urban art in a rural environment

ARTIVIST : creative by any means necessary!  

+ stencils on bales at Northern Bass Festival, NYE 2012/13, Mangawhai

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3rd International Visual Methods Conference (IVM III) 2013

Visual Methods in Mediated Environments: Connecting Diverse Worlds

Victoria University of Wellington in conjunction with Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand

2nd - 9th of September, 2013

What happens when we use visual methods in different ways, in different spaces?

We warmly invite researchers, artists, scientists, educators, curators, designers and producers from academia, public sector organisations, industry, Indigenous/Aboriginal and community organisations, not-for-profit, and art practice organisations into the conference space.

We are initially seeking proposals for activities that will engage the conference title, question and location, and stimulate creative collaborations between individuals, collectives and institutions which cross cultural, disciplinary, sectoral and/or geographic boundaries.

Proposals may take different forms: workshops, exhibitions, screenings, ephemeral pieces, temporary sculptures, mediated 3D presentations, mash-ups, ʻinfotainmentʼ-style presentations, static 2D designs or field-trips (but not limited to these suggestions).

Selection will be influenced by: an acknowledgement of the bi-cultural status of Aotearoa/New Zealand, its deep connection to Pacific Island states, availability of resources, environmental and/or social impact. Preference will be given to individuals/teams that will also be presenting a paper within the academic core of the conference. A separate call for academic papers/panels investigating Visual Methods on the conference theme(s) will be sent out in mid-January.

Proposals and paper abstracts will be due 28 February 2013.

A broad cross-faculty/inter-institutional panel will be involved with selection and all proposals/abstracts will receive feedback, whether accepted into the conference programme or not. This feedback will be sent by 31 March 2013.

Details of dates, venues, registration rates (including subsidies for PhD students and low-income/community/n-f-p participants), keynote speakers and draft programme will be available with the launch of the conference website in early February 2013. (Early-bird registration is expected to close in early July).

For more information contact:

Sara Kindon Sara.Kindon@vuw.ac.nz or Geoff Hume-Cook tilnz@me.com

 

The Second International Visual Research Methods Conference was held at The Open University in Milton Keynes, UK, 13-15 September 2011.  

This innovative and exciting conference covered the use of visual methods in research with presentations and commentaries by social scientists and practitioners including visual artists and photographers. It boasts an impressive mix of around 150 papers from international speakers, six film screenings, six exhibitions, several hands-on workshops, book launches, and an opportunity to visit the MK Gallery and speak with local artists. 

The event featured three keynote speakers who are leading practitioners in their fields: 

Filmmaker Katerina Cizek - Canadian documentary filmmaker whose digital revolution work has won a host of awards and National Film Board of Canada's Filmmaker-in-Residence at an inner city hospital

Professor Carey Jewitt  - educationalist from the London Knowledge Lab, Institute of Education, specialising in visual and multimodal theory and research methods, technologies in teaching and learning and video based research

Professor Ludmilla Jordanova - historian at Kings College London specialising in historian's use of visual and material culture.

3rd International Visual Methods Conference (IVM III) 2013

Visual Methods in Mediated Environments: Connecting Diverse Worlds

Victoria University of Wellington in conjunction with

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand

First week of September, 2013

(final dates to be confirmed in late January)

What happens when we use visual methods in different ways, in different spaces.

We warmly invite researchers, artists, scientists, educators, curators, designers and producers from academia, public sector organisations, industry, Indigenous/Aboriginal and community organisations, not-for-profit, and art practice organisations into the conference space.

We are initially seeking proposals for activities that will engage the conference title, question and location, and stimulate creative collaborations between individuals, collectives and institutions which cross cultural, disciplinary, sectoral and/or geographic boundaries.

Proposals may take different forms: workshops, exhibitions, screenings, ephemeral pieces, temporary sculptures, mediated 3D presentations, mash-ups, ʻinfotainmentʼ-style presentations, static 2D designs or field-trips (but not limited to these suggestions).

Selection will be influenced by: an acknowledgement of the bi-cultural status of Aotearoa/New Zealand, its deep connection to Pacific Island states, availability of resources, environmental and/or social impact. Preference will be given to individuals/teams that will also be presenting a paper within the academic core of the conference. A separate call for academic papers/panels investigating Visual Methods on the conference theme(s) will be sent out in mid-January.

Proposals and paper abstracts will be due 28 February 2013.

A broad cross-faculty/inter-institutional panel will be involved with selection and all proposals/abstracts will receive feedback, whether accepted into the conference programme or not. This feedback will be sent by 31 March 2013.

