ARTBOOM 09'

Marcin Ramocki and ARTBOOM 09' have the pleasure to present the European premiere of "Brooklyn DIY: A Story of Williamsburg Art Scene".

The screening will take place on Saturday, June 13th, 7pm
Kino Pod Baranami, Rynek Główny 27, Krakow



ARTBOOM Festival
Krakow, Poland - June 12-22, 2009

ARTBOOM 09 is a first edition of a cyclical event which will focus on art in the urban space.

featuring works by: Paweł Althamer, Mirosław Bałka, Rahim Blak, Rafał Bujnowski, Brad Downey, Karolina Kowalska, Norman Leto, Teresa Murak, Joanna Rajkowska, Marcin Ramocki, Pipilotti Rist, Jadwiga Sawicka, Roman Signer, Paul Slocum, Grzegorz Sztwiertnia, Julian Tomaszuk, Twożywo , Erwin Wurm, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Zeus

lectures/presentations by: Adam Budak, Michaela Crimmin, Regine Debatty and Robert Rumas

With special Atari music performances by Paul Slocum.

Organized by the Krakow Festival Office and the East of Art Foundation Curated by Małgorzata Gołębiewska.

Brooklyn DIY @ El Parqueadero, Bogota

Please joins us for the Latin American premiere event of "Brooklyn DIY: A Story of Williamsburg Art Scene" at El Parqueadero, Bogota.

The screening will take place on Saturday, May 30th, 5 pm, first floor of Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Calle 11 # 4 – 21, Bogota, Colombia.

Curated by Ernesto Restrepo.




Related events:

"Hacker Art y prácticas alternativas de navegación por Internet ", lecture/workshop by Marcin Ramocki, May 27-28, 2009

"8 BIT" (Ramocki, Strawhand 2006), screening and Q&A, May 29, 5pm

All events are free and open to the public.


El Parqueadero is a collaborative project of Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño and La Banco de la República promoting contemporary media arts.

"Brooklyn DIY" : images from the premiere

Brooklyn DIY premiere screening sold out!
Most of the cast was present in the audience...
The images below were taken by John Berens.


Sally Berger, the curator of Documentary Fortnight introducing the film.


Marcin Ramocki and Gene Pool, (Q&A after the screening)


The crowd.

Meredith Allen and Mike Ballou in the audience.
A short "mobile" video below.

"the future is not what is used to be" @ Postmasters

February 28 – April 4, 2009

"the future is not what is used to be"

Opening: saturday, february 28th 6-8 pm

"the future is not what is used to be” brings together artists engaged in the Internet shaped culture. Through drawings, photographs, sculpture, video, and online projects they explore social interaction in a networked world, reflection in the times of speed, new communication tools and smart technologies affecting cultural and sociopolitical reality, sustainable strategies for contemporary life, connectivity and dis-connect, digital/analog divide, instantaneity and obsolescence, the web as the largest image depository ever, and new forms of appropriation, means of production, and modes of political engagement.

What we do today shapes our tomorrows.

Kevin Bewertsdorf conducts Google searches for images that he then orders printed onto variety of objects employing online services like walgreens.com. These remotely made “Promotional Objects” transcend banality of its origins as private found imagery: from infinite web space onto a limited product, the unwitting subjects are made physical once again, staring at you across time and space.

http://www.maximumsorrow.com/

Charles Broskoski’s "Films" reverse the culture of image overload. On his site, six well known films (Pulp Fiction, Terminator 2 and When Harry Met Sally among them) play continuously on a fixed daily schedule. There is a catch: the screen is black save only for the subtitles of the dialog; an absurd comfort of knowing that the movies are always there to serve as a catalyst for visual memory.

