[Nettime-nl] NEWS FLASH DEBATES & CREDITS #1

[Eric Kluitenberg <epk@xs4all.nl>]

******** NEWS FLASH DEBATES & CREDITS #1 ********


N.B. - Excuses voor het Engels, tijdsdruk maakt het onmogelijk deze 
newsflash geheel te vertalen in Russisch en Nederlands.


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About Debates & Credits:

Debates & Credits is a Russian / Dutch art and media project which 
has invited four artists and artist collectives from Russia and four 
from The Netherlands to develop interventionist (media-) art works 
for the public space. The project happens in three stages:

- Amsterdam September 11 - 22
- Moscow October 7 - 13
- Yekaterinburg September 26 - 29

Website: http://www.balie.nl/d&c

Webjournal: http://n5m4.org/index.shtml?520
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Video-installation on facade of De Balie:

FALLS & RISES

By Galina Myznikova and Sergei Provorov / .ru

5 windows on the first floor of De Balie, facing the busy street of 
one of Amsterdam's prime night-life districts, have been transformed 
into large video screens. The installation refers metaphorically to 
the impact of the 9/11 event and was commissioned by De Balie as a 
counter-point to a series of programs exploring the new political 
conditions post-9/11.

Myznikova and Provorov are two young artists from Nizhny Novgorod who 
work in different genres: video art, installation, sound poetry, 
clothes design, TV advertising. In their work they touch the problem 
how the communication mechanism functions per se, first of all its 
visual aspect, structure and representative models. Seemingly without 
any effort the artists switch between serene poetic video-poetry and 
fast-cut, tightly designed and highly stylised advertisement clips. 
These contradictory modes of visual production have an almost natural 
presence in their work.

Hours: Every day from sunset to the closing hours of De Balie, appr. 01.00.
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D&C Presentations @ Imagine IC Tactical Media Lab (http://www.n5m4.org )

OLEG KYREEV (MOSCOW)  +  ARCHAEOPTERYX (IZHEVSK)

Sunday September 15, 18.00 - 20.00 hrs
Imagine IC, Bijlmerplein 1006 - 1008 Amsterdam (Metro: Station Bijlmer)
http://www.imagineic.nl


* OLEG KYREEV:
    RUSSIAN CULTURAL SITUATION IN THE AGE OF CHECHEN WAR

Russia is on a peak of globalisation, and Moscow is a new 
megalopolis. The city is exceptionally big and expensive, and is 
constantly infused with investments. But, at the same time, 
stagnation of cultural activity is
obvious. Less enthusiasm, less ambitions - unlike the times when 
avant-garde cultural and political circles were really prestigious. 
The same kind of stagnation hit the radical political life, which 
frequently comes into
contact with the world of art and literature (remember the radical 
leftist activities of actionist artists in Yeltsin's era).
Both press and TV abstain from surveying acute political conflicts, 
besides, there is strict division between private and public life 
style. In general, one can register depoliticisation being underway. 
Now Russia completely lacks any public opinion, which in previous 
times was so strong and influential. But this new situation gave 
birth to numerable new forms of artistic and social activity. 1st May 
street parties. the SVOI 2000 movement. Youth non-commercial and 
home-made video. Russian alternative internet. Artist run spaces. 
Non-spectacular art and, last but not least, neo-hippyism...

Oleg Kireev is an art critic (Moscow-correspondent of "Flash Art") 
and a political activist. He was a member of the "Against all 
parties" campaign, the "Svoi 2000" movement, and an editor for the 
infamous "Radek" magazine. He has been involved in a movement of 
young intellectuals, artists and writers who organised various large 
scale street actions to engage in social and political debate in 
public space.

Momentarily Kireev is curator of a project called "Ghetto", dedicated 
to cultural and political analysis: http://www.getto.rema.ru


* ARCHAEOPTERYX:
    "PACKING" AN ART INTERVENTION INTO CONCRETE HIVES;
    APPARTMENT BLOCKS IN IZHEVSK
    AND A PROPOSAL FOR AMSTERDAM SOUTHEAST

The artist group Archaeopteryx fitted 9-storey housing blocks (the 
traditional Russian standardised housing "boxes") in Izhevsk with 
protection labels, normally used on transport boxes. The labels give 
notice of special requirements during transportation and usage. The 
action Package uses the standardised visual language of commodity 
circulation to redirect the attention to the residents these "boxes". 
The common relation of these labels to the objects they were meant to 
protect now seems projected onto the people themselves, as if urging 
to protect people: DO NOT WET, DO NOT BREAK, HANDLE WITH CARE.

This humorous intervention acquires a second layer of meanings when 
situated in the Russian context where several explosions in similar 
living blocks, ascribed to fundamentalist terrorists, became an 
incentive to step up Russian military efforts in Chechnya. For 
Debates & Credits Archaeopteryx will repeat their PACKING action in 
Moscow. In Amsterdam the possibility of recreating the project in the 
high-rise district Amsterdam Southeast is under consideration - a 
district under large scale reconstruction and still traumatised by 
the crash of a Jumbojet freight airliner10 years ago. The main 
purpose of their visit is to investigate the local context and the 
legitimacy of this intervention in the sensitive local context of the 
Amsterdam Southeast district.

* PACKiNG Project:
    http://i-art.udm.ru/packing/index.htm

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* ARNO COENEN:
   OPENING INSTALLATION "DEMOLITIAN MAN" @ STATION BIJLMER
   IN AMSTERDAM SOUTHEAST
   Monday September 16, 17.00 hrs @ Station Bijlmer, Amsterdam South East

Arno Coenen will install a spectacular digital collage print 
installation at the Metro and Railway station Bijlmer in Amsterdam 
South East.

In Moscow Coenen has become inspired by the heroic wall paintings, 
mosaics and lavish decorations in the Moscow subway stations. It has 
inspired him to develop an up-date of the heroism of the former 
Soviet Union for contemporary Russia. The iconographic update of the 
heroes of the new Russians has brought him on a tour to St. 
Petersburg with one of Holland's most renown free-fighters, who 
challenged Russian free fighters on their native soil. The images of 
the free-fight spectacle in St. Petersburg, the fighters as heroes, 
the audience, the organisers, their exuberant following have been 
extensively documented by Coenen on video and in photography. With 
this material he intends to develop a iconographic cycle of digitally 
processed and reworked images depicting the 'Heroes of the new 
Russians' in a series of lightboxes and video-animations. Ideally 
this iconographic cycle is to be shown as the decoration of a metro 
station in Moscow and Amsterdam South East (the home base of the 
Dutch fighter Coenen followed to St. Petersburg).

* On-line preview of the project:
  http://www.solidrocketboosters.com/--DEMOLITIONMAN/poster01.htm
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More updates, reports and announcements via the web journal of 
Debates & Credits:

http://n5m4.org/index.shtml?520


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