Upgrade! NY: Improperly Named

By Marco Deseriis | May 3, 2010

Janez Jansa
Event Type: Conference
Time: May 10, 2010 (7:00-9:00PM)
Venue: Eyebeam
540 West 21st Street
New York, NY 10011

Panelists:
Marco Deseriis (Doctoral candidate, New York University)
Leonidas Martin Saura (Artist and professor, Yo Mango!)
Janez Janša (Artist, Janez Janša Janez Janša Janez Janša)

This panel of the Upgrade! series explores the aesthetic and political conditions of possibility for the emergence of the “multiple singularity,” an apparently contradictory term that describes the making of (collective) subjectivities as a process characterized by multiplicity and instability.

By tracing a genealogy of collective pseudonyms and “multiple-use names” such as Ned Ludd, Alan Smithee, Monty Cantsin, Karen Eliot and Luther Blissett, and connecting it to contemporary experiments such as Yo Mango! and Janez Janša, the panel will present and discuss radical strategies of subjectivation in times in which subjectivity is presented as an open, shared process by the very architecture of social media.

*Watch the live stream on May 10 at eyebeam.org/live

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Book Launch: Critical Strategies in Art & Media

By Marco Deseriis | April 7, 2010

When: April 15, 6:30-8:30pm
Where: New School University
Vera List Center (Wollman Hall)
65 West 11th Street
New York, NY

Brief introductory remarks by Steve Kurtz (Critical Art Ensemble) Marco Deseriis, (New York University), Beka Economopulous (Not An Alternative), McKenzie Wark (New School), Andy Bichlbaum (The Yes Men), Gabriella Coleman (New York University), Konrad Becker (World-Information Institute).

Moderators: Ted Byfield (New School University) and Jim Fleming (Autonomedia Verlag)

Critical Strategies Poster For centuries, art has been put on pedestals and in pillories, literally and figuratively, over its supposed capacity to carry a critical, political charge. Yet the trends of the last few decades – the birth pangs of hypercapital and environmental catastrophe – have hardly brought about any form of art potent enough to meet challenges on that scale.

In September 2009, the World-Information Institute convened a group of digital theorists and practitioners to debate whether art has a future beyond a “creative industry” bent on decorating disaster – or, if not, what new kinds of approaches might be called for. This book (Autonomedia 2010) distills that debate.

Contributions by: Konrad Becker (World-Information Institute), Ted Byfield (Nettime), Amanda McDonald Crowley (Eyebeam) Steve Kurtz (Critical Art Ensemble), Jim Fleming (Autonomedia), Claire Pentecost (Continental Drift), Peter Lamborn Wilson (Temporary Autonomous Zone). Interventions by Bifo, Marco Deseriis, Rene Gabri, Brian Holmes, McKenzie Wark, and Felix Stalder.

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Radars & Fences III: Borders, Affect, Space

By Marco Deseriis | March 4, 2010

Event Time
Friday, March 12, 2010
10:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Location
Institute for Public Knowledge
20, Cooper Square – 5th Floor
New York, NY 10003

RSVP at http://www.nyu.edu/media.culture/events/event.html?e_id=2324
Web site: http://blogs.nyu.edu/blogs/md1445/rf/

Description
A symposium with Ricardo Dominguez & Amy Carroll, Teddy Cruz, Helga Tawil Souri, Laila el Haddad & Mushon Zer-Aviv.

Radars and Fences 2010 explores the production of the Israel/Palestine and Mexico/US borders, examining how they engage affects, bodies, and spatial scales. Read More »

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A Few Considerations on Crowdsourcing Art

By Marco Deseriis | December 17, 2009

I have recently published an article on Repubblica.it (in Italian) on the work of Aaron Koblin, a young, brilliant Californian artist who has been crowdsourcing his art projects through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

By collecting the contributions of thousands of MTurk’s providers Koblin realized a version of Daisy Bell sung by two thousand voices, a $100 bill drawn by 10,000 contributors (paid 1 cent each), and a very large flock of sheep all facing left.

In this video interview Koblin explains what inspired him to ask 10,000+ MTurkers to draw a sheep for 2 cents a piece:

After watching the video I emailed him a couple of questions. In particular I asked him whether aside from assigning the Mturks an unusual and aesthetic task such as drawing a sheep he had tried to involve them on a different level, for instance whether he tried to involve them in a discussion on possible future developments of the project. His first answer was:

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Eva and Franco Mattes’ Book

By Marco Deseriis | December 6, 2009

Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.org have just released a book (Charta, 2009) about their precocious art career.

