Experimenta Social

Image credit: Ikea Roof Terrace detail, Joe Hamilton 2014

Experimenta Social is a series of talks, discussions and demos to provide proximity to some of Australia’s most adventurous contemporary artists, researchers and creative technologists.

This artist led series is curated and hosted by Emile Zile in collaboration with Experimenta and explores practices at the nexus of Art and technology, science, culture and design. You will hear from artists sharing their latest projects and researchers presenting projects that grapple with the concerns of our time. Beyond inconsequential debates over the role of Media Arts in a post-media world, Experimenta Social will combine activated audiences drawn from contemporary art, social research, electronic art and non-professional spheres for lively debate and discussion.

Experimenta Social will take place every second Wednesday from mid-August 2016:
17th and 31st August, 14th and 28th September, 12th and 26th October
ACMI X Studio, Level 4, 2 Kavanagh Street, Southbank, VIC 3006.

26/10/16
Session 6: Australiana, The Mongrel and Amnesia
https://www.facebook.com/events/1225051617515818/

For the last Experimenta Social in this series we invite Philip Brophy and Eugenia Lim to reflect on Australian identity, place and belonging. Using pop cultural forms as a lens to view Australian society, both Eugenia and Philip uncover latent meanings and interpretations through their video works, writing and installation. Expanding on his AFTRS Classics of Australian Cinema book that uses Priscilla Queen of the Desert as a map of Australian identity, Philip Brophy will deliver an expanded illustrated version of this book.

Philip Brophy After a series of experimental mixed-media works exhibited in art and non-art contexts over many years, Philip Brophy has consolidated his interests to produce a range of audiovisual works focussing on his key interests in pop, sex and music. Brophy continues to lecture and present on film sound and music internationally, specializing in horror, sex & exploitation, film sound & music and Japanese animation. He is widely published in all three areas, and his book 100 MODERN SOUNDTRACKS has been translated and published in Japan.
http://www.philipbrophy.com/

Eugenia Lim is an Australian artist who works across video, performance and installation. Interested in how nationalism and stereotypes are formed, Lim invents personas to explore the tensions of an individual within society: alienation and belonging in a globalised world.
http://www.eugenialim.com/


12/10/16
Session 5: WORDS
https://www.facebook.com/events/298787690504733/

Holly Childs and Christopher LG Hill deal with words, words as objects, words as recombinative forms. The internet and the street have conflicting voices, a sense of lawlessness, a place for infinite recombination and juxtaposition. Both these artists reflect the autonomous zones of the club, the artist-run initiative and the street in their writings, performances and installations. We are proud to invite Holly Childs and Christopher LG Hill to reflect on the impact of writing over networks, language as power, the power of networked speech at Experimenta Social 5.

Holly Childs is a writer and editor. Her work explores the use of digital networks in contemporary culture. Recent presentations of her work include: as art writer within Adam Linder’s choreographic service Some Proximity at MCA, Biennale of Sydney (2016); Danklands [Swamped in 3 voices] for Capitalist Surrealism curated by Liquid Architecture at NGV, Melbourne (2015) and as curator of both Quake II, Arcadia Missa, London (2014) and waterfalls.biz at Slopes, Melbourne (2014). She is the author of two books: Danklands, published by Arcadia Missa and No Limit, published by Hologram, Melbourne. She was an Associate Producer at Next Wave 2015-16, and founding editor of Next Wave’s online publication Worm Hole. In 2016-18 she is a Gertrude Contemporary studio holder.
http://www.hollychilds.com/

Christopher LG Hill __________laces on shoes then some words biodegradable people of such in places hard ruptures some other words including Christopher L G Hill an artist untitled poet unknown everythings anarchist Y3K ignorant teacher porpoise torture bunyip trax collaborator friend facilitator curator lover anti
power dexta daps falling words scrolling noise wall gardener monochrome co-label boss walking sips a homebody mirriad dancer plate and platter considerate participator dishwasher wind and sounds from the currawong graffiti bencher fine food
eater exhibitions tweeter @clghill moorhenrafft fog fatiguée dj cognitive labour/gunic slack conversation comas or spittle independent representing our self and others born melbourne 1980c.e lives World new tab and window shopper expel binary
dialog dispersed library open doors
http://www.christopherlghill.com/


