[Reader-list] RealPlay in [R][R][F] 2004

[Ah_Ek Ferrera_Balanquet]

RealPlay
Part of [R][R][F] 2004

Including:
 
Farah: In Search for Joy
<http://farah.dyne.org/>
by Jaromil

The Olive Project
<http://www.charlesstreetvideo.com/project.php?id=1>
by Hard Pressed Collective

Migrant
<http://www.crixa.com/mireille/Migrant/Tampa.htm>
by Mireille Astore

Project Threadbare
<http://www.threadbare.tyo.ca/>
by Project Threadbare Coalition

Survey of Common Sense
<http://surveyofcommonsense.net/>
by Haleh Niazmand

Curated by Gita Hashemi for [R][R][F] 2004

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[R][R][F] 2004 --->XP
[Remembering-Repressing-Forgetting]
<http://www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004>
global networking project
created and developed by Agricola de Cologne

5-29 March 2004
National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucaresti/Romania
<http://www.mnac.ro/next>
&
Bergen Center of Electronic Arts Bergen/Norway
<http://www.bek.no>

20-28 March 2004
New Media Art Festival Bangkok/Thailand
<http://thailand.culturebase.org>

For other programmes, times and places visit [R][R][F] 2004
<http://www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004>
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RealPlay
Curatorial essay by Gita Hashemi

RealPlay has little to do with play, really. It is about playing for real. 
Topically positioned in specific times and/or places, the works in RealPlay 
contest, counter and/or subvert dominant geopolitical and/or cultural 
notions with reference to the colonial constructs of the "Middle East" and 
the "West." This selection works as a broad political commentary as well as 
responses to certain trends in "new media" discourse that explicitly or 
implicitly (sometimes inadvertently) postulate and promote fundamental 
distinctions and discontinuities between the "virtual" and the "real." Such 
distinctions inevitably idealize the illusionary (utopic or distopic) space 
where code is entirely capable of masterminding experience, or where code 
becomes experience. The projects in RealPlay reject such Western-oriented 
techno-centric and techno-determinist tendencies by privileging urgent 
socio-political issues over media formalism and by insisting on the priority 
of social interaction over, as well as through, cyberspace interactivity. 
Using diverse practices of documenting and archiving, these projects 
capitalize on the function of the internet as a repository of retrievable 
data and, more importantly, as a communication channel that can be 
advantageously put to use towards inciting counter-hegemonic thought and 
action.
Subverting stereotypical representations of Palestinians as fanatic 
terrorists or people solely occupied and pre-occupied by war, inFarah: In 
Search for Joy  <http://farah.dyne.org/>, an account from a trip to 
Palestine following the brutal Israeli re-occupation campaign of the West 
Bank in 2002, software pioneer and artist Jaromil (Italy) gives an account 
of the everlasting human search and capacity for joy in towns and refugee 
camps under siege (again). Farah: In Search for Joy is a brief and 
unpretentious traveler's search for and documentation of those aspects of 
the Palestinian popular culture that continue to create, offer and celebrate 
joy in spite of the prolonged conditions of colonial occupation and war. As 
an archive (in progress), the website is incubated in and reflective of the 
artist's interactions with his environment as it is a virtual space for our 
encounter with a dimension of Palestinian reality categorically forgotten or 
ignored in dominant representations in the West.

An initiative of Hard Pressed Collective (Canada), a group of media artists 
with a penchant for politically-engaged art-making,The Olive Project  
<http://www.charlesstreetvideo.com/project.php?id=1> is, on the surface, a 
programmed compilation of short videos by diverse international artists. 
Thematically grounded in the historically rich and culturally diverse 
symbolism of the olive, the videos exhibit a range of artist responses to 
the ruthless practice of uprooting olive trees in Palestine by Israeli 
forces- a favourite occupation strategy aiming to force Palestinians off 
their land by effectively undermining the economic survival of the growers 
and their local production. Collectively, the videos construct a time-based 
memorial to "peace and justice" made of 2-minute blocks. Before, through and 
beyond the remediated compilation and its dissemination in cyberspace, 
however, this project functions as a tool for consciousness-raising, 
mobilizing and networking around an issue of real world significance.

