Our dear friend, Arlan Londoño, is no longer with us

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Arlan Londoño has suddenly left us.

arlan

Photo courtesy of Eugenio Salas

We are losing a sharp intellectual, a very generous individual, and a respected member of the artist and activist communities.  Arlan was an artist and curator who always brought his politics –his passion for social justice and decolonization– into his work. He was the co-founder of e-fagia and organized and curated “Digital Event” as an annual web and new media art exhibition presented in Toronto and broadcasted online to a number of active new media hubs internationally. He was also one of the brains behind Dystorpia, a project and a communication platform that used everyday technologies to explore different forms of integration within the Americas.

We have known Arlan for years, first as part of our audience; then as a comrade, on the streets and at activist events; as a collaborator, when he curated us into his projects in Toronto, New York and Sao Paolo; and finally, as a dear friend, sharing passions, doubts and hopes, drinks, food, dances and laughs, which he always led with his roaring, warming voice. These experiences will always stay with us, printed in our memory.

We will always remember those moments with you, dear Arlan!

For those in Toronto, his funeral will be held tomorrow, Monday, June 3 at
St. James’ Cemetery Chapel
635 Parliament Street, Toronto
From 2:00 – 4:00 pm

There will be also a memorial next Friday evening (6 pm) at
Unpack Gallery
11 Willison Square
Toronto

If you would like to contribute to the funeral costs, there is a paypal account set up at

www.e-fagia.org, or use this link:

Fund for Arlan

Your Words My Mouth

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We are currently collaborating with Trevor Schwellnus and other participants in the lab of Sao Paulo.
In Your Words My Mouth we are exploring issues of translation and language barriers using an ipad as  interface
schwellnus

Trevor Schwellnus  is a Toronto-based scenographer and Artistic Producer of Aluna Theatre

reSource for Transmedial Culture

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The reSource for transmedial culture is a new framework for transmediale festival related projects that happen throughout the year in the city of Berlin. It is an initiative that extends into ongoing activities with decisive touchdowns at each festival. The objective of the reSource for transmedial culture is to act as a link between the cultural production of art festivals and collaborative networks in the field of art and technology, hacktivism and politics. The reSource works in partnership with CTM/DISK, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien and the Post-Media Lab of the Leuphana University Lüneburg.

Tatiana Bazzichelli invited us to be part of reSource during Transmediale 2012.
see our report on the Berlin lab and the recording of our participation in the panel Zombie Play in the Ludic Salon: reSourcing an Exquisite Media Corpse reSource

MediaLab Prado Madrid

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We had the pleasure to have Florencio Cabello, a member of the MediaLab, participate in our Sandbox at RPI

See Florencio’s presentation on Free and Social Web Platforms  and his paper (in Spanish) on the Lorea.org case “Towards a Free and Federated Social Web”

…and his suggested list of online platforms for activists

  • Lorea – a project to create secure social cybernetic systems, in which a network of humans will become simultaneously represented on a virtual shared world
  • Diaspora Project
  • Crabgrass
  • Pinax
  • Elgg

Links and platforms explorations

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Many of the participants in our labs had a shared interest in creating and improving sustainable interfaces and platforms of collaborations for activist and artivists. Most of them are active promoters and contributors to these platforms

– Rica Amaral –

– Tatiana Bazzichelli –

  • reSource for Transmedial Culture – acts as a link between the cultural production of art festivals and collaborative networks in the field of art and technology, hacktivism and politics 

– Florencio Cabello *

  • Lorea – a project to create secure social cybernetic systems, in which a network of humans will become simultaneously represented on a virtual shared world
  • Diaspora Project
  • Crabgrass
  • Pinax
  • Elgg

* see Florencio’s presentation on Free and Social Web Platforms  and his paper (in Spanish) on the Lorea.org case “Towards a Free and Federated Social Web”

Post-Sao Paulo…

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Sao Paulo Sandbox tumblr

Encuentro 2013 has been an amazing experience. We would like to thank the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics and all the volunteers for organizing this event.

“The Politics of Passion in the Americas” was the title of this biennial event and the Sandbox Lab we ran at Encuentro explored it through a special focus: the idea of blocks and blockages. This focus was inspired by our previous lab at the Immigrant Movement International and Queens Museum of Art in Queens, NY. This lab attempted to take this often negative emergence as a starting point for a positive and constructive exploration. We asked our participants:

“A block refers to many things: a barrier or an obstacle (a physical or psychological block); a solid self-contained object, such as a brick; a group or batch, a building or a complex, and so on. Now we are proposing it to you: what does block mean to you? How does it relate to your work? How can we deal with, play with, avoid it, embrace it….?”

The material and documentation developed during the  Sao Paulo lab has filled a new tumblr site , as part of the Virtual Sandbox. The material ranges from video of performances to recordings of the lab; it is meant as a document of the process we seek to foster, rather than to showcase a self-contained final project.

We would like to thank everyone and acknowledge that the Sao Paulo lab would have not been a special one, were it not for the enthusiasm, energy and creativity of our participants:

Eugenio Salas

Thais Oliveira

Victor Monteiro

Vanessa Benites

Laura Soro

Ana Tamihori

Thomas Fessel

Trevor Schwellnus

Thank you for your generosity!

This performance was part of a series of interventions developed during a lab from Activism beyond the Interface: the Sandbox Project.