28/09/16
Session 4: AUTHORSHIP, THE NON-EXPERT AND SOCIAL ART
https://www.facebook.com/events/740691636068912

In the fourth Experimenta Social session we dive into working with community in the creation of artwork. What is the potential of working with non-artists in large-scale community work? Where are the fault lines between stakeholders, funding organisations, venues and audiences? Are distinctions between expert, artist and non-artist valid? What are the ethics of participation in the realm of the non-expert? How are new approaches to social practice being defined by leading practitioners in the field? We are proud to present the work of two independent Australian artists who also have elaborate and sustained engagement with the non-artist, James Hullick and Lara Thoms.

Lara Thoms recently received a two year Creative Australia Fellowship to explore site-specific and participatory possibilities in contemporary art. Lara was commissioned to create a large scale public work Ultimate Vision: Monuments to Us as part of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s C3WEST program, a publication of the same title was released by the MCA in 2014. Other works include ‘Exposition’ for the Melbourne Art Fair with Jason Maling, ‘The Experts Project’, (2011- 2013) where she spoke with 150 ‘unofficial experts’ as part of Local Positioning Systems at the MCA, and the ‘Funeral Party’ (2016), working with a funeral director to create an art event for Dark Mofo.
http://projectswithpeople.tumblr.com/

James Hullick is a composer, community arts worker, sound artist and producer. His projects have been presented internationally for a variety of ensembles and electronic formats. Innovative sonic terrains that James continues to work through include: recursive compositional techniques, perceptual music making, real time scores, sound making machines and community arts projects. In 2011 James founded The Click Clack Project, an organisation that combines community sonic artists with professional sonic artists. James recently completed a three-year Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Melbourne. He was awarded an Australia Council Fellowship (2015) and received the Michael Kieran Harvey Piano Scholarship (2015-16).
http://www.hullickmedia.com/


14/09/16
Session 3: ACCELERATION, LEGISLATION AND KNOWLEDGE-SHARING
https://www.facebook.com/events/1808637509371358/

The acceleration of networked communication has led to a proliferation of platforms for distribution and dissemination of knowledge. How do the disruptive efficiencies of digital distribution play against hundreds of years of copyright legislation that has known authorship and publishing in a very narrow channel? Where do the cracks in appear when a digital platform leverages it’s speed and efficiency against the monoliths of cultural gate-keeping? We are very happy to host Sean Dockray in the upcoming Experiementa Social to present alternative platforms for knowledge dissemination including aaaarg.org and The Public School.

Sean Dockray is a Melbourne-based artist, a founding director of the Los Angeles non-profit Telic Arts Exchange, and initiator of autonomous knowledge-sharing platforms The Public School and aaaarg.org. With a focus on social systems, time, and impermanence, Dockray’s practice often emphasizes an active, critical engagement with technology. As a recent research fellow the Post-Media Lab at Leuphana University, he explored the physical infrastructure of the sharing economy, focusing on Facebook’s new northern European datacenter. His written essays address topics such as online education (Frieze), the militarization of universities (in Contestations: Learning from Critical Experiments in Education), property within “the cloud” (in Undoing Property), book scanning (Fillip), traffic control (Cabinet), and radio (Volume). Between a BSE in Civil Engineering and Architecture from Princeton University and an MFA from UCLA (Design|Media Arts), Dockray worked for Plumb Design in New York and consulted for a variety of cultural producers including Laura Kurgan Architecture, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, the Not a Cornfield public artwork, and the Milosevic trial video archive.
http://thepublicschool.org/user/2


31/08/16
Session 2: DRAMATURGY OF NEW MEDIA
https://www.facebook.com/events/113054135812652/

Uniting dramatic energy and new media technologies is not a new challenge. Artists have consistently explored the overlap of technology and drama. From Italian Futurists privileging the new sounds of 1910s new media, namely the car and the machine gun, to 1960s developments around democratised broadcast technologies and the opening of video art to the body as exemplified by Nam-June Paik and Charles Atlas. Working at the intersections of performance, installation and new technology Martyn Coutts and Matthew Sleeth will unpack their elaborate individual practices and delve into what rehearsal decisions make technology invisible, how do technical advances drive creative decision making and what is the potential for media art on stage.

