Luis Sezões fotografiert verlassene Plakatwände: “It is a series of photographs I’ve been making since September of 2011 depicting abandoned advertisement structures, before used as support to host commercial advertisements or political campaigns. I see them as a reflection of the crisis in Europe in general and in Portugal in particular and as traces of a semi-apocalyptic and post-capitalist society.” Via: Mail

“Pulli”-Adding: Es ist kalt in Berlin. Via

Verwirrende Zeichnungen, nackte Foto-Shootings im Wald und Vagina-Performances: Willkommen in der faszinierenden Skulpturen-Welt von Helena Hartmann. “My general intention is to create a visual world, where the “abnormalities and imperfections” of the physical human form are shown in all their worth, using a touch of drama and humor. Ever since I can remember human handicaps, malformed limbs and other unique features have fascinated me: my imagination is so intense that I sometimes fail to see the distinction between reality and fantasy. In a time where perfection, sterile beauty and immortality rule the general outlock on life, I want to shake, rattle and roll the senses of an audiance.”

“Matrushka”

Cap’n Crunch executed on Aalto table

“Hated by many” & “Headstones”

“Franchi Spas-12″ & “Assassination of Nesquick Bunny”

“From the series: Rejected ideas for Cap’n Crunch advertisements”

“From the series Anything Helps: Framed with decorative and valuable gold frames, these signs have been collected from around the world for €20 or $20 apiece.”

“Novita” & “Nainen”

“Pay per view: Playing with the boundaries of art, commodification and voyeurism, Pay-per-view gives viewers a glimpse of an artwork from behind an electronic curtain for 15 seconds at a time. Works from unknown market artists to Jeff Koons are on display, but of course, the art consumer always pays the corresponding market price. To repeat the viewing experience, the viewer pays again. And again.”

“Free Ronald: Food Liberation Army“

WMMNA-Régine hat ein Interview mit dem Mörder von Ronald Mc Donald geführt, dem finnischen Künstler Jani Leinonen. Im Sommer ist der Gerichtstermin, ihm werden Betrug und Fälschung vorgeworfen: “We just got the final charges via mail a few weeks ago. I and two other FLA members are charged with forgery and fraud, and the trial will be held in June in Helsinki. The prosecutor claims that the repair form of a fictional statue repair company we left at the table at McDonald´s is a forgery. Even more surprisingly he claims we committed a fraud and tried to profit economically by kidnapping Ronald. I am very happy about the chance to make my case in trial. We are planning to invite the best food specialists and art scholars to witness that our action was art and and served a revolutionary purpose.”

* “radius of art“: Internationale Konferenz zum Thema Kreative Politisierung des öffentlichen Raums/Kulturelle Potenziale für soziale Transformation. Mittwoch, 8. / Donnerstag, 9. Februar 2012, Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, Schumannstr. 8, Berlin; u.a. mit Michelangelo Pistoletto (Aktionskünstler/Gründer der Stiftung „Cittadellarte“, Italien), Basma El Husseini (Kulturmanagerin/-aktivistin, Ägypten), Jonatan Stanczak (The Freedom Theatre, Palästinensische Gebiete), Bisi Silva (Kunstkritikerin/Direktorin des „Center for Contemporary Art“, Nigeria), Pooja Sood (Künstlerin/Kulturmanagerin, Indien), Shelley Sacks (Künstlerin/Gründerin der „University of the Trees“, England), Jordi Pascual (Gründungskoordinator des „Committee on Culture of United Cities“, Spanien), Dan Baron Cohen (Umwelt-/Kulturaktivist, Brasilien), Antanas Mockus (ehem. Bürgermeister von Bogota, Direktor der Federici Group, Kolumbien), Alessandro Petti (Leiter „Decolonizing Architecture Art Residence“, Palästinensische Gebiete)” Via: Mail

* “Art Hack Day is an event dedicated to cracking open the process of art-making, with special reverence toward open-source technologies. Between January 26 – January 28, artists and collaborators will inhabit 319 Scholes to create and explore the participatory nature of technology, bringing together hackers whose medium is art and artists whose medium is technology. The event will be streamed to online audiences, who will be encouraged to participate through various platforms to be listed soon on the ArtHackDay.net website.” Via

