Cities Without Maps - Kota Tanpa Peta

On July 27, Keg and I held a film screening and book launch of Cities Without Maps - Kota Tanpa Peta with the Warung Cinema in a vacant lot on the Kali Code, Ratmakan kampung. This was the first screening of Cities Without Maps - Kota Tanpa Peta a film project coming out of our Asialink residency in Yogyakarta (made with Vanie, a local activist from Kali Code). The event was very well attended by the local community and also by other artists and friends who came down to watch the film in the place where it was made. Everyone was encouraged to bring food to share which was placed on the warung in exchange for a copy of the book. We also bought a large bunch of balloons as a thank you for the kids who helped out in the project by coming along to the drawing workshop. The night after we held a second screening at Mes 56 an photography collective from Yogyakarta. This also attracted a large crowd and provoked a heated discussion over community based art projects.

Cities Without Maps - Kota Tanpa Peta is an artistic mapping project of Ratmakan and Jagalan, two kampungs along the Kali Code. Both these kampungs are squatter communities - people's houses are built on a former rubbish dump and graveyard. Cities Without Maps uses animation and film to explore the politics of space in this area including issues such as the development of new housing estates and the fragile ownership the local community has over their land. The film looks at how children, teenagers men and women all use space differently and how these over lapping uses of space constitute the local area. The film uses the metaphore of ghost stories - which predominate in a community built on a former graveyard (and where some houses still have tombs in rooms of the house) - to look at how different generations have used space and the fleeting relationship we create with the material world.

If you would like a copy of the book and film Cities Without Maps - Kota Tanpa Peta please send me an email.

Treat (or Trick)

Still from Treat (or Trick), 1 min. 30 secs, sound by Kate Carr, words borrowed from an article by Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann, animated film, Zanny Begg, 2008.





I have made a new animation Treat (or Trick) for Esky Cinema, as part of the Next Wave Festival, Melbourne. Esky is a giant inflatible bar/cinema which is the inspired brain child of Keg de Souza. For more information on the project go to: http://www.kegdesouza.blogspot.com/

New Film: What Would It mean To Win?

WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO WIN?

A film by Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler
40 min., 2008

Media Release:

“What Would It Mean To Win?” was filmed on the blockades at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany in June 2007. In their first collaborative film Zanny Begg and Oliver Ressler focus on the current state of the counter-globalisation movement in a project which grows out of both artists’ preoccupation with globalisation and its discontents.

The film, which combines documentary footage, interviews, and animation sequences, is structured around three questions pertinent to the movement: Who are we? What is our power? What would it mean to win?

Almost ten years after “Seattle” this film explores the impact this movement has had on contemporary politics. Seattle has been described as the birthplace for the “movement of movements” and marked a time when resistance to capitalist globalisation emerged in industrialised nations. In many senses it has been regarded as the time when a new social subject – the multitude – entered the political landscape.

Recently the counter-globalisation movement has gone through a certain malaise accentuated by the shifts in global politics in the post 911 context. The protests in Heiligendamm seemed to re-assert the confidence, inventiveness and creativity of the counter-globalisation movement. In particular the five finger tactic – where protesters spread out across the fields of Rostock slipping around police lines – proved successful in establishing blockades in all roads into Heiligendamm. Staff working for the G8 summit were forced to enter and leave the meeting by helicopter or boat thus providing a symbolic victory to the movement.

“What Would It Mean To Win?”, as the title implies, addresses this central question for the movement. During the Seattle demonstrations “we are winning” was a popular graffiti slogan that captured the sense of euphoria that came with the birth of a new movement. Since that time however this slogan has been regarded in a much more speculative manner. This film aims to move beyond the question of whether we are “winning” or not by addressing what would it actually mean to win.

When addressing the question “what would it mean to win?” John Holloway quotes Subcomandante Marcos who once described “winning” as the ability to live an “infinite film program” where participants could re-invent themselves each day, each hour, each minute. The animated sequences take this as their starting point to explore how ideas of social agency, struggle and winning are incorporated into our imagination of politics.

The film was recorded in English and German and exists also in a French subtitled version. “What Would It Mean To Win?” will be presented in screenings in a variety of contexts and will also be part of the upcoming installation “Jumps and Surprises” by Begg and Ressler, which will present a broader perspective of different approaches to the counter-globalisation movement.


Concept, Interviews, Film Editing, Production: Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler
Interviewees: Emma Dowling, John Holloway, Adam Idrissou, Tadzio Mueller, Michal Osterweil, Sarah Tolba
Camera: Oliver Ressler
Animation: Zanny Begg
Sound: Kate Carr
Image Editing: Markus Koessl
Sound Editing: Rudi Gottsberger, Oliver Ressler
Special thanks to Turbulence, Holy Damn It, Conrad Barrett
Grants: Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst und Kultur; College of
Fine Art Research Grants Scheme, Sydney

Further Information:
www.ressler.at
www.zannybegg.com

FIRST SCREENINGS / ERSTE VORFÜHRUNGEN:

Wyspa Institute of Art, 1 Doki Street/145B, 80-958 Gdansk (PL), 17.01.08, 18:00, www.wyspa.art.pl

“Tour de Lorraine”, Kino in der Reitschule, Bern (CH), 19.01.08, 23:15; 01.02.08, 22:45; www.reitschule.ch/reitschule/prog.shtml www.tourdelorraine.ch/sidemenu/programm-tdl-08/kino/index.html

“politics”, Künstlerhaus Dortmund, Dortmund (D), 15.02. - 23.03.08 www.kuenstlerhaus-dortmund.de

“empören – einrichten – fliehen: Institutionskritik und instituierende Praxen”, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna (A), 13.03. - 19.04.2008,
http://kunsthalle.wuk.at

Electrification of Consumer Brains opens

The Electrification of Consumer Brains, a collaboration between Dmitry Vilensky and myself opens tomorrow at the Motorenhalle, Dresden, Germany. The work includes drawings, a publication, a poster campaign and a performance and will also be made into a film.

