[ISEA2011] Panel: He­lene Black (moderator) – Through the Roadblocks: Technology and Orality

Panel Statement

Chair Per­son: He­lene Black
Pre­sen­ters: Ian­nis Zan­nos, George Ka­todry­tis & Yian­nis Co­lakide

This panel will dis­cuss how oral­ity and tech­nol­ogy in the arts, through so­cial nar­ra­tives and urban de­ter­mi­nants, trans­mute re­sult­ing in lo­calised adopted new forms.  The pro­found changes that have in­flu­enced artis­tic cre­ative processes by dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy are lead­ing to a re­de­f­i­n­i­tion of both the role of the artist and the re­la­tion­ship be­tween artist and au­di­ence. It has been thor­oughly dis­cussed that dig­i­tal media art forms have a ten­dency to aban­don the clear-cut di­vi­sion be­tween in­di­vid­ual cre­ator and au­di­ence and move to­wards col­lec­tive sit­u­a­tions where au­thor­ship is shared be­tween many. (Alexan­der 2007, Austin 2007, Bakioglu 2007, Pet­titt 2007). This panel dis­cusses how elec­tronic arts and tech­nol­ogy re­late to col­lec­tive and non-writ­ten as­pects of cul­ture. It ex­am­ines both spon­ta­neous processes sup­ported by the na­ture of dig­i­tal media and con­scious strate­gies that build on per­cep­tion and oral­ity in glo­cal cul­ture. The panel will pre­sent and dis­cuss is­sues re­lated to this topic cen­tral to their col­lab­o­ra­tive re­search as par­tic­i­pants in  the NeMe ini­ti­ated pro­ject Through the Road­blocks which was first pre­sented in May 22, 2009 at the e-Mo­bi­LArt con­fer­ence dur­ing the Thes­sa­loniki Bi­en­nial. This pro­ject in­ves­ti­gates how ideas and con­cepts are adopted and as­sim­i­lated re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal, cul­tural and spa­cial bound­aries. A team of cu­ra­tors, cul­tural man­agers, schol­ars and artists lo­cated in 10 coun­tries span­ning from Aus­tralia to UK and from Turkey to Is­rael and Pales­tine have been in­vited and their pro­pos­als are cur­rently under de­vel­op­ment promis­ing a rich va­ri­ety of in­ter­pre­ta­tions which will de­fine the sec­ond stage of the pro­ject. The third phase is planned to take place in Cyprus in 2012.

  • He­lene Black is an artist and co­founder of NeMe. To date, she has many one per­son shows and group shows both in Cyprus and abroad.  In ad­di­tion, she has cu­rated and co-cu­rated sev­eral ex­hi­bi­tions such as “In Tran­si­tion Rus­sia 2008” with Sheila Pinkel and Alisa Prud­nikova (Mu­seum of Mod­ern Art, Eka­ter­in­burg and Na­tional Cen­tre of Con­tem­po­rary Art, Moscow, Rus­sia), “In Tran­si­tion Cyprus 2006” with Sheila Pinkel,  (Lani­tis Cen­tre, Cyprus) and “Isolo­ma­nia” (NIMAC, Nicosia) 2008.  She has also co-cu­rated the fol­low­ing shows with Yian­nis Co­lakides, “…SO NOW WHAT?” (for Scope New York and Basel), “COR UNUM” 2008 (NCCA, Moscow), Mar­gins of Time, 2008, (Lani­tis Cen­tre, Li­mas­sol) and Di­a­logues with the Ma­chine (Sala Berlanga, Madrid, Spain). At pre­sent, He­lene is co-or­di­nat­ing with Yian­nis Co­lakides, the three year NeMe pro­ject, ‘Through the Road­blocks’ (2010 – 2012). This pro­ject, ini­ti­ated by Peter Lyssi­o­tis, George Alexan­der and He­lene Black in 2009 has now grown into a large cross dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ject in­volv­ing many col­lab­o­ra­tions from 10 coun­tries at this stage, with em­pha­sis on con­tri­bu­tions made by par­tic­i­pants from coun­tries which im­me­di­ately sur­round Cyprus in the East­ern Mediter­ranean re­gion.  hblack.net    neme.org