nettime: media and ethics

[Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>]

media and ehtics
on the contemporary critique

A SYMPOSIUM AND GATHERING FOR CRITICS AND ARTISTS
in the field of photography, multimedia, video, installation and performance

Helsinki,  September 12th-14th, 1996

Organisers:  The Arts Council of Finland
MAP (Media-Art-Project)
Radio and Television Institute (YLE)

Programme Coordinator:  Tapio Makela  <director@kaapeli.fi>
Producer:  Adele Eisenstein  <map@kaapeli.fi>
Supported by: The Nordic Cultural Fund, C3: Center for Culture
Communication/Soros Foundation Hungary, USIS (United States Information
Service), French Embassy, Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Swedish
Institute, Soros Centers for Contemporary Art - Skopje (Mecedonia), St.
Petersburg (Russia), Tallinn (Estonia), Riga (Latvia), Polish Ministry of
Culture, Finnish Museum of Photography, Ateneum - Finnish Museum of
Contemporary Art, Nordic Art Center, Helsinki City Art Museum

MEDIA AND ETHICS
of the contemporary critique

CONCEPT
The symposium in Helsinki will be a gathering of critics and artists from
the Baltic Sea countries and the surrounding region. The main topic under
discussion is new media as a twofold challenge. The first challenge focuses
on the potentialities of emerging art spaces, such as www, cd-rom and
telematics. The second challenge is to discuss these media as critical
forums and dialogical spaces. How do traditional museums, galleries,
newspapers and other mainstream media react to these changes? What types of
alternatives have been developed?

Discussion of ethics in the new media culture is a central theme of the
symposium. If defined as one's personal politics, ethics of the
contemporary critique deals with choices, which for the artist are
questions of inclusion and exclusion. As ethical discourse is dangerously
close to moralistic discourse, the symposium foregrounds questions of free
speech and free artistic expression.


SUBTOPICS
(1) Media: Space;  (2) Media: Theory and Tradition;  (3) Ethics;  and
(4) Artists and Critics I/O - Cultural Difference and National Politics
 PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME

Thursday, September 12                                          programme
Radio and Television Institute Auditorium-YLE-Pasila

10.00   Registration and coffee

10.30   Welcoming address from Doris Laine-Almi, Chair of The Finnish Arts
Council, and the Head of the Radio and Television Institute (YLE)
        Overview of the Programme by Producer Adele Eisenstein
        Opening Words by Symposium Chair Tapio M=E4kel=E4

11.00   KEYNOTE LECTURE: Peter Weibel (A)
        Media and Metis

13.00   Artist presentation: Fred Forest (F)
        TV/Video

14.00   Lunch

14.45   Lecture: Ryszard Kluszczynski (PL)
        Ethical Discourse in Media Art (some examples)

16.00  Artist presentation: Marita Liulia (FI)
        Ambitious Bitch

16.30  Artist presentation: Palle Torsson & Tobias Bernstrup (S)
        Join Hands

17.00   Coffee

17.15   Lecture: Hubertus von Amelunxen (D)
        Anticipating the Ruins of the Future

18.30   Artist presentation: Akke Wagenaar (NL)
        The Hiroshima Project

19.15   Closing of the day

20.00   Welcoming Reception given by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (UM)


 Friday, September 13                                   morning programme
Radio and Television Institute Auditorium-YLE-Pasila

10.00   PARALLEL WORKSHOPS (1) and (2)
12.00

(1) Media:Space
Medialization, art becoming communication and vice versa, is a challenge
for tradtional ways of making and evaluating art. How are museums and
galleries suited for media art - or for performance? What are the new
characteristics of space that cd-rom, interactive installations, world wide
web, or art in the city space create? How should critics view, feel, smell,
and listen to these spaces and rewrite them?
Workshops: (a) Theories of space;  (b) Museums and galleries: ruins or new
methods?;  (c) From infocult to critical strategies

CHAIR:  Minna Tarkka (FI)
Speakers:       Tapio M=E4kel=E4 (FI) - From Gallery Space to Interface
                Marina Grzinic (SI) - What Space?
                Lily Diaz (US/FI) - Augmentation and the Architecture of
                                        Boundaries in New Media
                Jeremy Welsh (N) - "rashzone, MediArt, fuzzy definitions and
                                        soft "ollisions

(2) Media: Theory and Tradition
Artists using new media are combining techniques of visual arts, cinema,
video and performing arts, yet their theoretical background may be from one
genre. These complex situations require awareness on the part of the critic
to use multiple interpretive strategies. Are such new genres as cd-rom
production, interactive theatre and computer animation suited for film
critics, visual art critics - or do we need media art critics?
Workshops: (a) Research as media critique (with particular attention to
different traditions of art history, cinema studies, cultural studies and
aesthetics);  (b) Art work as research and theory;  (c) A dialogue between
critics and performance artists