Matthew Sleeth is an Australian artist living and working between Melbourne and New York City. His conceptually driven practice uses a range of media, including sculpture, photography, video and public installation. In 2015 Sleeth directed A Drone Opera which featured unmanned aerial vehicles in an experimental multimedia performance featuring
drones, their pilots and opera singers, combined with a new sound score, laser light design and moving image. A Drone Opera also featured collaborators Kate Richards, Robin Fox, Phil Samartzis, Susan Frykberg.
http://sleeth.info/

Martyn Coutts is an Australian interdisciplinary artist concerned with ideas of the live, the interactive and the mediated body. His work has been shown in theatres, online, public space and galleries throughout Australia and the Asia Pacific. His works include Operation, Computer Boy and I Think I Can with Blood Policy, the Wayfarer series of works with Kate Richards, Thrashing Without Looking with Aphids, Visible City (the keynote project of the 2010 Melbourne Fringe) and SAC35 for Salamanca Arts Centre.
http://www.martyncoutts.com/


17/08/16
Session 1: MAPPING AND TRACKING GLOBAL SYSTEMS
https://www.facebook.com/events/1381066568576199/

Citt Williams is currently a PhD candidate at Digital Ethnography Research Centre RMIT and is researching large-scale mapping of global systems such as climate change, animal migration and ecosystem modification. With a background in filmmaking, policy development and environmental science she has developed and shot independent documentaries in India, Nepal, Tajikistan, Siberia, Japan, Papua New Guinea, France, Borneo and Australia. From 2003-2005, Citt was the Executive Producer at the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association.
http://teacup.net.au/citt-williams/

Joe Hamilton is a Melbourne-based artist working at the intersections of big data, global imaging and Capitalist Realism. Hamilton is part of a new movement of post-photographic artists that have less use for a camera than a database. Sourcing raw material from stock photography, open source mapping data and a 3D scanning techniques, Hamilton’s work uncovers a sense of contemporary visuality that privileges machine processing over the lens’ humanist inheritance.
http://www.joehamilton.info


This is a free event.

This project is supported by the Besen Family Foundation and the City of Melbourne, and presented in conjunction with ACMIx

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Mining the Cloud

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Interval Projects
Mining the Cloud
A series of desktop documentaries
Thursday May 26, 7pm
Schoolhouse Studios
81 Rupert St. Collingwood
$15

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Interval presents Mining the Cloud: a series of desktop documentaries by local and international artists.

Charting the multitude of the Internet through the desktop interface, these films and performances record the virtual as real, traversing landscapes that fall outside our visual circuits. From abandoned virtual realities to electronic dumping grounds of Ghana, this is the detritus of late capitalism in a time of rapid technological change.

The desktop documentary is an emerging practice drawing from the disciplines of ethnography, archaeology and contemporary art. Using desktop browsers as both lens and edit suite, these films and performances excavate artefacts from under the “cloud”. These artists respond to the human impulse to navigate, archive, interpret and ultimately control the world around us.

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Lettres du Voyant by Louis Henderson (UK)
Lettres du Voyant is a documentary-fiction about spiritism and technology in contemporary Ghana that attempts to uncover some truths about a mysterious practice called “Sakawa” – internet scams mixed with voodoo magic. Tracing back the scammers’ stories to the times of Ghanaian independence, the film proposes Sakawa as a form of anti-neocolonial resistance.

All that is Solid by Louis Henderson (UK)
A technographic study of e-recycling and neo-colonial mining filmed in the Agbogbloshie electronic waste ground in Accra and illegal gold mines of Ghana. The video constructs a mise-en-abyme as critique in order to dispel the capitalist myth of the immateriality of new technology – thus revealing the mineral weight with which the Cloud is grounded to its earthly origins.

Utopia 1.0: Post ­Neo ­Futurist ­Capitalism in 3D! by Annie Berman (US)
A first­-person expedition to Second Life, the once thriving virtual 3D online world, in search of what remains. Given the invitation to come build anything imaginable, what is it that we chose to create?