Invitation to participate in our São Paulo Lab

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January 12-19, 2013. at: The Politics of Passion in the Americas. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, 8th Encuentro
Universidade de São Paulo, SESC Vila Mariana, São Paulo, Brazil

As part of the DystoRpia Project by No Media Collective, we would like to invite you to participate in ACTIVISM BEYOND THE INTERFACE: THE SANDBOX PROJECT, an experimental production lab bringing together artists, activists and techies to reflect creatively on the productive coexistence of artivist practices.

Our initiative seeks to acknowledge and nurture the work of individuals and communities operating both locally and internationally in the fields of artivism, media activism, political performance and other political-aesthetic trouble-making practices. We want to create a space where people with different backgrounds, perspectives and strategies start to experiment with new modes of co-creation and tackle the question of how to strengthen connections among different groups in a relaxed and fun environment.

This event is part of a series of labs that are taking place in cities like Toronto, Berlin, Montreal and New York. Each new lab picks up where the last one left and incorporates some of the ideas and knowledges collected along the way. Thus, in Sao Paolo we plan to start with the theme that emerged in Queens, NY: the presence of “block” and “blockages”. Our experiment will take this often negative emergence as a starting point for a positive and constructive exploration.

A block refers to many things: a barrier or an obstacle (a physical or psychological block); a solid self-contained object, such as a brick; a group or batch, a building or a complex, and so on. Now we are proposing it to you: what does block mean to you? How does it relate to your work? How can we deal with, play with, avoid it, embrace it….?

The Sao Paolo Sandbox lab is a playful live collaboration to be developed by participants with the help of facilitation exercises. The lab will consist of a series of activities and pre-mediated discussions that draw on the concept of blocks and blockages and will help us develop a short performance, video or other intervention. The intervention, or its documentation will be made available as a collaborative production on our website, and will also shape the next lab. At Encuentro, it could be used for a guerrilla intervention, if deemed appropriate. Finally, lab participants will be able to incorporate this material in their own work, if they wish. All participants’ knowledge and skills will be valued as we experiment in the space of the Sandbox.

We would be thrilled to have you as part of our São Paulo event
The Sandbox Lab will take place on January 14, 2013, 9AM-2PM

At this stage, we are inquiring about availability and/or commitment to participate. Due to logistical restrictions, the number of participants is limited to 20 registered guests.

Also, if you can’t attend but you know of anybody who should be part of this project, please, let us know.

for any inquiries, rsvp and suggestions contact us sandbox.prj @ gmail.com

Artivistic Collective

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LE COLLECTIF ARTIVISTIC emerges out of the proposition that not only artists should talk about art, academics about theory, and activists about activism. We aim to promote transdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue on activist art beyond critique, to create and facilitate a network of diverse peoples, and to inspire, proliferate, activate.

Artivistic strives for intense forms of knowledge, exchange, representation and practices of everyday life by stimulating the mind, the imagination and the body. We oppose the progression of monolithic thought and aim to make links between diverse perspectives and approaches, facilitating mutually beneficial processes of contamination. Our desire is to build a space of exchange, analysis and experimentation for “artist-organizers” drawing on self-organized, collaborative and distributed networks.

Artivistic emerged in 2004 in Montreal as an “evention” (a hybrid between event, invention and intervention) facilitating a much-needed alternative space for the discussion of political-creative action on the periphery of academia. Since then, Artivistic has produced three international gatherings on the interPlay between art, information and activism, in addition to several special projects.

Current and past co-presenters include: Apathy is Boring, Artengine, articule, Café Cleopatra, Cinema Politica, CKUT 90.3 community-campus radio, La Centrale Galerie Powerhouse, Critical World, DARE-DARE, Frigo Vert, GIV (Groupe intervention video), Ile Sans Fil, Lokidesign, OBORO, Pop & Politics, Skol, Studio XX, University of the Streets Café, as well as UpgradeMTL (Upgrade! Montréal).

http://artivistic.org/

Lifeblood, collaboration and stronger communities: awesome projects by two lab participants from Queens

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Bloodbank by Artefacting

Blood. It’s the capital of life, costs nothing yet is more valuable than gold. It’s exchange from one human to another is done not with the expectation of receiving something in return but as a means of giving back to society, to the community. Its giving, or donation, in turn strengthens the giver and their ties to others, minting a social capital that helps people run on their own blood.

In Long Island City Queens NYC, everyday people are being engaged in an Artefacting of the life their city, their neighbors, their friends, and their strangers share with them. What compels them to give back and what do they receive by doing it? What is it that’s in their blood and how do we as people come back stronger through giving?

Citizens will come together to tell their stories and participate in an Artefacting of what compels people to give, all the way through their donation of blood. Bloodbank is an online video registry and a storefront art incubator space where the social dynamics of blood and everyday gifting will fuse as a multimedia experience.

As Richard Titmuss, a sociologist dealing with blood donation proclaimed “People have a right to give just as they have a right to shelter and housing and to speak their minds. This right to give must be protected.”

Bloodbank is being developed in conjunction with No Longer Empty’s “How Much Do I Owe You” arts exhibition in the Queensboro Clocktower that will open on Dec.12, 2012

SANDY by Andalalucha
Sandy hit harder than any of us could have ever imagined, but few of us I think were surprised by the incredibly slow response by government and large disaster relief efforts. The huge outpouring of community support coordinated by groups like CAAAV, GOLES, FUREE and Occupy Sandy has been very inspiring. A few days after the storm I went out to the Rockaways and Red Hook and produced a video and radio piece about these efforts. Some of my interviews were featured on Radio Bilingue’s weekly show which you can listen to.