Intermediæ english blog

404: Amar en tiempos Hipster

Hipsteria Lane: Gentrifying Intimacy

April 20-21 11am-2pm and 4pm-8pm.

A workshop kicking off collective research into a new cultural paradigm through its media representation.
 
It would be quite hard to understand cultural industries without first understanding the central position that love has attained in the heart of them.  If we took away love as a theme for pop music, film, literature, and television programmes, we would be left with scarcely any content, or we would at least have to make do without a main content that simultaneously forms the backbone for many others.
 
Here when we say love we do not mean a set of emotions and feelings that are felt and lived by those consuming cultural content.  Instead we are talking about a complex instrument pertaining to cultural industries and having different genealogies and manifestations.  We are talking about a discursive framework containing collective imaginations and sincretic representations.  We mean a set of archetypes, narratives, key words, situations, and conduct that are inextricably linked and woven into the content of cultural industries in a sort of discursive consensus of love.
 
Therefore, we must escape from the proverbially inrreproachable individual feeling and focus on disecting a social instrument represented and presented incessantly as text, pretext, or subtext in contemporary cultural products.
 
Amar en tiempos Hipster [Love in the Time of the Hipster] is a workshop that sets out to discover what is the ideal for love and what ways of experiencing sexuality are represented by all things “hipster”.  It is a workshop for analysis and the building of (ambiguous) texts using several kinds of language (discursive, journalistic, fiction and non-fiction, textual and audiovisual, ethnographic, pictorial, stage, and podcast) pertaining to the socio-emotional forms and sexuality that the hispter “subculture” offers and how we are affected, both socially and individually, by it.
 

Spanish P2P WikiSprint/es

Wednesday 20 March at 16 h.

A WikiSprint is a collective content production event that takes place in a short period of time in a wiki type of platform. This "P2P WikiSprint" in Spanish aims to collectively document and map P2P (peer-to-peer) initiatives in Latin America and Spain.
Medialab-Prado offers its space to get together and work in this global mapping.

Presentation of the report titled "Feminicide in Spain 2010-2012" and the new project, an investigative journalism laboratory.
Feminicide.net

Thursday 28 February at 7 pm

Feminicide.net is a news portal with a gender perspective, specialized in violence against women. Its ongoing work includes digital art campaigns and data visualization related to GeoFeminicide, an online application for documenting Feminicide in Spain and Latin American countries. At this meeting, they will present their report titled “Feminicide and other murders of women 2010-2012” in Spain and their new project: “Investigative and Data Journalism Laboratory with a Gender Perspective”.

Feminicidio.net

ARCO 2013/ 404: Collective investigation of a new cultural paradigm through its media representations. Amor Hipster
With Silvia Nanclares and Jaron Rowan


Next sessions: 16 and 17 February 2013 (times to be confirmed).



A project that explores the ideals of love and how sexuality is experienced according to “hipster” mores. A workshop to analyze and construct (ambiguous) texts with different languages (discursive, journalistic, textual and audiovisual fiction and nonfiction, ethnography, images, podcasts, stage arts) about the sexuality proposed by hipster subculture and how it affects us socially and individually.

At this first meeting core issues will be examined which are fundamental to this collective investigation, covering some of the components from cultural industries which have contributed to generate this supposed cultural paradigm. The idea is to work jointly and generate debates with participants to reach some common ground. The objective: to create a framework to serve as a springboard for getting the investigation underway. Two intensive days with talks, texts, concepts, written and audiovisual fiction, a presentation of the archive and ongoing lines of work.

Jaron Rowan is a researcher and cultural agitator. He combines research and teaching and for 10 years has been one of the members and cofounders of YProductions. He is also a member of the Free Culture Forum and the research project Empresas del procomún.
For several years he has been a tutor and one of the lecturers for the course MA in Culture Industry at Goldsmiths University of London. In 2010 he wrote the book Emprendizajes en cultura published by Traficantes de Sueños. www.demasiadosuperavit.net

Silvia Nanclares studied play writing and directing at RESAD (Madrid). She works in the editorial field and since 2004 she has focused on writing stories, having published her first collection titled El sur: Instrucciones de uso (2009). Since 2001 she has collaborated in her own and others’ publishing processes, and has sold, carried, placed, thought and written about books and publishing.