The book recapitulates the couple’s memorable exploits, including their participation in the multiple-use nameLuther Blissett, the fake Nikeground campaign in Vienna, the poster ad for United We Stand, a fictitious film on the power dreams of the European Union, and their recent Synthetic Performances in Second Life.

The book also reveals the couple’s very first (and until now undisclosed) work: Stolen Pieces. From 1995 to 1997, the Matteses toured the world’s most important museums and stole dozens of fragments from well-known works by artists such as Duchamp, Kandinsky, Beuys and Rauschenberg. This work, which has remained a secret for 14 years, is revealed and discussed here for the very first time.

Texts by Domenico Quaranta, Bruce Sterling, RoseLee Goldberg, Wu Ming, Fabio Cavallucci, Maurizio Cattelan, Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito, Tilman Baumgärtel, Marco Deseriis and Matthew Mirapaul.

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‘We Get More Ambitious:’ An Interview with Wu Ming

By Marco Deseriis | December 1, 2009

Altai Book Cover

The last day Roberto Bui aka Wu Ming 1 was touring New York City’s colleges and bookstores to present the English translation of Manituana (Verso, 2009), Ashley Dawson, Gabriella Coleman, and I came together to interview him in Biella’s office on the 7th floor of the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU.

Roberto was in a good mood, as he had just learned that Altai, the latest effort of the Wu Ming collective (Einaudi 2009), is selling extremely well in Italy. The conversation touched upon a number of stimulating topics including Wu Ming’s process of collective writing, the relationship between the four Wu Mings and their community of readers, the collective’s authoring and communicative strategies, Manituana as an allegory of American exceptionalism, the difference between ‘technified myths’ and genuine myths, and the different apprehension of the notion of “popular culture” in Italy and the United States.

Ashley Dawson, whose work focuses on literature written in places once colonized by the British and is Associate Professor of English at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY), and at the College of Staten Island, has published the interview on the blog of Social Text.

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Wu Ming Presents Manituana

By Marco Deseriis | November 18, 2009

This Friday I will be introducing Wu Ming @ BlueStockings!

Date:
Friday, November 20, 2009
7:00pm

Location:
BlueStockings
172 Allen St
New York, NY

Wu Ming is a pseudonym for a group of Italian authors, “a band of guerrilla novelists” whom have collaboratively written several novels, including 54 (2002), Manituana (2009), and, under the pseudonym of Luther Blissett, Q (1999).

Wu Ming, This Revolution Is Faceless

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FCF’s Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge

By Marco Deseriis | November 10, 2009

The Free Culture Forum which met in Barcelona on Oct 29-Nov 1, 2009 has elaborated a Charter for Innovation, Creativity and Access to Knowledge which is worth reading, circulating, and discussing.

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Stephanie Rothenberg on Invisible Threads

By Marco Deseriis | November 1, 2009

The Internet as Playground and Factory – Stephanie Rothenberg from Voices from The Internet as Play on Vimeo.

Co-created by Stephanie Rothenberg and Jeff Crouse, “Invisible Threads – Double Happiness Jeans” is a mixed reality performance-installation, which explores the growing intersection between labor, emerging virtual economies and real life commodities through the creation of a designer jeans “sweatshop” in Second Life that manufacturers real world, wearable jeans on-demand.

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No End In Sight

By Marco Deseriis | October 10, 2009

Networked Book LogoI have recently published a chapter of Networked: A (networked book) about (networked art), “an open book designed to be written, edited and read in a networked environment.”

The project has been commissioned by Turbulence.org, and implemented in collaboration with the Institute for the Future of the Book in 2008. After an international committee selected five chapters, the editors, Jo Anne Greene, Helen Thorington (Turbulence) and Eduardo Navas, invited new authors, including myself, to contribute new chapters to the book.

At the moment seven authors and three editors are holding a stimulating conversation on the potentialities of collaborative writing and networked editing on the empire mailing list, with the goal of collecting feedback from potential readers and inviting new contributors to participate.

Everyone can post comments on any of the existing chapters. Mine, titled “No End In Sight: Networked Art as a Participatory form of Storytelling” is available at http://deseriis.networkedbook.org.

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