Details of dates, venues, registration rates (including subsidies for PhD students and low-income/community/n-f-p participants), keynote speakers and draft programme will be available with the launch of the conference website in early February 2013. (Early-bird registration is expected to close in early July).

For more information contact:

Sara Kindon Sara.Kindon@vuw.ac.nz or Geoff Hume-Cook tilnz@me.com

Unclear Holocaust - anti banality

UNCLEAR HOLOCAUST (2011)
Detourned by The Anti-Banality Union. 65 mins. U.SS.A.
Amerikan with some Arabic.

Unclear Holocaust is a feature-length autopsy of Hollywood's New York-destruction fantasy, gleaned from over fifty major studio event-movies and detourned into one relentless orgy of representational genocide. It is the unrivaled assembly of the greatest amount of capital and private property heretofore captured in one frame, that, with unfathomable narrative efficacy, suicides itself in an annihilatory flux of fire, water, and aeronautics.

"A Terrorist film collective hijacks the U.S. propaganda apparatus and detonates it over New York. Everything is obliterated and the world celebrates. Through fifty studio event-movies abstracted of all demokratic variation, we see the Cinema as it really is; an unequivocal annihilation, the auto-genocidal mass fantasy of a megalomaniacally depressed First World. Every screen is lifted and bares the obscene underside of all these images. Movements of character and narrative burst into pure and mechanically perfect propulsions of a psychotic camera from which all this violence emanates. The Mise-En-Scene becomes an inventory of the dominant visual-auditory arsenal, enumerating and measuring the power of every weapon available to the Spectacle. Utilizing them all with paradigmatic rigor, the Hollywood-Military complex launches an endless pre-emptive attack on its own shadow, the Terrorist. And, as in all encounters between doubles, the former ends up joyously suiciding itself." -A.B.U. Communique #1

"When I first heard of Unclear Holocaust, the debut project of nebulous situationist art collective The Anti-Banality Union, my initial impression was that these impious troublemakers would fully deserve the inevitable fatwa that will be vexed upon them. However, after viewing part of the work, which reconstitutes scenes from over 50 Hollywood New York City disaster porn films into a more or less coherent narrative, I am pleased to report it is a rather damning yet thoughtful–and dare I say hilarious and enjoyable?–reminder of how bad Hollywood had pushed this scenario. (In cinematic terms, what is 9/11, after all, other than all three* Die Hard movies–exploding tower, exploding airplane, exploding New York City–rolled into one?) “The Spectacle of Terrorism forces the Terrorism of Spectacle upon us…” the ABU wrote me in this mysterious, Frankfurt School-inspired communique. I’m reminded of the remarks Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw shared on 9/11 the other day:

'Perhaps the whole point of 9/11 was that it could never be represented on the cinema screen. The diabolic, situationist genius of the kamikaze attacks was that they were themselves a kind of counter-cinema, a spectacle very possibly inspired by the art-form, but rendering obsolete any comparable fictions it had to offer. The 9/11 attacks smashed Hollywood’s monopoly on myth-making and image production, and inspiring as they did only horror and revenge, aimed a devastating blow at imagination, and maybe for a while enfeebled the reputation of cinema and all the arts.'

Thankfully for the ABU, Hollywood pulled its shit together and made Nicolas Cage apocalypse thriller Knowing, providing Unclear Holocaust about half its runtime." -ScreenSlate.com

-?!

social media stats 2012

via huffington post

1940 New Zealand Centennial Exhibition

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In 1940 New Zealand celebrated its national coming of age. Maori history and the centenary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi took a back seat to the celebration of a century of European effort and progress in New Zealand. Local and provincial events plugged into a full diary of national events - the unveiling of memorials, historical re-enactments, and music and drama festivals. An array of specially commissioned publications recorded the stories of progress, re-writing the country's past.

The jewel in the centennial crown was the vast 55-acre Centennial Exhibition in Wellington. To many New Zealanders, its modern buildings and soaring central tower seemed to symbolise 'the progress and ambition of the young nation'. Others were more interested in the thrills of Playland, the exhibition's big amusement park.

ARTIVIST : project schedule 2013

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ARTIVIST : creative by any means necessary! is on a schedule for 2013 with various specific projects involving artists, media & events with a diverse technical & artistic requirement.

ARTIVIST will design, compile & make content, provide creative, art & technical direction, manage & develop business models & curate, produce & facilitate events, exhibitions & installations.