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The common link amongst these artists is philosophical and political, rather than aesthetic. These are people who challenge the existing assumptions and conventions of the technological tools, the power relations of convergent technologies, and the emerging artforms of the third millenium. Each of the three artists selected for Virogenesis 2 has a history of working with various 'disenfranchised' groups and communities, with a view to disrupting existing social inequities through the creation of new contexts for the transmission of 'marginalised' perspectives.
An extensive national itinerary for viral agents Scanner, Matthew Fuller and Gomma will achieve the project's aim of provoking dialogue, broadly disseminating ideas and information, establishing networks and human hyperlinks, and challenging existing preconceptions of what constitutes 'art' in the information age.
Agent Gomma will inspire mutatation of existing cultural forms via his analysis of the Italian counter-cultural scene from the history of the squatted social centers to the post-modern media tactics.
Our intentions for the future are to create through editorial activity the conditions and the countercultural humus, because the movement can regenerate, this is how it happened at the end of the sixties. We want to intervene into what could be called the "crisis of the social center", a valid model of resistance during the eighties, but it must necessarily mutate and evolve in the view of the year 2000. In a paradoxical epoch where the maximum of the diffusion of technology for the distribution of information, corresponds with the minimum of real communication between social subject, the only prospect is to reason around a hypothesis of upturning this relation of dominion.
Agent Fuller will transmit his viral ideas of cultural sovereignty/autonomy
via the vectors: readings : street interventions
Interrogating relationships between the device of perpetually footnoted, perpetually appended 'windows into information', of the contemporary computer interface; the development of dysfunctional bureaucracy in the ruins of the welfare state; and in neobiological representations of the market as entering a new 'heroic' phase, against which no borders must be allowed to stand. Whilst the war of subjectivity ratchets up a couple of points, from pimp states to the production of the freelance unemployed, Eating Disorder gets it on with the most abandoned and licentious wretches on earth and fully advocates such brutality, and insolence, such debauchery and extravagance, such idleness, irreligion, cursing and swearing and contempt of all rule and authority, human and divine as is necessary to bring it down.
Agent Scanner will infiltrate the cultural body via the vectors: radio transmissions : club subliminals : surveillence technologies workshop
Video cameras survey our every movement in the streets, the Underground, the buses, the shops. We are all featured on countless home videos without consent. There is this paradox of privacy and invasion. I use what is simply available on open access in the shops, but what else exists? What do higher authorities have access to? How much are we being watched without our knowledge?
Participating parties include the United Trades and Labor Council of SA, Ngapartji Co-operative Multimedia Centre, Experimental Art Foundation, Doppio Teatro, Carnivale, Art Gallery of New South Wales, The Performance Space, Artspace, Street Level Inc, University of Western Sydney, Nepean (Dept of Design), Zonar Records, Australian National University (Canberra School of Art), Institute of Modern Art, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, IMAGO Co-operative Multimedia Centre, Contemporary Art and Technology and Melbourne Cyber Fringe.
These dates will be updated each week. If you require further details contact Francesca da Rimini gashgirl@sysx.apana.org.au, Virogenesis curator, ANAT anat@anat.org.au, or the host venues direct.
Adelaide
September 24: Gomma presents a lecture at the Media Resource Centre as part of the UTLC's Community Cultural Development and Multimedia Symposium
25 September: Gomma presents a workshop at the Ngapartji Cooperative Multimedia Centre, also as part of the UTLC's symposium
17 October: Fuller
does a presentation at the Experimental Art Foundation
Brisbane
9 October: Fuller
does a presentation at the Institute of Modern Art
Canberra
10 October: Scanner lectures to art and music students at the Australian National University's School of Art, as part of the Canberra School of Art Forum Program.
Melbourne
16 October: Scanner performs and talks at McClelland Art Gallery in conjunction with NETS Victoria.
18 October: Scanner talks at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA), in association with Contemporary Art and Technology (CAT).
19 October: Scanner performs at the Melbourne Cyberfringe hosted by Contemporary Art & Technology and the Melbourne Festival.
Perth:
12 October: Gomma and Scanner do a presentation in association with the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art and IMAGO.
Scanner will also perform that evening at the PICA Cafe.
Sydney:
28 September: Gomma presentation at the Art Gallery of New South Wales as part of Carnivale
3 October:Fuller and Gomma present a lecture at the University of Western Sydney in collaboration with Streetlevel
4 October:Scanner performs at Lyric above Barazza in association with Zonar Records and Ear
5 October:Scanner and Fuller do a presentation in association with Artspace and The Performance Space at Artspace
This tour has been assisted by the Hybrid Arts and Community Cultural Development
Funds of the Australia Council.
For further information or interviews, contact:
Australian Network for Art & Technology
tel: 08 231 9037
fax: 08 211 7323
email: anat@anat.org.au
web: http://www.anat.org.au