, Varvara & Mar, Vuk Ćosić, Waiwai (Hiuwai Chan), Wolfgang Spahn, Yoshinari Nishiki.

“Hack Child” LARP RGP Berlin.
👢 Live Action Role Play
⚠️ Real Game Play
Over the last few years we have seen an increased drive within the autonomous dance scene, collectively organising sub-raves via the blockchain, and using mining as an entry point via friend2friend networks. This ultimate shadow play tactic has created a tight knit community but we wish to expand the social novel, beyond our own cliques and networks.
So for one-night-only, this underground subculture will be opened up to those who wish to PLAY CRYPTO RAVE. On this occasion, we will launch the very first EP «Alexiety» specifically for _smart_ devices, electronically produced by Low Jack [1] & !Mediengruppe Bitnik.

🕳 The game will be held at an undisclosed location
📡 in Berlin on 21:00h, 9th May 2018.
Points of contact Omsk Social Club [2] and !Mediengruppe Bitnik
Zen, Speed, Organic
3 lifestyle choices
<3 Mediengruppe Bitnik
https://wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.bitnik.org/
[1] Low Jack https://soundcloud.com/low-jack
[2] OMSK SOCIAL CLUB http://www.punkisdada.com/