Cleotronica a media festival set in Egypt’s second largest city

CLEOTRONICA 08 MARCH PROGRAM

What is Cleotronica 08?
Cleotronica 08 is the inaugural version of Cleotronica a festival for media, art, and socio-culture organized by Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF) an alternative initiative for art and culture based in Egypt’s second largest city. Cleotronica 08 is planned as a monthly series of public art projects, workshops, lectures, performances, and exhibitions that commence in January 2008 gradually building up to an international symposium in May. The festival presents a diverse set of projects, mediums, and issues, ranging from net art to tactical media and from public intervention to design. Apart from being an international festival, Cleotronica is critically involved with and conditioned to its locality, striving to make a distinct contribution to it by extensively interacting with university students and recent art graduates in its projects. While showcasing a broad range of media related art, the festival is particularly reflective of practices that stimulate media, tech!
nology,
art, and public socio-cultural activity to come together.

/ MARCH /

Cleotronica 08 Project # 4
The Silent Ornamental Revolution
A Public Art Project by Jan Robert Leegte (NL)
Date: Viewable starting 9 March 2008
Location: Selected public locations all over Alexandria, Egypt

The Silent Ornamental Revolution is a public art project that uses a series of minimal posters created by Jan Robert Leegte based on his work and text developed in Vienna in 2006, it builds on the idea of the ornament as “sublime” intervention, the ornaments Leegte readapts are derived from popular computer interfaces such as the Windows operating system. The works made in 2006 were video collages simulation ideas of ornamental interventions. The project in Alexandria is a true intervention, using modular posters to build endless ornamental patterns. There will be two types of posters, one based on the artist’s “selection” series, and the other based on his “scrollbar” series, using bevels. Basically any urban structure will be selectable, and any surface can be transformed to a minimal or hysterically ornamented facade. Art students from Alexandria will play a vital role in assisting Leegte with this series of interventions in public space. Links to the original text by L!
eegte
can be found here: http://www.leegte.org/works/text/ornaments/index.htm
Bio
Jan Robert Leegte (1973) studied Fine Arts at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam after having studied Architecture at the University of Delft. Inspired by artists like Bruce Nauman and Fischli & Weiss, Leegte probes the surface of our surrounding world, aiming to reveal the underlying materials. Fascinated by the world behind the computer screen, he explored the sculptural possibilities of the Internet as from 1997. In 2002 he shifted back to the gallery space, taking along his newly discovered favorite materials with him. Recently Leegte is exploring more “embedded” possibilities out of the gallery space into the endlessly deep contexts of the outside world. His work has been exhibited at a widespread selection of international shows and festivals. Leegte lives and works in Amsterdam. Website: www.leegte.org

Cleotronica 08 Project # 5
Stammer: A Lecture in Theory
A Live Performance and Video Installation by Shady El Noshokaty (EG)
Dates
Performance: Stammer Live Performance by Shady El Noshokaty, 9 March, Starts 7 pm
Exhibition: Stammer Video Installation Exhibition: 9 -16 March opening directly after live performance
Location: Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), 10 Hussein Hassab Street, Azarita, Alexandria

The property dualism theory asserts that humans are made of only physical substances; these physical substances are the carriers of two kinds of properties, physical properties and mental properties. El Noshokaty’s new performance and related video portrays an educator (El Noshokaty himself) at a decisive moment in a theory lecture he is delivering. Personal emotions, desires and symbolisms interfere with the logical stream of thought usually attributed to lectures. This interference causes an overlapping of the mental properties into the physical, jamming the educator’s speech and teaching abilities and causing the closest effect in humans to when a digital satellite receiver delivers a poor signal leading to the pixilation and freezing of the picture, thus the phrase El Noshokaty uses in the lecture “The Mind is a Digital Computer”
Bio
Shady El Noshokaty (1971) is a Cairo based artist and a teacher at the Faculty of Art Education, Helwan University. With a Fulbright grant, he studied avant-garde cinema and video art at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As of 2000, El Noshokaty organized and supervised the annual experimental media art workshop in the Faculty of Art Education until its 5th edition in 2005. His work has been exhibited in numerous local and international institutions including the Kunstmuseum Bonn, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, and the Hayward Gallery, London.