A performance by Emile Zile (AU)
Emile Zile’s performances use new-age healing apps, YouTube monologues and algorithmic portraiture to create audio-visual meditations on augmented spirituality and networked representations of the self.

James Cameron’s Avatar at Channels Festival

James Cameron’s Avatar feature length performance September 19 2015

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In the Epoch of the Near and Far invites contemporary audiences to reframe discussions on digital media. Flipping the much talked-about suggestion that emerging technological forms distort reality on it’s head, the exhibition proposes a relationship which sees our physical and digital lives mutually support and influence each other. Comprising the work of six Australian and international digital and performance artists, In the Epoch of the Near and Far is running as part of the Channels Festival for Australian video art.

The exhibition opens September 19 with a performance from Emile Zile, the Australian born Netherlands based artist whose work is informed by his own navigation of a technologically mediated reality. Featured artist Keith Deverell will also run an Artist in Conversation session on September 24 alongside art historian Dr. Grace McQuilten and exhibition curator Amelia Winata.

In the Epoch of the Near and Far runs from the 18-27 of September at Grey Gardens Projects in Fitzroy and features work from:

Petra Cortright (USA)
Heath Franco (AUS)
Marian Tubbs (AUS)
Emile Zile (AUS/NL)
Keith Deverell (UK/AUS)
Aaron Christopher Rees (AUS)

ACMI Video Contemporary

Artist talk and screening of Western Digital for Sydney Contemporary Art fair

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Curated by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), Video Contemporary presented by Samsung, showcases an exciting and diverse selection of video works by artists at the forefront of their field. Curated into six themes (Duality, Constructed Worlds, On Time, Forbearance & Fortitude, Role Play and Material Beings) by Ulanda Blair and Jess Bram, (see full bio here) Sydney Contemporary is delighted to be collaborating with such an innovative and dynamic arts institution on the delivery of this exciting exhibition sector.

Talk Contemporary
Thursday, 10th September 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm
Speakers: Director Carroll/Fletcher, London JONATHON CARROLL, Artist SHAUN GLADWELL, Fair Director BARRY KELDOULIS and Artist EMILE ZILE. Moderated By Senior Curator and ACMI, SARAH TUTTON
Sydney Contemporary, Carriageworks, Video Contemporary Lounge

Western Digital at MARS Gallery, Melbourne

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Emile Zile witfully uses the ‘truth’ of video in constant movements of distanciation that reaffirms our position as spectators—in the gallery and in the world—to draw us back with the question: where is the individuality of our self-expression, in a banal act of connectedness?
– Anabelle Lacroix, Curator

Opening reception and artist in Q+A: Saturday 30 May, 3pm
Dates: Friday 29 May – Saturday 13 June 2015
Venue: MARS Gallery, Black Box, 7 James Street, Windsor VIC 3181

Reschooling: workshop at Museum of Contemporary Art Sydney

Emile Zile leads a collaborative workshop on (mis)using the internet for the purpose of art/lulz. Through a range of participatory exercises Zile will demonstrate techniques to detourn everyday social media and search engines in dynamic performative ways that offer new perspectives on these ready-to-hand tools.

#cavemanVJ #expandedhomecinema #officeworksavantgarde #postitnotebrut

With his history of performances that engage with popular culture and consumer technology Emile Zile recently premiered OMG_Sisyphus. The Greek mythology of Sisyphus, a tale of burden and absurdity, is used as a prop on which to enact a contemporary performance situation: being on YouTube. The performance happens in the midst of laptops, amplifiers, digital cameras, projectors and a heavy looking stone that the artist carries in from outside. In recent performances of OMG_Sisyphus at (Open Archive Melbourne, 30 November 2011, Palais Paradiso Amsterdam 16 February 2012) Zile enacts a humorously calculated switch. In his treatment we begin to understand that the laptop/webcam is now a rock, or vice versa. Its physical presence, weight, and texture become entwined in a passage of worship, as the ubiquitous Apple product is now something more equivalent to a Chinese scholar stone (Gongshi). Throughout the whole performance it is as if through some application of post-production what we should be seeing as a computer (the adored gateway to online audiences) is now a small volcanic boulder. Simultaneous slips between live action and published content begin, as Zile sits staring at the rock we imagine him staring at his computer, alone in a room while addressing an imagined YouTube audience. In doing so the actual live audience sitting in the gallery space is distanced, even denied.