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A Few Simple Steps to a Stunning Magic Trick Performed Completely By the Spectator

Introduction: The magician asks the spectator: do you know any magic tricks? Whatever the spectator answers, the magician says "Well, here’s a great trick, only YOU'RE going to perform it."

The fetishism of the commodity — the domination of society by “intangible as well as tangible things” — attains its ultimate fulfillment in the spectacle, where the real world is replaced by a selection of illusions yet which at the same time succeed in making themselves be regarded as the epitome of reality. It’s a great trick – all the better because we ALL participate in the performance.

The Illusion: The spectator holds up a deck of cards, the magician points to one card which the spectator removes and places face down upon the table without looking at it. The spectator after some manipulation, ends up with two piles of cards on the table. The top cards on each pile are turned over, and, like magic one reveals the value of the selected card while the other reveals the suit.

Economic growth has liberated societies from the natural pressures that forced them into an immediate struggle for survival; but they have not yet been liberated from their liberator. The commodity’s independence has spread to the entire economy it now dominates. This economy has transformed the world, but it has merely transformed it into a world dominated by the economy.

The pseudo-nature within which human labor has become alienated demands that such labor remain forever in its service; and since this demand is formulated by and answerable only to itself, it in fact ends up channeling all socially permitted projects and endeavors into its own reinforcement. Thus we may not yet know how the trick works but we always know the value of the card and the importance of the suit.

The Performance: This trick is actually not too difficult, but the effect is astonishing because the magician never actually handles the deck all the work is done by the spectator. The only real skills necessary are good verbal communications and misdirection.

Whereas during the primitive stage of capitalist accumulation “political economy considers the spectator only as a worker,” who only needs to be allotted the indispensable minimum for maintaining his labor power, and never considers him or her their leisure and humanity, this perspective is revised as soon as commodity abundance reaches a level that requires an additional collaboration from the spectator.

Once the workday is over, the spectator is suddenly redeemed from the total contempt toward him or her that is so clearly implied by every aspect of the organization and surveillance of production, and finds him or herself seemingly treated like a grownup, with a great show of politeness, in his new role as a fellow magician. At this point the humanism of the commodity takes charge of the worker’s “leisure and humanity” simply because political economy now can and must dominate those spheres as political economy. It’s a great trick - the “perfected denial of humanity” has thus taken charge of all human existence.

The Trick: The spectator shuffles the deck and fans the cards in front of his or her face with the backs of the cards towards him or herself. Meanwhile, the Magician watches for the card that has the same value as the top card and the same suit as the card second from top.

The Spectator puts the cards down and deals the cards alternately into two piles. The Magician explains to the spectator that if he or she has been concentrating on the card on the table, he or she will have subconsciously picked two cards that will respectively reveal the value and suit of the card that the magician have randomly selected. Flip the three cards to reveal that this is so.

The constant decline of use value that has always characterized the capitalist economy has given rise to a new form of poverty within the realm of augmented survival — alongside the old poverty which still persists, since the vast majority of people are still forced to take part as wage workers in the unending pursuit of the system’s ends and each of them knows that he must submit or die. The reality of this blackmail — the fact that even in its most impoverished forms (food, shelter) use value now has no existence outside the illusory riches of augmented survival — accounts for the general subconscious acceptance of the illusions of modern commodity consumption. The real consumer has become a consumer of illusions. And the most astonishing part of the trick is that we go to the magic show, having lost our belief in magic, but wanting to be fooled regardless.

Next Trick how to pull a rabbit from a hat with one easy sleight of hand…

2016: Archive Project second installment

2016: Archive Project (a collaborative project between Keg de Souza and myself) has been shortlisted for the Helen Lempriere Travelling Art Scholarship and will be included in an exhibition at Artspace opening August 23rd. This is the second installment of this ten year artistic study into changes taking place in the suburb of Redfern. To access the archive go to www.ifyouseesomethingsaysomething.net and follow the links.

Debates on avant-garde

A new edition of Chto Delat? on "Debates on the Avant-garde" has just been published - this is a drawing I contributed for the cover. The edition has articles by John Roberts, a diaglogue with Jacques Rancier and an article co-written by Dmitry Vilensky and myself. The Chto Delat? website is: http://www.chtodelat.org/.

avant-garde...

I have been working on a series of drawings for a forthcoming edition of the Russian/English newspaper Chto Delat? on the avant-garde. The newspaper will be published as part of the Documenta 12 magazines project. If anyone is interested in Chto Delat? their web-site is www.chtodelat.org - they are an art collective and newspaper publishing group and their paper represents an excellent collection of texts on contemporary issues surrounding art, theory and politics.