http://www.supercentral.org/9/

Marc Horowitz found an analog way to connect with his fellow twitterers: "for the next 100 people that add me on twitter ( twitter.com/ineedtostopsoon ) I'll send you a small drawing.” The 100 drawings on view will be mailed out at the end of the show. In addition every afternoon Horowitz will broadcast “AnHourADay.me” - a livestream video and chat talkshow with scheduled field trips, interviews, concerts, covert meetings, cooking instruction, comedians, reviews, round tables, celebrity guests, LA artist studio visits, road trips, and more

http://www.ineedtostopsoon.com

http://www.flickr.com/photos/marchorowitz/sets/72157607123055883/

Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung has been called “the John Heartfield of the digital era” His collages and animations composed entirely of imagery appropriated from the web deliver a biting political satire. New series -“In God We Trust” - presents global and domestic challenges facing the new Obama administration with the savior president cast as different deities (Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Krishna, prophet Abraham, Yoruba Orisha Trickster God Elegua/Eshu, Buddha, and Guadalupe)

http://www.111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111.com/

http://www.tinkin.com/

Kristin Lucas pays hommage to the ever-replacable technological marvels: maclassic, a 25 years old icon of personal computing, and other nearly forgotten hardware objects are cast in colored wax as beautiful yet perishable candles

http://www169.pair.com/klucas/archive/

Michael Mandiberg’s altered encyclopedias, dictionaries, and newspapers, words incised into them with a laser cutter, highlight the loosing battle of printmedia at a time of rapid online delivery and the never ending newness of information. Everyday a fresh copy of The New York Times with the words “old news” cut onto it will be delivered to the gallery, a stack accumulating over the course of the exhibition.

http://www.mandiberg.com/

Eva and Franco Mattes (0100101110101101.org) inject new synthetic life into art long gone. Their avatars in a virtual world Second Life re-enact seminal performance works from the seventies. Gilbert and George’s “The Singing Sculpture” and Marina Abramovic and Ulay’s “Imponderabilia” are staged for a very different audience.

http://www.0100101110101101.org/

Joe McKay finds the ghosts of Google Street View van and Mapjack car. His photographs recreate these stealth vehicles from partial reflections in store windows in San Francisco.

http://homepage.mac.com/joester5/art/

JooYoun Paek’s inflatable objects are smart appliances for urban survival. A bicycle cover made from garbage bags provides inconspicuous “blend-in” protection for a city cyclist, and a self-sustainable chair inflated by walking offers its user an independence from the urban infrastructure.

http://www.jooyounpaek.com/

Sharing and communal nature and of online engagement has lead to formation of surfing clubs: group blogging sites with fast-paced conceptual exchange based on treatment and analysis of online material. Marcin Ramocki & Paul Slocum (with Spiritsurfers) will present “Where is it?,” a short video based on the blog posts of Spiritsurfers.

http://www.spiritsurfers.net/

http://ramocki.net/surfing-clubs.html

*The title of this show is a quote from Paul Valery

Postmasters Gallery located at 459 west 19th Street between 9 and 10 Avenues is open Tuesday through Saturday 11 - 6 pm.

Postmasters Gallery 459 W 19th Street New York, NY 10011 212 727 3323 postmasters@thing.net

Feb 25th: "Brooklyn DIY", World Premiere @ MoMa

Marcin Ramocki and The Museum of Modern Art have the pleasure to invite you to the world premiere of "Brooklyn DIY".

Wednesday, February 25, 2009, 8:30 p.m.

The Museum of Modern Art
(212) 708-9400
11 West 53 Street,
between Fifth and Sixth avenues
New York, NY 10019-5497

Theater 1 (The Roy and Niuta Titus Theater 1), T1

Brooklyn DIY. 2009. USA.

A Story of Williamsburg Art Scene 1987-2007

Directed by Marcin Ramocki.

Brooklyn DIY is a long overdue examination of the creative renaissance in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Home to underground warehouse parties, anarchistic street creativity, and artist-run galleries and performance spaces, Williamsburg gave birth to one of the most vibrant and rebellious artistic communities to arise in the 1980s, permanently changing the city's cultural landscape. Featuring interviews with a host of artists and neighborhood characters, Ramocki's film captures life in a utopian universe made by artists, for artists—along with its inevitable decline in the face of real estate development, gentrification, and the post–September 11 market collapse. 71 min.

