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RealPlay
Gita Hashemi (Iran/Canada) curates RealPlay
for
[R][R][F] 2005--->XP
[Remembering-Repressing-Forgetting]
http://rrf2005.newmediafest.org
global networking project created and developed by Agricola de Cologne
including following artists
1. Jaromil
2. Hard Pressed Collective
3. Mireille Astore
4. Project Threadbare Coalition
5. Haleh Niazmand
Curatorial statement
RealPlay has little to do with play, really. It is about playing for real. Topically positioned in specific times and/or places, the works in RealPlay contest, counter and/or subvert dominant geopolitical and/or cultural notions with reference to the colonial constructs of the "Middle East" and the "West" This selection works as a broad political commentary as well as responses to certain trends in "new media" discourse that explicitly or implicitly (sometimes inadvertently) postulate and promote fundamental distinctions and discontinuities between the "virtual" and the "real."
Such distinctions inevitably idealize the illusionary (utopic or distopic) space where code is entirely capable of masterminding experience, or where code becomes experience. The projects in RealPlay reject such Western-oriented techno-centric and techno-determinist tendencies by privileging urgent socio-political issues over media formalism and by insisting on the priority of social interaction over, as well as through, cyberspace interactivity. Using diverse practices of documenting and archiving, these projects capitalize on the function of the internet as a repository of retrievable data and, more importantly, as a communication channel that can be advantageously put to use towards inciting counter-hegemonic thought and action.
(Excerpt from Gita Hashemi's curatorial statement - full text on http://rrf2005.newmediafest.org)
About the curator:
Gita Hashemi (http://strictlypersonal.net) engages in cultural practice as artist, writer, curator, organizer, worker and educator. Her most recent curatorial projects include RealPlay (2004, netart exhibit) Negotiations: From a Piece of Land to a Land of Peace (2003, art-driven multidisciplinary event, http://negotiations2003.net), WILL (2003, multidisciplinary transnational exhibition, http://negotiations2003.net/will), Afghanistan, 2002: No Refuge and Locating Afghanistan (2002-3, image-text exhibition and publication with photography by Babak Salari), and Trans/Planting: Contemporary Art by Women from/in Iran (2001, with Taraneh Hemami, http://strictlypersonal.net/transplanting).
Hashemi's labour as an intellectual has crystallized in simultaneous processes of de/re/construction; not in any specific class of objects or within any particular representational genres, but in the envisioning of the spaces and formulation of the critical practices that can be constitutive in transformative social and political movements. Informed by her direct engagement in liberatory political struggles before, during and after the 1979 Iranian Revolution as well as her experience of exile in North America, Hashemi's work takes shape in a continuous process of countering masculinist discourses of fundamentalism, fascism, colonialism, corporatism and militarism. Notions of community, co-labouring, public space and active participation are integral to her creative engagement. So is the understanding that artistic practice, as a fundamentally social process, is inherently political and must, therefore, be subject to conscious (re-visionary) feminist re-articulation: The political is personal, the personal is poetic, the poetic is political, the political must become ethical.
About the artists
1. Jaromil
Rami a.k.a. Jaromil (http://korova.dyne.org) is a free software programmer and streaming media pioneer, media artist and activist, performer and emigrant.
Wired to the matrix since 1991 (point of NeuromanteBBS on Cybernet 65:1500/3.13), Jaromil co-founded (1994) the non-profit organization Metro Olografix for the diffusion of information technology, and in 2000 founded the free software lab dyne.org; sub-root for the autistici.org / inventati.org community. Jaromil is active in the Italy Indymedia Collective, and is currently the software analyst and developer for PUBLIC VOICE Lab (Vienna).
Jaromil's most recent online piece is Farah: a documentation of his travel through the occupied territories of Palestine, in search for joy.
2. Hard Pressed Collective
The Olive Project is a project of the Hard Pressed Collective and Charles Street Video.
The Hard Pressed Collective is a group of video artists working in support of a just peace in Israel/Palestine. This project was inspired by the solidarity efforts around the olive harvest in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Members include: Riad Bahhur, Richard Fung, Rebecca Garrett, John Greyson, Jayce Salloum, and b.h. Yael. The Olive Project coordinator at Charles Street Video is Greg Woodbury.
3. Mireille Astore
Mireille Astore was born in Beirut and came to Australia in 1975 following the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon. Although at the time Astore was classified as a migrant by the Australian Government, her status bears a strong resemblance to that of past and current refugees in the world. She has two children and lives in Sydney.
A multi disciplinary artist, Astore also has a solid background in the visual and literary Arts, the Sciences, art administration as well as policy development.
She has been publishing and exhibiting for over 14 years. She is currently undertaking a scholarship funded PhD candidature in Contemporary Arts at the University of Western Sydney.
4. Project Threadbare Coalition
Project Threadbare is a city-wide coalition in Toronto, Ontario, made up of members of the Pakistani and south Asian communities, cultural organisations, immigrant and refugee groups, anti-poverty organisations, political groups, faith groups, trade unionists, students, and concerned activists and individuals who came together in response to the arrest and detention of twenty Pakistani men and one south Indian man in August 2003.
None of the men have committed a crime and none have been charged.
5. Haleh Niazmand
Haleh Niazmand's art has been exhibited widely in many galleries and museums including the San Diego Museum of Art, the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, The Des Moines Art Center, the University of Arizona Museum of Art, The Worth Rider Gallery at the University of California, Berkeley, the Macy Gallery at Columbia University and A Space Gallery, Toronto.
The internet-adapted version of her participatory projects The Survey of Common Sense and the Post Exile collective's Word Room are included in the Rhizome's Artbase archive.
In addition, Niazmand's art has been discussed in numerous scholarly essays, journals, and professional magazines including the Middle East Women Studies Review, Radical History Review, Mix Magazine and Artweek. Between 1996 and 2000 Haleh Niazmand designed and implemented several collaborative art projects with under-represented community groups in California as well as Iowa while serving as the Artist in Residence at the Des Moines Art Center from 1998-2000.
She holds a Master of Fine Arts from University of Arizona.
"RealPlay" the curatorial contribution by Gita Hashimi can be accesssed via "Memory Channel 1", i.e [R][R][F] Channel on the artistic body of [R][R]F[] 2005--->XP
http://rrf2005.newmediafest.org
[R][R][F] 2005 --->XP is realized in collaboration and networking with numerous virtual and physical locations and partners around the globe, it will be developed and operating during 2006 and beyond.
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All details are available on
[R][R][F] 2005 --->XP info site
http://rrf2005.newmediafest.org
rrf2005@newmediafest.org
[R][R][F] 2005 --->XP
is corporate member of
[NewMediaArtProjectNetwork]:||cologne
www.nmartproject.net
info@nmartproject.net
Technical requirements
Recommended DSL Internet connection
Required latest Flash player/plug-in
latest browser versions of
MS Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera
http://rrf2005.newmediafest.org
info@nmartproject.net
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