CHAIR:  Asko M=E4kel=E4 (FI)
Speakers:       Pauls Bankovskis (LV) - Culture of Memory and Meta-Art
                Nebojsa Vilic (MK) - Authorship?
                Eric Kluitenberg (NL) - On the Reciprocity of Art and Media
Theory
                Ewa Mikina (PL) - Media as Experience
                Sven-Olov Wallenstein (S)

12.00           Lunch and travel to Ateneum



=46riday, September 13                                    afternoon programm=
e
Ateneum Auditorium, Kaivokatu 2



14.00   Public Lecture: Mark Dery (US)

15.30   Artist presentation: Mare Tralla (EE)
        T.Est Art

16.00   Lecture: Sadie Plant (UK)

17.30   Discussion open to the public

18.00   Ateneum closing

18.30   Glass Palace
        Artist group performance: Victor Mazin & Olessia Turkina (RUS)
                                        Valery Dudkin & Vladimir Tamrazov
        Golem of Con-sciousness


 Saturday, September 14                                 morning programme
Radio and Television Institute Auditorium-YLE-Pasila

10.00   PARALLEL WORKSHOPS (3) and (4)
12.00

(3) Ethics
In the days of personal satellite tracking devices, it is possible to tell
one's precise geographical location. What do you do with that kind of
information in media culture? What kind of borderlines are drawn in
cyberspace? On whose terms can one do art work using communication
technologies? Media culture allows cultural remapping and both painful and
pleasurable dislocations. As national borders dissolve (if they do) and
modernist states make room for post-industrial societies (if they do),
there is a desire for fresh ideas and points of view (if there is). What
kind of ethics will influence the future critique? How are artists and
critics dealing with censorship and conservative ethics?
Workshops: (a) Social and environmental changes, crises and critique;
(b) Ethics and politics of critique

CHAIR:  Jeremy Welsh (N)
Speakers:       Mats Hjelm (S) - Art and the Ideology of the Information
                                        Machine
                Jan =C5man (S) - Every Action is War, Every Conversation is
                                        Politics
                Aneta Szylak (PL) - Ethical Questions in Polish Contemporary
                                        Art
                Richard Kriesche (A) - Immateriality/Purity/Light


(4) Access and Interactive Critique: Cultural difference and national
politics in the age of optic fibre
The question of access to the media for artists, potential audiences and
critics is crucial. Are you I/O (In or Out)? How does high technology in
the arts affect artists in the post-communist countries. After access - can
there be interactive critique, where critics' texts are criticized by the
artists? Will criticism transform into cultural dialogue in the next
millenium?
Workshops: (a) How to use www and other Internet tools for critical
discussion: a hands-on introduction;  (b) Interactive and independent
critique: a dialogical space;  (c) Cultural difference and national
politics in the age of optic fibre

CHAIR:  Geert Lovink (NL)
Speakers:       Algis Lankelis (LT) - Three Site-Specific Projects
                Heie Treier (EE) - The Case of Sven Kivisildnik
                Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska (PL) - Two Attitudes: Between
                                        Melancholy and "Trauerarbeit"
                Torben Christensen (DK)
Saturday, September 14                                  afternoon programme
Radio and Television Institute Auditorium-YLE-Pasila


12.00   Coffee

12.30   Artist presentations:
        Alexei Shulgin (RUS) - Moscow WWW Art Center
13.00   Rasa Smite (LV) - The Hedgehog Coat (video/computer installation) /
                                E-L@b (Riga)
13.30   Alla Mitrophanova & Kostja Mitenev (RUS) - Subject of
                                Communication / Virtual Anatomy/UNDINA

14.00   Lecture: Toshiya Ueno (JP)
        Techno-Orientalism and Japanese Subculture

15.00   Lunch

15.45   Lecture: Geert Lovink (NL)
        Mass Psyche of the Net: Fear and Desire on the Data Highway

16.45   Refreshments
        John Hopkins (IC) - webmaster
        Presentation of the www-pages made during the symposium
        IRC-line open - on-line discussion (Tapio M=E4kel=E4)

        Nettime Meeting: Pit Schultz (D) and Geert Lovink (NL)
        Memesis/Ars Electronica Review: Gerfried Stocker (A) and
                                                        Geert Lovink (NL)

18.00   Closing of the Symposium

19.00   Sinebrychoff Tower Project
        Opening:  Saku Paasilahti
        (to be opened by Aneta Szylak, WYSPA (PL))

20.30   Closing dinner and party





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