Cinematography: Lalo Molina
Edit: Jessie Stead

Associate Producers: Carlton Bright, Jason Roque
Assistant Director: Jessie Stead
Production Assistants: Zoe Willoughby, Jenine Orzechowski
Sound Mix: Chris Burke

Featuring interviews with: Joe Amrhein, Daniel Aycock, Mike Ballou, Ken Butler, Don Carroll, Lauren Cornell, Ebon Fisher, Matt Freedman & Jude Talllichet, Jillian Mcdonald, Aron Namenwirth & Nancy Horowitz, Sarah Schmerler, Ward Shelley, Amy Sillman, Becky Smith, Larry Tee, Conrad Ventur and Eric Z.

Special appearances by: Medea, Gene Pool, Adam Simon, Brian & Leon Dewan, Brian Conley, Charles Beronio, Mike Smith, Lexy Grey, Golden Triangle, Tim Spelios and many more.

http://brooklyndiy.com

http://ramocki.net

trailer: http://vimeo.com/3230069

World premiere. Q&A with director

In the Film exhibition Documentary Fortnight 2009

Screening tickets info: http://www.moma.org/visit_moma/admissions.html#top

RESET/PLAY in Austin

RESET/PLAY
September 6 – November 2, 2008

Cory Arcangel
Beat the Champ (Sega Genesis Championship Bowling: Dana), 2008
installation with hacked Sega Genesis game controller
dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist and Team Gallery, New York, NY

The video game as a medium and a style of life has reached its middle age along with the first generation of people who grew up playing them. The non-linear, interactive, processor based narratives, which at first mimicked Hollywood and struggled to convey their simple content with 8-bit processors, gradually became the largest entertainment industry in the history of electronic media. RESET/PLAY is an exhibition attempting a critical exploration of contemporary art inspired by video games. Questioning the history, control mechanisms, political and art-historical implications of electronic games, RESET/PLAY assembles a formidable group of international artists who made a significant impact on this growing post-game artistic sub-genre. Artists include Cory Arcangel, Michael Bell-Smith, Mike Beradino, Brody Condon, Alex Galloway, JODI, Guthrie Lonergan, Kristin Lucas, Joe McKay, Michael Smith, Eddo Stern and Keita Takahashi.

Brody Condon
Judgment Modification (After Memling), 2008
self-playing video game
Courtesy of the artist and Virgil de Voldère Gallery, New York, NY

Talking Art with RESET/PLAY guest curators Marcin Ramocki and Paul Slocum

Saturday, September 6, 3:00 pm

RESET/PLAY is organized for Arthouse by guest curators Marcin Ramocki and Paul Slocum, both of whom are practicing media artists who also run independent spaces in Brooklyn and Dallas, respectively, that focus on media art. The exhibition will be accompanied by an 8-bit music and film festival co-organized by the Austin Museum of Digital Art.

Obsolescence/Invention conference @ NSCAD

Michelle Gay, "Error Code", hand stiched computer crash

"Obsolescence and the Culture of Human Invention" was a conference / related group exhibition(".txt"), which I attended last week in Halifax, Canada. The participants included artists Robert Bean, David Clark, Michelle Gay, Jillian McDonald, Michael Maranda, Luke Murphy, Marcin Ramocki, Ilan Sandler and the keynote speaker N. Katherine Hayles. Katherine gave an excellent and slightly scary talk on transhumanism: a political/philosophical movement interested in replacing humans with technological beings.

works by researchers Robert Bean and Ilan Sandler


Obsolescence and the Culture of Human Invention will cover a three-year investigation into language, technology and artistic production in the context of digital media. It involves researchers, artists and Cultural Studies scholars.

some Nasty Nets posts

I have put together a paper/presentation about the art practice of net surfing clubs, specifically discussing Nasty Nets, Loshadka, Spirit Surfers and Double Happiness. I guess I was trying to make sense out of it for myself for a while... and this piece is an outcome. During my talk I discussed the topic in much greater detail, but this text is a good outline and an introduction to the subject (I hope).

"Surfing Clubs: organized notes and comments"

this is a 4.5 Mb pdf file.
if you prefer a smaller, crappy and ugly looking html without links I have it here.