Open Terrario / Presentation of the book 2000 Kcal / 8439.5 kJ 2000 Kcal / 8439.5 kJ
Rafael Suárez


Thursday 10 January 7:30 – 10 pm

This work began in 2009 as a reflection on assessing the human body as an economic system. Parallels were drawn between the problem of obesity and the economic system in which we live, both phenomena characterised by improper management of surpluses. The photographic work has turned into a book with collaboration from two specialists, an economist and a biologist. They offer academic perspectives on surplus management in an organism and in a socio-political structure.
This unusual presentation will take place around a buffet table with various components that dialogue with the work to be presented.

OPEN MONDO PIXEL ARSGAMES
Mondo Píxel

The Evolution of Perfection. Friday 2 November at 7 p.m.

Every so often products appear that improve what had seemed unbeatable. Two examples prove it: the Halo videogames series, in essence a constantly evolving epigenesis of the beautiful mechanical and graphic features already present in the first chapter of the saga, and Mondo Píxel, a reference for the press in the videogames sector whose successive mutations have made an unstoppable news diamond shine that started out as a blog. At the next Open Mondo Píxel meeting we will offer the amazing maturing rejuvenation of both: thanks to the expert work of the x6tence team, we will offer an absolute premiere of the evolved combat of the upcoming Halo 4, and among the competitions, prizes and contests generated from the Haloverse we will present to the world the revolution following perfection: Mondo Píxel Ultimate.

THE INTERNATIONAL VILLAGE SHOP
Thursday 3 February, starting at 4 p.m.

Artist Wapke Feenstra from the MyVillages.org group is presenting  The International Village Shop, an international itinerant bartering market where any locally produced product can be exchanged for local products from the various cities where the market has been. This project has been held in countries including Japan, the United States, England, Germany and the Netherlands. Now it is coming to Madrid to join the Seed Exchange Bank in shedding light on the local territory.

> The market will be open as of 4 p.m. and Wapke Feenstra’s presentation will be at 7 p.m.

SEED EXCHANGE BANK
Thursday 3 February, 6 p.m

On 3 February the next Seed Bank Exchange will be held. This initiative aims to foster decentralization of seed control, question prevailing management models and encourage organic agriculture in Madrid. The Seed Bank can be visited at the Terrario during regular opening hours or at other times by contacting mediacion@intermediae.es.

> Creative Grants Programme


The International Villlage Shop doesn’t exist as a single shop, but through the ongoing set up of temporary and semi-permanent trading platforms by the different groups involved. Settings include the Honesty Box at Lawson Park, an annual stall at a village fete in Höfen, the Boxberg Products Display in Boxberg, a one-hour shop as part of a presentation in San Francisco, a shelf in a waiting room in a veterinary practice in Friesland, etc.

The products for the shop come from a wide range of sources and contributors, and are linked to the places where the shop takes place. They have a strong local narrative and identity, and are mostly developed collaboratively. The product development is rooted in stories, materials and skills that are particular to the village. Villages have always been a place of intensive production, from agriculture to meat and dairy production, gardening, fruit and vegetable processing etc. Today the meaning of agriculture and associated products have declined dramatically, but the village remains a rich resource for numerous materials, craft and labour skills and creative thinking.

The shop trades the products across cultural and language borders. Together with the products short film documentaries about their background are made. Their intention is to communicate the particularities of each product and its production. The films are 4 – 6 minutes long and focus on „handling“ as a form of explaining. Each film starts with a brief visual introduction to the geographical place. It then follows the producers and their everyday routines and activities that inform the products.