Cleotronica 08 Project # 6
Tactical Media Club Alexandria
A Participatory Club for Tactical Media Moderated by Joanne Richardson (RO) and Francesca Bria (IT)
Dates
CLUB MEETINGS: 20-22 March 2008 at ACAF
Lecture1: Tactical Media: Past, Present, and Future by Joanne Richardson, Friday 21 March, 7 pm
Lecture 2: Social Media, Shared Culture, and the Hacker Movement in Italy by Francesca Bria, Sunday 23 March, 7 pm
Location: Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), 10 Hussein Hassab Street, Azarita, Alexandria

Tactical Media is a concept and set of practices that emerged around the Next Five Minutes festivals in Amsterdam from 1993 to 2003. What is common to these practices, that are now practiced worldwide, is the artistic use of media technologies to subvert power. As part of the Cleotronica 2008 festival Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF) will set up a transient club for ‘Tactical Media’ inside its space. The club seeks to collectively explore ‘Tactical Media’ practices in the different contexts of Europe and Egypt, and conduct brainstorming sessions that investigate the possibility of new intersections between art, media, activism, and theory. Artists, activists, and collectives are invited to be members of the club and participate in its discussion and debate group meetings that will be moderated by Joanne Richardson (Romania) and Francesca Bria (Italy). To become a member and participate in the club’s sessions please send us a brief paragraph about yourself and your
interests or your collective in English or Arabic to office@acafspace.org, please include your complete contact info and write “club” in the subject box. The meetings will be carried out on the 20, 21, and 22 of March. In addition to the club meetings Joanne Richardson will be delivering a public lecture on the past, present and future of Tactical Media at ACAF on Friday 21 March, while Francesca Bria will talk about social media, shared culture and the hacker movement in Italy on Sunday 23 March, both lectures will feature live Arabic translation and start at 7 pm.
Bios
Joanne Richardson
Born in Bucharest, grew up in New York, currently living between Cluj, Romania and Berlin. Founder of D Media (http://www.dmedia.ro) in Romania, an NGO for the production and dissemination of art and digital culture. Editor of Subsol webzine (http://subsol.c3.hu), and author of essays on social movements, postcommunism, immaterial labor, copyleft, tactical media, the history of the avant-gardes, and experimental film & video in Eastern Europe. Recent videos on nationalism, delocalization, migration, activism, precarity and borders.
Francesca Bria
Film Maker, journalist and Independent Network Activist. Born and currently living in Rome . She teaches digital media and video journalism in Rome and she is active as a free lance video journalist.She is counsultant and expert on access to knowledge policy for the Region of Lazio and the European Commission. She has been coordinating an international cooperation project between Italy and Brazil on Digital Culture and she’s currently coordinating a cooperation project on free software in Venezuela. She is the author of different video documentaries and short experimental films on digital media technology, free knowledge, politics, precarity, migration and social justice. She’s active in different networking and grassroot projects for the promotion of shared culture and free technology.

Cleotronica 08 Project # 7
RECYCLIZER
A Workshop on Sampling in Animation and Solo Show by Jan van Nuenen (NL)
Dates
Workshop: Sampling Animation Workshop 29-31 March 2008
Exhibition: Jan van Nuenen Solo Show 28 March – 6 April, Opening: Friday 28 March 7 pm
Lecture: Sampling in Contemporary Animation, Sunday 30 March 7 pm
Location: Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), 10 Hussein Hassab Street, Azarita, Alexandria

RECYCLIZER is a 3 part project by Jan van Nuenen. The exhibition showcases screenings of van Nuenen’s sample-constructed animated worlds of automatons, works that can be seen as the descendants of Bosch aesthetics and imagery in the digital age. The workshop on 29, 30, 31 will concentrate on creating a collectively made animated video that will be put up on You Tube, the video will be created using samples collected by the workshop’s participants. Please apply to the Workshop by sending a brief e-mail that includes your CV/Bio to office@acafspace.org , write “workshop” in subject box, basic knowledge of some graphics/animation programs required. Finally the talk on 30 March will summarize the idea and culture of sampling in Animation and its industry today, live Arabic translation will be available.
Bio
Jan van Nuenen (1978) is a video artist and animator based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He studied audio-visual design at the art academy St. Joost in Breda, the Netherlands. He has been working on short, experimental animation films and video-installations since 2002. His works are mainly animated collages of found-footage video and photographical material or samples, cut up, combined and edited with the computer and different types of animation software. The films are characterized by a complex and combined action of loops, repetitions and rhythms, where sound plays a vital role. His works have been shown at different international film, video and art festivals. Van Nuenen also creates electronic music some of which is used in his films. Website: http://www.janvannuenen.com/

Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF)
10 Hussein Hassab Street, Flat 6, Azarita, Alexandria, Egypt
T: +20 (0)3 480 41 45 E: office@acafspace.org
Opening times: Tuesday – Sunday, 3 – 9 pm, Closed on Mondays and most official holidays

Musée départemental d’art
contemporain de Rochechouart

Jean-Pascal Flavien
under star (or stare)
2007
red pencil on paper, 50×70cm
private collection
courtesy gallery Catherine Bastide, Bruxelles

New from Mount Analogue
March 1st-18th May

Jean-Pascal Flavien
March 1st - 2nd June

Musée départemental d’art contemporain de Rochechouart
Place du Château
87600 Rochechouart
tel. +33 5 55 03 77 77
fax. + 33 5 55 03 72 40
http://www.musee-rochechouart.com

On March 1st Rochechouart Museum of Contemporary Art reopens with two new exhibitions

Jean-Pascal Flavien
Forgotten times & moments

Flavien’s works encompass a wide range of forms, from drawing and architecture to poetry and publishing. Their force derives from an unbounded imagination, fascination with strange events and temporal accidents. Ever since 2002, the enigmatic presence of dinosaurs have haunted a cycle of works he is currently still engaged in making: “[Dinosaurs] mainly interest me because of what they enable me to build and think, and what I can contribute myself. They only emerged in my work because they come from a totally alien world, outside anything I’ve made before or lived through. They continue to constitute an alien world, or rather this alien world never stops making itself. Their distance from us, helps me re-examine my own ways of working. It facilitates the elaboration of an architecture suited to their existence and the development of ways to exhibit it that correspond to the time scale they inhabited. Each drawing, sculpture or intervention is an attempt to alienate myself
from our familiar environment… to create a world where we don’t exist.”

For what is his first solo exhibition in a public museum, Jean-Pascal Flavien has chosen to show over sixty drawings, models and films from Viewer, a fictional yet functional architectural structure recently completed in Brazil. The exhibition is accompanied by the printing of a new publication edited by the Devonian Press, jointly founded and run by Jean-Pascal Flavien and Julien Bismuth.

News from Mount Analogue

The surrealist writer René Daumal (1908-1944) left his novel, Mount Analogue, unfinished. Its full title was A Tale of Non-Euclidian and Symbolically Authentic Mountaineering Adventures and it described the discovery of an island in the middle of which stood the world’s tallest mountain, “linking heaven and earth”. Even though the summit seemed beyond reach, its lower slopes could be climbed since according to Daumel, “the doorway to the invisible must be visible”.

In the early seventies, Slovak artist Július Koller (1939-2007) founded the “U.F.O. Gallery Ganek” on the Ganek Peak of the Upper Tatras Mountains in Slovakia, a place situated between “heaven and earth”. Physically inaccessible, the gallery was only partially fictional because exhibiting artists could build it in their mind’s eye, turning it into an intellectual refuge, a space of freedom devoid of any frontiers. The exhibition at Rochechouart underlines parallels between Daumal’s novel and Koller’s project (the museum has recently acquired a large collection of the latter’s works), and may be read as a homage to the artist and his utopian vision. More than thirty pieces drawn from the museum’s collection or loaned by other galleries provide a survey of invisible subjective Utopian or fictional spaces that can nevertheless be shared or inhabited by our own thoughts. Included are works by Robert Barry, Marius Boezem, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Ian Hamilton Finlay, D
ora Garcia, Mario Garcia-Torres, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Douglas Gordon, Raoul Hausmann, Július Koller, Marcel Märien, Roman Ondak, Nam June Paik, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Tobias Rehberger, Ed Ruscha, a set of artists’ books by Seth Siegelaub plus the secret door used by 18th century French economist and statesman Anne Robert Jacques Turgot.

The Musée départemental d’art contemporain de Rochechouart is an initiative of the Conseil général de la Haute-Vienne. Those exhibitions were made possible through the support of the Minister of Culture (DRAC Limousin).

Hours:
10am-12.30am/13.30pm-18pm
every day except Tuesday

PAC

unitednationsplaza Mexico DF
March 1 - 30, 2008

CASA REFUGIO
Citlaltépetl 25,
Col. Hipódromo Condesa 06170
Del. Cuauhtémoc, México D.F.

http://www.pac.org.mx/

El Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo, A.C. (PAC) is pleased to present unitednationsplaza Mexico DF, an exhibition in the form of a temporary school. For this project, artist Anton Vidokle is organizing a month long program of seminars and workshops that use the Casa Refugio as a site to shape a critically engaged public through art discourse. unitednationsplaza is presented by PAC (Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo A.C.) as part of its new curatorial residency program, and will run from March 1st through March 30th, 2008.

unitednationsplaza is thematically organized around a central topic: possibilities for artistic agency today. The program will comprise of a series of short seminars and workshops developed by a group of artists, writers, curators and theorists including Eduardo Abaroa, Minerva Cuevas, Anselm Franke, Liam Gillick, Boris Groys, Nikolaus Hirsch, Chus Martinez, Martha Rosler, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Jalal Toufic, Jan Verwoert and Tirdad Zolghadr. All topics will be addressed from the perspective of ongoing research and production, and as such will constitute the core structure of the school. The program will also feature discussions, screenings, performances and publications by a group of contributors including Julieta Aranda, Fia Backstrom, Regine Basha, Oksana Bulgakowa, Nico Dockx, Adriana Lara, Desiderio Navarro, Damian Ortega, Hila Peleg and Eduardo Sarabia. unitednationsplaza will operate a web-based radio station: WUNP, a project by Angel Nevarez and
Valerie Tevere.

For program and schedule please scroll below.

unitednationsplaza Mexico DF is the third in a series of art projects organized around a temporary school format, started by Anton Vidokle. Vidokle initiated his research into education as site for artistic practice for Manifesta 6, which was cancelled. In response to the cancellation, Vidokle set up an independent project in Berlin called Unitednationsplaza–a twelve-month exhibition as school involving more than a hundred artists, writers, philosophers, and diverse audiences. Located behind a supermarket in East Berlin, UNP’s program featured numerous seminars, lectures, screenings, book presentations and projects including the Martha Rosler Library. Starting January 2008, Vidokle is presenting a related year-long program, called Night School, at the New Museum in New York City.

El Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo, A.C. (PAC) is a non-profit organization formed by a group of individuals committed to promoting the development of contemporary art. PAC was founded in 2000 as an initiative to bring contemporary art closer to a larger audience by way of collaboration with museums, galleries, curators, publishers, critics and researches in the field of contemporary art. Its board of directors concentrates the voluntary efforts of an independent group of cultural professionals. PAC’s program is supported and enhanced thanks to the yearly contributions of individual and corporate donors.

Casa Refugio Citlaltépetl is a civic association based in Mexico City whose mission is to provide shelter and protection to prosecuted writers from any country. In addition, Casa Refugio also has an intensive public cultural program which includes publication of the quarterly magazine “Líneas de Fuga”, as well as the organization of conference cycles (known as “Literary Thursdays”); special events such as book launches and poetry readings, and literary workshops amongst other activities.

Admission is always free but space is limited. Please reserve a seat for each event by writing to magdalena@unitednationsplaza.org

PROGRAM March 1- 30th, 2008:

• March 1st, 7-10 PM

Liam Gillick: Two Short Texts on the Possibility of Creating an Economy of Equivalence,
Day 1: The day AFTER closure of an experimental factory.

• March 2nd, 4-7 PM

Liam Gillick: Two Short Texts on the Possibility of Creating an Economy of Equivalence,
Day 2: Reoccupation, recuperation and PRECISE renovation.

