[Capdist-announce] New Media Theorist Brian Holmes to Kick-Off Series: "Art & Islam: Electronic Representations & Local Communities"

[iEAR Presents]

The iEAR Presents! Spring 2008 season features four events on the theme of
³Art and Islam: Electronic Representations and Local Communities². Four
artists-in-residence* will provide context and responses to the theme by
producing collaborative work with interdisciplinary electronic artists,
faculty and students at the iEAR Studios.  Special attention will be given
to networking international artists with the local, and considering
connections between communities of Troy, NY and the communities of the
visiting artists from Iraq, Malaysia, Indonesia, and England.
 
Kicking off the series at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, February 6, 2008 in the
West Hall Auditorium, RPI campus, Troy, NY, will be new media theorist Brian
Holmes, who will present key overall questions that each residency will
address from their own unique process and point of view:
 
How does the initial artistic act consist in establishing the environment
and setting the parameters for a larger inquiry?
 
How does this inquiry become expressive, multiple, overflowing the initial
frame and opening up unexpected possibilities?
 
In what ways do these new kinds of practices emerge in a new definition of
art as a mobile laboratory and experimental theatre for the investigation
and instigation of social and cultural change?
 
A reception with the artist will follow the lecture and talkback session.
Refreshments will be served. The event is free and open to the public.  For
directions or more information, please visit www.arts.rpi.edu
<http://www.arts.rpi.edu> or call (518) 276-4829.
 
Brian Holmes is an art and cultural critic, activist and translator, living
in Paris, interested primarily in the intersections of artistic and
political practice. He holds a doctorate in Romance Languages and
Literatures from the University of California at Berkeley. He was the
English editor of publications for Documenta X, Kassel, Germany, 1997, was a
member of the graphic arts group Ne pas plier from 1999 to 2001, and has
recently worked with the French conceptual art group Bureau d¹ etudes. He is
a frequent contributor to the international mailing list Nettime, a member
of the editorial committee of the art magazine ³Springerin² and the
political-economy journal ³Multitudes², a regular contributor to the
magazine Parachute, and a founder of the new journal ³Autonomie Artistique².
He is currently preparing a book in French, entitled ³La personnalite
flexible: Pour une nouvelle critique de la culture.²
http://brianholmes.wordpress.com/
 
 
Future events in the series:
 
March 5 - Wafaa Bilal, video artist
 
April 2 - Leonard Retel Helmrich, filmmaker
 
April 23 - Hasnul Saidon, electronic artist
 
iEAR Presents! is a series of public performances, exhibitions, screenings
and lectures.  Curated by artist faculty, iEAR Presents! seeks to bring
artists into a creative dialogue regarding integrated electronic arts
practice and theory with a participatory community of faculty and students
from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and members of the general public.
This series is sponsored in part by the New York State Council on the arts.
 
Visit www.arts.rpi.edu for more information or call (518) 276-4829.
 
For disability services for West Hall events, including wheelchair access,
please call (518) 276-2746.
 
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