Paul Slocum on Spirit Surfers

8 BIT in Australia

8 BIT made it around the world all the way to Australia! Last Thursday, April 24th we premiered at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne. It was well worth the 24 hour trip: 8 BIT sold out and ACMI turned out to be an excellent venue, up there with the NYC MoMa and Montreal S.A.T. The screening was a part of "Game On", a massive exhibition about the history of video gaming, featuring every game I have ever seen + some brand new machinima by Eddo Stern.

I was super excited to meet the few Australian chiptune people: DJ Trip opened the event with an awesome 30 minutes Commodore/Gameboy + PC set, and the after party was quite successfully rocked out by 10kfreemen and Dot.Ay.
For more info on Australian chiptune scene check out http://gameboyaustralia.com/.

Huge thanks go to Tim Webster (the organizer), Anna Svedberg, Helen Stuckey and the entire ACMI crew, which made my week in Melbourne truly special!

Image above: Tim Webster, DJ Trip and Anna Svedberg.

And last but not the least: my Melbourne micro-video documentary;)

Future Film Festival, Bologna

Just came back from the beautiful Bologna, where 8 BIT was screened in the 10th Future Film Festival. The event, mainly focusing on contemporary animation, was wonderfully organized by Giulietta Fara and Oscar Cosulich.

The festival brought some of the best work made in the field of 2 and 3D animation, both independent, like Otto Guerra (Brasil), Makoto Shinkai (Japanese), Juan Antin (Argentina), Pablo Angeles (Mexico), and big industry artists like Bruce Sterling & Matt Aitken (Weta Digital), Vicki Dobbs Beck (IL&M), Mark Holmes (Pixar) and Mike Thurmeier (Blue Sky).


The food in Bologna deserves to be talked about in the arts context: above the typical
Bolognese tortelini with pork, permigiano reggano and ricotta, served in broth. In the background a fantastic bottle of Pino Nero from Trento.

The closing party: Random and NrGiga playing gameboy music on a very tiny sound system;)

Wall Street Journal: Andrew Lavallee about blogs and art

Today's Wall Street Journal contains an article by Andrew Lavallee featuring works by Guthrie Lonergan, Marcin Ramocki, Paul Slocum, Cory Arcangel, Marisa Olson and commentaries by Lauren Cornell and Paddy Johnson. Check it out on the front of the Marketplace print section (also running in our Europe and Asia editions) and online.

image: Guthrie Lonergan, "Internet Group Shot"

Natalie Moore and Marcin Ramocki at artMovingProjects

artMovingProjects
October 20 – November 18th

Mirage: Morning Before the Fact

A merciful mirage makes the living possible. The sun stoops low over everything wished for in a flash. Reverie alone assists the staggering mind. Here, at last (the map appears to disappear), are the artist’s intentions intact: that shimmer, that presence, as destructive as it is sublime. The clearest way to the universe is through wilderness. How to show the way for those who would climb through a hole in the sky?

In a sculptural landscape the artist figures herself as a traveler searching for a lost memory. In transitory time universal ideas and local reflections connect to macro and micro levels of conception. The forms are fleeting – moving in and out of solidity. Can a holistic view be regained? Can perception be trusted?

When the sun sets and after the sunsets and before it is night, the sky has light but there is no actual sun. The light is very soft and there is something magic about it. It limits with a magic look, a softening beauty and fragility. Open-ended and interrupted experience: the wind blowing, bird rustling, and sunshine flowing into trees.

Evening reports back as forms travel towards their disappearance. Place and replace with light and shadow, rich with past needs of representation or significance. The flawed nature of perfection is a landscape. Antelope Canyon, Bodø, Cappadocia, and the Sahara are the alien lands where great mountains and majestic deserts dwarf humans to insignificance. Such landscapes are neither an empty vista awaiting human settlement nor a jewel-like scene resisting human intrusion.
Like a mirage these objects seem to reconfigure themselves, the active mystery of uncertain vision. The work emits its aura without muscular statement or grand scale. The largest fire proceeds through aeons of emptiness in textures, tones, shapes, and edges, superimposes, and washes. The largest fire proceeds. Melanie Neilson Junceau

Project Space

Marcin Ramocki: blogger skins



“blogger skins” is a project based on time-specific capturing of image Google searches. The community most sensitive to this new phenomenon, and par excellence conceptually most related, is the world of pro-bloggers. For this project I chose five art bloggers: Tom Moody (tommoody.us), Paddy Johnson (artfagcity.com), Régine Debatty (we-make-money-not-art.com), James Wagner (jameswagner.com) and Joy Garnett (newsgrist.typepad.com) and performed specific image searches on their names. The thumbnails of first 100 images were imported (in the order of appearance) into an HTML editor and compiled into an image map, reflecting the original Google layout and popularity of search items.