• March 3rd, 7-10 PM

Eduardo Abaroa: Cheap Nebula

• March 4th, 7-10 PM

Natasha Sadr Haghighian: 40 minutes between the boards

• March 6th, 6-8 PM

Rirkrit Tiravanija: The Land

• March 7th, 7-10 PM

Martha Rosler: Essays

Presentation of Imágines públicas: La funcíon política de la imagen
Editorial Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, 2007

• March 8th, 7-10 PM

Julieta Aranda & Regine Basha: Out of Tune.

• March 9th, 5-7:30 PM

Anselm Franke: From Animism to Animation: Moving Image in Modern Culture.

Introduction Anselm Franke
Guest speaker: Oksana Bulgakowa, Eisentstein in Mexico.
Film excerpts “Que Viva Mexico”

• March 10th, 7-10 PM

Anselm Franke: From Animism to Animation: Moving Image in Modern Culture.
Lecture by Anselm Franke

• March 11th, 7-10 pm

Jan Verwoert: Yes, No And Other Options.
Part 1

• March 12th, 7-10 PM

Jan Verwoert: Yes, No And Other Options.
Part 2

• March 13th, 7-10 PM

Tirdad Zolghadr: Kitchen Party: revisiting Class Hegemony, Ethnic Marketing and the unp.
Part 1

• March 14th, 7-10 PM

Tirdad Zolghadr: Kitchen Party: revisiting Class Hegemony, Ethnic Marketing and the unp.
Part 2

• March 15th, 1-10 pm (all day)

Nikolaus Hirsch: The Architecture of Education

• March 16th

4-6PM

Fia Backström: HERD INSTINCT 360° (2006)

6-9pm

Chus Martínez: Attitude Relativism: A session on the notion of the “contract” established between the artists and the audience.

• March 18th, 7-10 PM

Boris Groys: Art after Communism.

Guest speaker: Desiderio Navarro

• March 24th, 7-10 PM

Minerva Cuevas: Artistic Research

• March 26th, 7-10 PM

Jalal Toufic: You Said “Stay,” So I Stayed

• March 27th, 7-10 PM

Jalal Toufic: The Withdrawal of Tradition Past a Surpassing Disaster

• March 28th, 8PM

Mexico City Premiere: A Crime Against Art

A film by Hila Peleg
2007, Berlin/Madrid, 100 min.

With:
Defendants: Anton Vidokle and Tirdad Zolgdhar
Prosecutors: Vasif Kortun and Chus Martinez
Defense attorney: Charles Esche
Judge: Jan Verwoert
Expert witnesses: Maria Lind and Anselm Franke
Artist: Setareh Shabazi
Public: Keti Chukrov and Barnaby Drabble
With special contribution by Liam Gillick.

• March 30th

4-6 PM Damian Ortega: Book Presentation: MI CASA ES TU CASA
Selected Writings and Works of Lawrence Weiner.
Editorial Alias, 2008

7-9 PM Adriana Lara: A launch of a special issue of PAZMAKER for unitednationsplaza.

10 pm till the last person leaves!
SALON ALEMAN – UNPMX closing party with Tequila Sarabia by Eduardo Sarabia

Can’t come to Mexico? Tune in online: Angel Nevarez and Valerie Tevere will continue WUNP as a live internet broadcast stream from Casa Refugio, Mexico DF. Every Wednesday during the month of March. Schedule TBA; check the UNP website for more information: http://www.unitednationsplaza.org

*Please note that schedule is subject to change.

For full program information, abstracts and bios of participants, please go to http://www.pac.org.mx/unitednationsplaza_program.html

For further information please contact:

Viviana Kuri Haddad
Coordinadora
Patronato de Arte Contemporáneo, a.c.
Palmas 820 piso 3, Lomas de Chapultepec 11000
Mexico DF
t. (5255)55 40 8395 / 5284 0360 ext. 395
http://www.pac.org.mx

unitednationsplaza Mexico DF has been made possible with generous support from

- OMR Gallery
- Nina Menocal Gallery
- Kurimanzutto Gallery

Special thanks to Boris Hirmas and Alberto Fierro/Cultural Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign affairs.