English

My "New Tendencies" Recent Book Tour

Armin Medosch — Wed, 26 Oct 2016 17:28:54 +0000

Topic:

book launch

Special tag:

New Tendencies

cabinet_book_launch.JPG

In this picture story, I recapitulate my recent New Tendencies book tour between early September and end of October 2016, which took me from Madrid to Zagreb, from, London to New York and Warsaw.

Talking with our planet

paoleb — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 21:22:10 +0000

In 1901 Nikola Tesla published an article in which he describes the possibility to communicate with other planets through radio waves. His hypothesis can be seen as part of a speculative field shaped by spectral theories based on a common ground where scientific and spiritual beliefs were indistinguishable. Are there messages hidden in chemical elements that we could trace though spectral lines? More than a hundred years later intriguing signals coming from the universe challenge skeptics and ask for attention. Are we being mesmerised, our brains directly affected by extraterrestrial electromagnetic radiation?

Art in a Third Space: New Tendencies and the Nonaligned Avant-gardes

Armin Medosch — Fri, 20 May 2016 05:58:20 +0000

Special tag:

New Tendencies

This talk “Art in a Third Space” was held at the CAA conference in Washington D.C., February 04 2016, as a part of the panel Non-aligned: Art, Solidarity, and the Emerging “Third World”. The paper presents a condensed investigation of the international art movement and network New Tendencies. Non-alignment, in the context of my talk, refers both to political circumstances but also serves as a metaphor to gain access to a rich transdisciplinary understanding of New Tendencies.

Tracing Information Society – A Timeline

drupaladmin — Thu, 26 Nov 2015 08:08:01 +0000

Tracing Information Society is the new project of the Technopolitics Working Group. This text was collectively written on the occasion of the Technopolitics Salon@Social Glitch where the timeline project was discussed together with two respondents, Aneta Stojnić and Noit Banai, and the audience.

Robert Adrian Smith (1935-2015): The Artist and the Media Condition

Armin Medosch — Fri, 23 Oct 2015 07:49:13 +0000

Topic:

The Canadian Artist Robert Adrian Smith, who had lived in Vienna, Austria, since 1972, passed away on Monday September 7th 2015. Robert Adrian X is widely known as an art and telecommunications pioneer, but also was a painter who developed an analytic, conceptual practice, uniting aesthetics and politics in his answers to the question “What is Art?”

Art and Technopolitics: Resist, Subvert, Accelerate!

Armin Medosch — Sat, 10 Oct 2015 09:16:54 +0000

This is the text of my Riga lecture. It has a philosophical introduction, then touches on the notion of Post-Art and finally analyses the Fields exhibition. Drawing on my own curatorial work, conducted in cooperation with RIXC, in the exhibitions Waves and Fields, I hope to arrive at criteria of what makes good art today.

Cities of the Sun: Urban Revolutions and the Network Commons

Armin Medosch — Thu, 24 Sep 2015 07:40:49 +0000

In this talk, I want to bring together two notions: the city as utopia and project; and the recent developments, over the past 10 to 15 years, with regard to the development of a network commons. The network commons is one among a number of other initiatives that propose alternative future developments, from alternative and creative uses of technology, to alternative energies to alternative economies and ecologies. Those propositions, however, have remained separate.

Voicing Opposition: Against Neoliberal Europe

Armin Medosch — Fri, 31 Jul 2015 09:39:18 +0000

Topic:

Recent weeks have seen an escalation of events in connection with the Greek Debt Crisis which has been extremely revelatory. This comes together with an escalation of wars, news of opening a case for "treason" on two German journalists and bloggers, and a general feeling of democracy in decline everywhere. Voicing opposition, and doing so effectively, has become a real concern.

Rewind: Grexit and the Politics of Self-destruction (after Polanyi)

Armin Medosch — Sat, 27 Jun 2015 08:05:57 +0000

The Greek Referendum Alexis Tsipras has announced last night, June 26th 2015, is probably the best they can do. The story that has been going on here was one, where from the very start, the new Greek government was insisting that this was political and could only be solved by heads of state, while the creditors - and we are to be reminded who they are, the governments and nations of the Eurozone, the European Central Bank and the IMF - kept insisting that this was a technical issue which Greeks had to solve with the "Troika" rechristened as "institutions".

Network Commons Case Studies

drupaladmin — Sun, 31 May 2015 09:41:46 +0000

This page contains contributions to the Network Commons book by a range of authors on separate topics and case studies. If you would like to contribute, please email me, Armin Medosch.

Free Mesh Networks. Two Cases from Chile

Ignacio Nieto — Sun, 31 May 2015 09:15:23 +0000

This article starts with a short introduction to free networks, followed by a summary about free networks in Latin America. The article then tells in more detail the story of two attempts at making free networks in Chile, in both cases linking the idea of free networks with specific artistic and socially engaged goals, reports Ignacio Nieto, who has been involved in both projects.

The Incomplete Paradigm Shift

Armin Medosch — Tue, 26 May 2015 11:26:13 +0000

Special tag:

Free Networks

This chapter takes a bird-eyes' view of history, locating the developments of wireless community networks within a historical transition from industrial to information society. Following the thesis that this paradigm shift has become stuck, creating serious obstacles for realizing the emancipatory potentials of information society, the conclusion can only be that those obstacles need to be overcome in order to realize “Society in Ad-hoc mode” as a positive, really existing utopia.

Towards the Network Commons (Conclusions)

Armin Medosch — Sat, 23 May 2015 10:45:27 +0000

Topic:

Special tag:

Free Networks

This draft chapter summarizes my findings. Based on a recent trip to Germany, where vibrant new communities have triggered discussions about what makes the essence of Freifunk, I am suggesting that the future of wireless community networks lies in the notion of the Network Commons.

Gedankenkunst – László Beke and the Art of Ideas

Armin Medosch — Thu, 09 Apr 2015 10:29:13 +0000

Topic:

On the evening of April 8th 2015 at Secession Vienna, the book IMAGINATION/IDEA - The Beginning of Hungarian Conceptual Art. The László Beke Collection, 1971 was presented. László Beke is widely recognized as a key figure in conceptual art in Hungary and internationally. In 1970-1 he sent out an invitation to all his artist friends to send him a documentation of work on an A4 sheet. The incoming work he collected in a book. Due to the vicissitudes of the Communist Hungarian regime in the early 1970s this „collection“ could only be viewed privately, in his home, or at exhibitions abroad. This collection, after it was published as a facsimilie book in Hungarian in 2008, IMAGINATION/IDEA has now been made available in English in a book produced by Tranzit Hungary.

The Museum of Forever - Interview with Robert Adrian

Armin Medosch — Sat, 14 Mar 2015 10:19:01 +0000

bobaxbdaymix.mp3

In 1979 the Vienna-based Canadian artist Robert Adrian started using the I.P. Sharp telecommunicatiins network for art purposes. Access to this network had been organized by Bill Bartlett in the context of an event called Interplay. Bartlett had gained access to the network of the company I.P. Sharp Associates for the first time in 1978 through the Toronto based artist Norman White (cf. Shanken 2003. p. 61). In 1980 Bartlett organized he Artist's Use of Telecommunication conference at SF MOMA.