John Giglio
New Project Space Location rear Door and Installation by John Giglio.
In keeping with the Front Doors designed by Giglio in 2004 the rear door expands aMP's new media ambitions.

166 N.12th St, between Bedford and Berry Sts., Williamsburg (917-301-6680, 917-301-0306).
Subway: L to Bedford Avenue Thurday -Sunday, 1pm - 6pm
www.artmovingprojects.com

"vertexList: An Attempt at Disclosure" in the Journal of National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

My essay about the curatorial concept of vertexList came out in October issue
of the very fancy Journal of National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. The whole issue is devoted to Digital Art and various approaches to its preservation in archiving. Below is a short fragment (in English:) with images:

Doug Henderson installing a sound installation in front of the gallery

"I picked the name vertexList because I found the metaphor to be potent and inclusive, not to mention the word itself sounded good. The curatorial philosophy was to follow my theoretical interests of disclosing the hidden codes running behind everything from on-screen images to American war games and social institution. This way I didn’t feel limited to new media only, although new media naturally became the label. The kind of artwork I was looking for opened up the slick surface of things and showed the underlying principles, algorithms and numbers. The focus immediately became “low end”, material residues of digital cultures and revisiting the early days, when computers where still bulky calculators. The ideas developed organically: I realized that low-end digital was more interesting from artistic point of view, didn’t require tremendous budget for cutting-edge technology and was largely underrepresented in the New York art scene. I lined up the first season worth of shows; mostly artists I knew since my MFA times at the University of Pennsylvania and some local Williamsburg/Brooklyn selections. I opted to follow the example of Pierogi and Momenta and do two projects by separate artists at the same time. There was enough space and the mixing of two “crowds” at the opening turned out to be very beneficial for developing artistic relations and connections.

"Breathing Mickey Mouse", Akiko Sakaizumi (mechanical sculpture, digital print on fabric)

I also decided to have music performances with the openings, which added some unique character and brought large audiences. To continue with the general philosophy of vertexList I begun curating chiptune music performances, Game Boy sonic experiments and various, digitally based sound performances. Since October 2003 vertexList hosted Bitshifter, Brian Dewan, Bubblyfish, Receptors, Covox, David Kristian, Glomag, Huaratron, Jengizkhan, Minusbaby, Nullsleep, Role Model and many more.

***

Joe Amrhein, "Spurs Take Assault on Women", acrylic on plaster

The magic arrived sooner than one could expect. After the positive review in the New York Times by Holland Cutter, vertexList was on the map, and I had to somehow keep the momentum. Still barely capable of putting together a proper press release, armed with my cell phone and laptop, I took the challenge and tried to make things as interesting as I could. People arrived to check out the new spot in Williamsburg, most with a fresh copy of the Times rolled under their arm and asking what happened to the Four Walls. Yellow envelops from young artists interested in having their NY debut appeared on my desk, which I just recently found on the streets of Brooklyn. Soon after Steven Miyao, the CEO of Kasina, (a smart e-commerce consulting firm in Manhattan), offered his sponsorship: vertexList received a brand new data projector and funding for all printed materials. All I had to do now is show some good work.

"Mus Muluscus Domesticus", Ernesto Restrepo and Maria Lopez (50 female mice, cameras, projectors, prepared doll houses, toys)

VertexList disclosures took very different formats: anything from an acrylic painting to a sensor based Jitter installation. I tried to proove to my audience and to myself that the digital condition is hidden in the way of thinking, communicating and the medium of its deconstruction is really secondary.
...
Over last 3 years vertexList exhibited solo projects by 32 different artist and collaboratives. The small selection described above is just a sampling of the enormous variety of media, tastes and schools of thought. "

"Explosion", Lee Arnold, acrylic on canvas