* Buchtipp: Leah Lievrouw: “Alternative and Activist New Media” (Polity Press, 200 pages, 2011, English, ISBN-13: 978-0745641843). “Defining new media has always been tricky. Here, the author gives a clear and thorough definition of new media based on three components: the device/artifact which enables the ability to communicate, the communication activity/practice, and the social arrangements and organizational forms created around the artifact and the practice. This is a strong base that, coupled with an explicit reference to “Remediation”, the famous book by Bolter and Grusin, is used to develop Lievrouw’s extended concept of “mediation”, which she suggests both intensifies communication and makes it more participative. Lievrouw ranges over five different fields of investigation: culture-jamming, alternative computing, participatory journalism, mediated mobilization, and commons knowledge. Taking Dada and Situationism as initial reference points, she goes through different classic artworks (by Surveillance Camera Players, RTMark, Jonah Peretti, for example) analyzing the hacktivist initiatives of sharing the DeCSS code embraced by 2600 The Hacker Quarterly magazine and the whole history of Indymedia. According to the author, media activism represents a cultural “turn” which leads to a more contemporary concept of “mediation” as previously explained. What if we’re already beyond this turn? In that case, we’ll hopefully soon see this kind of consistent analysis applied to the next phase of alternative (new) media, such as the alternative use of social media, the ubiquitous possibilities of mobile digital publishing and the building and sharing of alternative archives.” Via: Neural

* Striking against censorship: “PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”"

* “On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of do it, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Independent Curators International (ICI) are teaming up to investigate and archive the evolving exhibition, which is now the most wide-reaching in the world, and they need your help. ICI is launching a call for documentation of do it exhibitions done spontaneously, residentially, on a small scale or a large scale—essentially any and all material from a realization of do it that may have been excluded from the official exhibition history. ICI and Obrist are aware that many independent and little-known iterations of the exhibition have taken place, and as the do-it-yourself ethos forms the foundation of the exhibition’s premise, material on these more impromptu or makeshift shows is of great import to the exhibition at large. do it began in 1993 with a discussion in Paris between the artists Christian Boltanski and Bertrand Lavier with Obrist about whether an exhibition could be made from a series of instructions: How would an artist’s work be transformed if others made the artwork? To see what would happen, they invited 13 artists to send instructions, which were then translated into 9 different languages and circulated as a book.”

Neue Arbeit von Homer aka Sasha Kurmaz.

Und plötzlich diese Ruhe: “Real Life Adblocking von Planka in der Stockholmer U-Bahn. Planka ist Teil der “Free Public Transport“-Bewegung die sich für eine kostenfreie Nutzung öffentlicher Verkehrsmittel einsetzt.” Via

“Low-Commitment Projects” ist ein Projekt von Tae Kitakata and Brittany Powell, die einmal in der Woche, jeden Montag, eine neue Idee vorstellen möchten – nach dem Prinzip “Minimaler Aufwand, maximales Ergebnis”: Los ging es mit diesem Leckerli “Sandwich Artist”. ¡oʇsıɹɥɔ pun oʞɥʇoɹ ʞɹɐɯ ‘ǝɟɟǝǝʞ,o oʇʇoʇ ɐıƃɹoǝƃ ‘ʇɯılʞ ʌɐʇsnƃ ‘dɯɐɥɔnp lǝɔɹɐɯ ‘ʞɔollod uosʞɔɐɾ ‘ʇsɹıɥ uǝıɯɐp ‘suɥoɾ ɹǝdsɐɾ ‘uɐıɹpuoɯ ʇǝıd :ƃunsölɟnɐ. Via

Quick, dirty & kontextsentitiv – was will man mehr. Via

Der französische Medienkünstler Benjamin Gaulon verwandelt das Licht der City-Light-Poster in Töne: “Research and recent innovations have led to an amazing increase of types and uses of visual displays and screens; indeed, in our predominantly visual culture, they are everywhere. A typical person carries at least one device with a screen, is presented with them in public places, uses them at work and in many leisure activities. They are so ingrained in our everyday acts and habits that we don’t even notice them anymore. L.S.D invites its users to engage in a new perception of their daily environment. L.S.D feeds on light via two LDR (light depending resistor) mounted on a suction cup, allowing the sensors to be mounted on any screen surface. An analogue synthesizer converts the light input to sound waves. This device can be used in many different configurations and feeds from any light sources. Even if L.S.D can be controlled by any light source, its design is aimed at screen reading/listening.” Via: Mail