Migrant <http://www.crixa.com/mireille/Migrant/Tampa.htm> is the web 
component of Mireille Astore's (Australia) larger sculpture and performance 
project that takes as its starting point the infamous Tampa ship incident in 
August 2001. The incident brought local and international public attention 
to the plight of the "boat people"- refugees primarily from the "Middle 
East"-who, upon arrival in Australian waters, were first refused landing and 
then recast as prisoners by a xenophobic "Western" state. Astore's obsessive 
photographic documentation (from the inside looking out) of her 18-day 
self-inflicted virtual imprisonment-in a scaled recreation of Tampa on a 
public beach in Sydney-functions as a looking glass in which to observe the 
uneasy and disturbing reactions to the arrival of new migrants by a society 
that has repressed its own memory and burried its own racist and colonial 
settler history under the grounds on which Woomera and Nauru detention 
centres currently stand for real.

Project Threadbare <http://www.threadbare.tyo.ca/> is animated by a 
coalition of activists in response to the detention in August 2003 of 21 
South Asian (primarily Pakistani) students in Toronto, Canada under the 
guise of anti-terrorist and national security operations. Since its 
inception, Project Threadbare has been an immensely successful local 
expository and legal campaign against racial targeting, detention and 
deportation of immigrants and refugees by Canadian police, intelligence and 
immigration forces, who are hotly in the race for the third place prize of 
dishonour, after USA and Australia, for breaking their own nation's civil 
liberties codes as well as international human rights conventions. This 
website, an ongoing forum, newsboard and archive for Toronto activists, is 
one wiki that doesn't pretend to be the virtual world's better-than-original 
replica of "democracy." Although some of the active members of the coalition 
are artists and their website is pretty slick, Project Threadbare was not 
conceived as and does not make a claim to being new media art; rather, it is 
a real world experiment in social and creative participation and 
collaboration, with tangible impact in the lives of the original 21 
detainees and now in the lives of many others in similar predicaments.

Survey of Common Sense <http://surveyofcommonsense.net/> is a recreation of 
an earlier participatory painting installation project by the same title by 
Haleh Niazmand (USA). A parody of the polling industry that for the past 5 
or 6 decades has been the engine of "democracy" in the United States, 
Niazmand's image-text intervention, in the form of survey questions with 
forced yes/no "choices," is not only an authorial comment on the practices 
of polling as determinant of "democratic outcome," but a strong challenge to 
notions of "pragmatism" and "common sense" preached from political pulpits 
in the present-day United States. Beyond this, Survey of Common Sense is an 
invitation, courtesy of an artist from the "Middle East" and a citizen of 
the "West," to the participants/viewers to recongnize, acknowledge and 
reflect upon the ways in which each and every one of us are intricately and 
deeply implicated, really and virtually, in the bloody absurdity of this 
political moment. As such and in the very impossibility of responding with 
any degree of ease and resolution to Niazmand's questions, this work is an 
incessant challenge issued so we will not slip into forgetting.

The projects in this selection have taken shape independently of this 
curatorial effort. My thanks to all the participants for allowing me to 
include their work in RealPlay.

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[R][R][F] 2004 includes selection by:
Gita Hashemi (Iran/Canada)
Raul Ferrera-Balanquet (Cuba/USA)
Calin Man and Stefan Tiron (Romania)
Eva Sjuve (Norway)
Bjoern Norberg (Sweden)
Raquel Partnoy (USA/Argentina)
Agricola de Cologne (Germany)
Melody Parker-Carter (Germany)

For more on other curator's programmes, visit [R][R][F] 2004
<http://www.newmediafest.org/rrf2004>
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Raul Moarquech Ferrera-Balanquet,MFA
Artist/Writer/Curator
krosrods at cartodigital.org
ektenel at hotmail.com
http://www.cartodigital.org/krosrods

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