The collection of films shows the multiple places and individuals involved in the overall project. The different scales on the International Village Shop, from international links, to the individual village, to private production sites are captured in the films. They are shown during shop settings, and explain the extended network of producers and production sites that make the International Village Shop.

The shop, the making of new produce and the films are all ongoing.

Image courtesy of Antonio Yemail

SEED BANK EXCHANGE + PRESENTATION BY ANTONIO YEMAIL
Ecosecha
Thursday 2 December, 6 p.m.

On 2 December the second exchange day will be held at the seed bank. The Seed Exchange Bank is an initiative of Ecosecha in favour of decentralizing control of seeds and questioning the management models we generate or in which we take part in this culture. The Seed Exchange Bank and the activities held throughout the year are offered as a metaphor for the need for change in society today.



In relation with the seed exchange day, Antonio Yemail, in residence currently at El Ranchito at Matadero, will give a talk titled Harvest Actions (Acciones de Cosecha), an overview of strategies that aim to promote environmental, material, political and social diversity as a creative commitment. 

Yemail will also converse with Ivan López Munuera (curator of El Ranchito) on the research lines to be developed during his residency.

SATELLITE CONTACT | ARCHIVING-ARCHIVE (MODES OF ENGAGING)
Uriel Orlow and Ruth Maclennan
From 18 November - Until 20 March

Video installation comprised of two screenings. Colour DVD and sound. Loop. 60’, 2004-2005

Satellite Contact is a journey deep inside one of the most extensive national archives in the world, The National Archives (the official archives of the British Government). For an hour, two video cameras move along at the speed of the mechanism responsible for searching documents throughout the archive’s titanic structure. From the innermost and most protected areas –entire rooms that serve as safe deposits- crossing long tunnels, passing through walls and ceilings, on to the hustle and bustle of the outside world: the reference and reading rooms. The collaboration between Uriel Orlow and Ruth Maclennan has resulted in an apparently simple, direct piece that manages to bring to life a tangible, recognizable recreation of the complicated apparatus structuring the archive. Through this work, one can penetrate the border of the archive, approaching it in a concrete, limited way that is also ontological and poetic.

Uriel Orlow (Zurich, Switzerland 1973). He studied Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, in London. After that, he did post graduate  studies in Philosophy, Literature and Aesthetics at the University of Geneva, completing his doctorate in Fine Arts at The Slade School of Art (UCL) and the University of the Arts, in London. Uriel’s work aims to address the impossibility of narrating or representing the past and he does so by going to places where history and memory are found, in search of blind spots in the production and distribution of knowledge. He has taught Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design and Goldsmith College, at the University of London, and currently he is a researcher at the University of Westminster in London.

Ruth Maclennan (London, United Kingdom 1969). She studied Fine Arts at Edinburgh College of Art and got her Master’s Degree in Fine Arts at Goldsmiths’ College at the University of London. Her work deals with questions about identity, using performance and language to explore the conditions that affect how individuals are defined. She has collaborated with Uriel Orlow on various occasions, approaching archives as both repository or physical storage and symbol or metaphor through which one can sink into an understanding of the past and the future.

GARBAGE AND TENSION 02
A project by Toxic Lesbian
11 and 18 Novembre, 7.30 p.m.

Garbage and Tension is an artistic and activist project by the Toxic Lesbian collective. It is carried out collaboratively, from the standpoint of gender and sexual orientation, centred on the causes of violence surrounding some groups of women and bio-women who even today are still under-represented socially. Persons with mental health problems, single mothers, women in prison, Lesbian gypsies, transsexuals and trans-gendered persons are all groups taking part in the project that experience different kinds of violence and yet are not offered the same social coverage as victims of violence against women in Spain.

The project will be carried out in two sessions:

· 11 November, 19.30h, on-site session, Intermediae / Matadero Madrid. If you cannot attend, go online and follow the event until 21.30 at www.toxiclesbian.org
· 18 November, 11,30h, virtual session, from the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía