Conflux is this upcoming weekend!
"Conflux is about contemporary psychogeography, the investigation of everyday urban life through emerging artistic, technological and social practice".
Last year, the fact that each exhibit was scattered among a few galleries in Williamsburg meant that the festival, although enjoyable, felt scattered and incoherent. This time, they're having a bunch of talks at Luna Lounge, which may cohere the entire festival -- which is great, because it's a new media/art+technology festival in North America, which is a rare thing in of itself, and also because the topic is so broad and intriguing, endlessly applicable.
Some culled events:
We like to Peep
A presentation by Régine Debatty
Friday, Sept 14, 2007, 3 - 3:45pm
Luna Lounge
"Recent discussions about urban space have debated the issue of surveillance and how it is modifying the way we engage with cities. But is the problem coming only from above, from those who govern us? Or is voyeurism becoming increasingly integrated in our popular culture?"
The person behind the awesome awesome We Make Money Not Art (the BLDGBLOG of architecture, The Sartorialist of fashion..)
Sousveillance Culture panel with Amy Alexander, Jill Magid and Hasan Elahi, moderated by Marisa Olson
Luna Lounge, 61 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, Sept 15, 2007, 2:30pm - 4pm
Rhizome is organizing a panel in conjunction with Conflux, on sousveillance, the practice of watching from below (sous-) rather than above (sur-). A diverse group of artists whose work engages surveillance will explore the cultural and political implications of sousveillance, which tends to be discussed as empowering when manifest as a "taking-back" of cameras or the rising-up of "little brother," but which also unfolds in an era of increased self-surveillance, encouraged by both the government and the culture of participatory and 'transparent' media. Panelists include artists Amy Alexander, Jill. Magid and Hasan Elahi, and moderator Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator, Rhizome.
Conflux Block Party
Sunday, Sept 16, 2007, noon - 5pm
The Change You Want to See, 84 Havemeyer Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211
" * Replacement Pickles . Benjamin Thorr Brown . The Change You Want to See . Ongoing Event, Installation
* Urban Propagation . Joe Mangrum . The Change You Want to See . Block Party Event, Ongoing Event, Installation
* Growgreenpoint [GGP] . Hikaru Furuhashi . Block Party Event, Installation
* Making Winter . Jaclyn Meloche . The Change You Want to See . Block Party Event, Ongoing Event
* Pick Up Artist . Gertrude Berg . The Change You Want to See . Block Party Event, Ongoing Event, Performance
* Energy Harvesting Dérive . Christian Croft + Kate Hartman . The Change You Want to See . Self-guided Walk/Tour, Block Party Event, Ongoing Event
* The Locksmithing Institute of Conflux . Lucas Murgida . The Change You Want to See . Block Party Event, Open Workshop, Presentation
* Urban Camouflage: Taking Shelter . Katherine Behar . The Change You Want to See . Block Party Event, Ongoing Event, Installation"
Toward a Schizogeographic Society?
A panel discussion with Janet Abrams and Adam Greenfield, moderated by Mark Shepard.
Luna Lounge, 61 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
Sunday, Sept 16, 2007, 2pm - 4pm
"The psychogeography of a city like New York today is not at all the same as that of Paris in 19th or mid 20th Century. Alone in the crowd, at home in the crowd – today we dérive in the shopping mall. If the Flâneur presents a point of reference for a mobilized observer for whom the aestheticisation of the urban is simultaneously a liberatory and alienating practice, the Situationist dérive suggests a spatial practice for liberation from an alienating commodification of the city. Today, negotiating our daily lives in and through a city like New York involves evermore-subtle maneuvers between public and private, virtual and actual. In place of a unified, embodied subject we find new hybrids and assemblages of body, data, self and consciousness. The placing and spacing of the urban experience is strewn across radically different environments. The gaze of the crowd has been replaced by that of the surveillance camera and the RFID reader; the pyschogeographic “attractions of the terrain” have become a schizogeography of nodes and networks. This panel will attempt to re-evaluate the psychogeographic in terms of contemporary conditions of subjectivity and urban space."
Adam Greenfield had a talk last April, "The City Is Here For You To Use", which I really really wanted to go to but missed. Perhaps this will make up for it.