At some points in the piece we are made to feel the joys of web 2.0 publishing, light relaxation muzak plays, we are all connected by technology. But the gallery space begins to fall out of step as the artist struggles against what appears to be self-doubt and loneliness. The rock remains motionless on a small table under lamplight. Is real life different to projected life? Maybe it used to be. Zile seems to suggest a new friction is built in this crossover rather than a seamless merger. Whilst various elements of the performance are online, the crux of this work hinges on being present live in the gallery space – where multiple facets of contemporary being are felt and fired simultaneously. As it happens we are pointed toward a space where states of alienation, corporation and intense connectivity collide into a state of indivisibility.

– Ry David Bradley, February 2012

Saturday October 4, 10am – 1pm.
Capacity is limited and bookings can be made through the MCA at http://www.mca.com.au/events/reschool-emile-zile-internet/

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Liquid Architecture tour 2014

Screened: new performance in Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney and Singapore.

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Liquid Architecture is an Australian organisation for events, exhibitions, performances and situations of the world’s leading artists working with sound.

Once a “sense-specific” festival, interested in listening and the depth of individual sound perception, Liquid Architecture is broadening its focus of concern to engage the social, cultural, political, economic as well as aesthetic frameworks in which sound takes place. Now in its 15th year, Liquid Architecture’s 2014 festival program brings together work from across a range of disciplines to audiences in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Singapore. Marking the new direction driven by curators Joel Stern and Danni Zuvela is the festival’s focus on social and conceptual questions, signalling a more sustained engagement with the discourse, sound and practices of contemporary art. This is a move into the investigation of the audible as an expression of the myriad, sometimes inaudible forces enframing, encoding, describing and producing what we hear – whether that is considered music, sound, or noise.

Talks program: public speaking, private thinking, social listening
http://www.liquidarchitecture.org.au/program/stutterances/

“Stop talking about talks” – Christof Migone

Christof Migone gives an artist talk, no a TALK ARTIST
Alessandro Bosetti demonstrates MASK MIRROR
New Waver loads up THE KING OF PPT
Ur 1st Luv propose A SOUND INVESTMENT
Johannes Kreidler adresses THIS TULIP OF WHICH I AM SPEAKING AND WHICH I REPLACE IN SPEAKING
Kusum Normoyle is SILT (Screaming In Lecture Theatre)
Emile Zile performs SCREENED
Makiko Yamamoto is UTTERLY SILENT, UTTER SILENCE, UTTERLY SOMETHING, OR UTTER SOMETHING, THINKING THINKING, UTTERLY LISTENING, UTTERLY UMMM.

Capacity limited to 250 people

RSVP http://www.eventbrite.com.au/o/liquid-architecture-6942295259

In partnership with NGV and ABC Radio National’s Creative Audio Unit.

Further performances of Screened will occur during the Liquid Architecture tour in Brisbane on October 1 at IMA, Sydney October 5 at UNSW Art and Design (COFA), Singapore October 10 at LaSalle College. Full details at http://www.liquidarchitecture.org.au/program/

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Jack screening at IDFA / Amsterdam Art Weekend

Amsterdam Art Weekend at IDFA
30 Nov 2PM-4PM, Cinema Tuchinski Amsterdam
http://www.idfa.nl/industry/tags/project.aspx?id=7ced2b08-a13f-46bc-97a3-702739bf3074

This screening will be a 2K DCP version in surround sound.

Melanie Bonajo – ‘Pee on Presidents’, courtesy the artist
Muzi Quawson – ‘Doll Parts’, courtesy Annet Gelink Gallery
Ursula Mayer – ‘Gonda’, courtesy Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam
Emile Zile – ‘Jack’, courtesy the artist

IDFA and the Amsterdam Art Weekend collaborate during the programme Paradocs, the festival’s line-up devoted to video art. Films submitted by galleries participating in this year’s Amsterdam Art Weekend, De Rijksakademie and De Ateliers, will be screened at the Tuschinski cinema.

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