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Science and Technology in Cultural Context

OFF LABEL Ideologies

Last update: January 14, 2012, at 06:35 PM

OFF LABEL Ideologies: Festival Plenary Speakers & Related Panels

Host Institute:
Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at University of Victoria

Host Contact Person:
Paul Bramadat →

Place:
Universtiy of Victoria BC, Harry Hickman Building → more info
Open Space → more info

Dates:
Wednesday 26 October to Wednesday 2 November 2011

'OFF LABEL Ideologies: Festival Plenary Speakers'

With every OFF LABEL experiment comes a series of reflections, prescriptions and anticipations -- keying the concept of the OFF LABEL both to its otherwise normative application and to the drive for the creative, the unusual and the alternative. Paradoxically, when seen philosophically, the OFF LABEL returns to its own form of prescription -- an alternative practice represented through dialogue for the contemplation, or provocation, of others. In this way, every OFF LABEL experiment is also a challenge -- in some way re-writing and remixing the codes of digital living, while also serving as example to others for ways in which this re-writing might take place. OFF LABEL thinking does not defy expertise so much as it looks to the experts to provide a catalyst for ways thinking itself could be imagined differently.

In this spirit, OFF LABEL has invited established experts and innovators in the fields of technology, culture, religion and ideology to share their insights on OFF LABEL practices in the context of the festival -- a series of keynote lectures that will both launch and conclude the festival. Selected for the creative ways they re-imagine the digital present and future, these talks promise to both challenge the boundaries of critical thinking and provide insights on alternative methods for engaging the technological present.

Featured Speakers

Arthur and Marilouise Kroker

The Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, University of Victoria
"Exits to the Posthuman Future"

Abstract: If everything today is marked by panic control—over-coded, over-normalized, over-secured, over-mediated, over-measured-- this is probably because the reality-principle has been shaken to its core by a fundamental technological wobble. More than ever, the future appears in purely astronomical form as a fatal precession of things where all the traditional polarities of society and culture suddenly reverse, with the result that events are understandable today only by an imaginary of mirror images. Now that life has become a series of complex but no less seductive exits to the posthuman future, only that which is confidently offlabel—fractured, incommensurable, bifurcated, unreconciled—can provide a way to ride the violent shockwaves accompanying the precession of society. Offlabel, therefore, as the name given to a form of posthuman imagination that fully reveals the hauntologies, disavowals, and silences of the technological dynamo that has crashed the game(s) of reality.

Biography: Arthur and Marilouise Kroker are acclaimed theorists of technology, culture and politics. Their work merges philosophical insight with political wisdom to creatively re-imagine the digital future in provocative and always insightful ways. Arthur Kroker is Canada Research Chair in Theory, Technology and Culture, Director of the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture, and Professor of Political Science at the University of Victoria. He is the author of several books, most recently The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism (University of Toronto Press, 2007). Marilouise Kroker is Senior Research Scholar at the Pacific Centre for Technology and Culture at the University of Victoria and co-editor of numerous anthologies, including Critical Digital Studies: A Reader (University of Toronto Press, 2008). Together they edit the journal CTheory.

Hans Bernhard is a Vienna and St. Moritz based artist working in the fields of digital and fine art. Using technology, computers and the internet as a medium since 1994, he exhibited and performed in venues like the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (Japan), the Ars Electronica (Austria), the Konsthall Malmoe (Sweden) or the SFMOMA (USA). He is a founding member of the legendary etoy.CORPORATION and of UBERMORGEN.COM. He studied visual communication, digital art, art history and aesthetics in Vienna, San Diego, Pasadena and Wuppertal. Hans is a professional artist and creative thinker, working on art projects, researching digital networks, exhibiting and travelling the world lecturing at conferences and Universities.

Art Clay

Director of Digital Art Weeks

Abstract Pending

Biography: Art Clay is an artist, curator and researcher who was born in New York and lives in Basel Switzerland. As an artist, he is a specialist in the performance of self created works with the use of intermedia and has appeared at international festivals, on radio and television television in Europe, Asia & North America. His recent work focus on performative works using mobile device and installation works that involve the public directly with a concept "play". He has received awards for sound works, performance, theatre, and new media art. He has taught media and interactive arts at various Art Schools and Universities in Europe and North America. In 2005, he founded the Digital Art Weeks and as its Director has brought the arts and science communities together and presented award winning collaborations internationally.

Marie-France Bojanowsk

Artist in Residence, Computer Science Department, ETH Zuerich
Abstract pending

Biography: Marie-France Bojanowski is an interdisciplinary artist from Montreal Canada based in Zurich Switzerland. Having a genuine interest for people, architectures, stories and cracks, she traveled the world to make documentary films and art projects. Using a creative process at the crossroads of art, design and filmmaking, she built her repertoire of experience with numerous site-specific situations involving media tools and human interaction, and with video. Her working platform revolves around the content, research and development, media tools, visuals and organization/ coordination. She builds a project by carefully treating every step, bringing it from the brainstorming phase through the different production stages to its final public presentation. Her work has been presented at various international events, festivals and on television channels.

Doug Jarvis

Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria

"Imaginary Friends"

Abstract: In this lecture I will reflect on communication and imaging technologies and their relationship to non-material entities (such as ghosts and spirits) and contemporary notions of the self. I argue that virtual experience, digital avatars, and other technologically mediated forms not only augment and stretch the boundaries of the traditional material, non-material terrain, they are also changing our relationship to these entities and the reciprocal nature of the self. I will present an overview of my art practice, including examples of recent projects, to show how my current investigations address key religious, philosophical and cultural questions related to the self and the nature of the material world.

Biography: Doug Jarvis is an experimental media artist, an Artist in Residence at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society at the University of Victoria, and the Programming Coordinator at Open Space Artist-Run Centre. A founding member of the avatar performance group Second Life, Jarvis has exhibited his work widely, in virtual and real-world environments, in Canada and abroad, most recently at Subtle Technologies (University of Toronto, 2011) and the Xi'an Academy of Fine Art (Xi'an, China, 2010).

Copyright @ ETH Zürich

Page last modified on January 14, 2012, at 06:35 PM