Location 0=∞

Creative Communities and Locative Media

Curators: Dunja Kukovec, Nataša Petrešin

One of the consequences of the contracted space and time, where a certain segment of the world population within the high-tech infrastructure defines information as goods and new technologies as mere tools, is the physical, psychological and social shifting of boundaries as well as creating temporary topologies. The new cartographic, symbolic or emotional mapping of the world carves out space, time and identity to the representative techniques of the temporary selfproviding communities. Within the virtual or geopolitical zones the latter stand for the stream of resistance which has been maintained already by the situationists in their psychogeographical recording through cities. By means of wireless technology the locative and mobile tactical media provide a new record of the subjective itineraries and personal space-time zones within the given geographical situations.

Contemporary transnational politics regards boundaries as always evasive and immaterial definitions which reflect the socio-political situation. Within the current geopolitical conditions boundaries (be it economic, cultural, symbolic or geopolitical) should become permeable, the location intermediate while the citizenship or the belonging to a community should be in constant migration.

Today’s economic map of capital flow into the junctions of world communication networks by no means matches the image of the contemporary world shaped through history. Does the transgression of such boundaries actually take place in this moment or is it a mere fantasy of utopians and activists? How to conquer a space emotionally? Can we give up confines like centre, integrated periphery, attached periphery, forsaken periphery, dead corner or half isolated zones not only on the level of the imaginary, but also on that of the real?

Key words:
cybergeography, psychogeography, data visualisations, tracing routes, community, mapping, grouping, locative and mobile media, browser design, interface creations, networking, statistics, emotional space, situations, social, cartography, temporality, space-time relations, transgression, subjective mapping, political revelations, objective constructs, diagnosis

Dunja Kukovec

Dunja Kukovec (b. 1975) is a curator, open source advocate and worker. Since 1997 she curated several solo and group exhibitions (public art, new media art....). She is interested in intersections between technology, art and life, while considering networked technology as a source for inclusive social and political structures. In 2004 she curated Area Kolaborativa in Gallery Škuc, Ljubljana, Coded Cultures, Freiraum, Museumsquartier, Vienna, Share! Like a receipt!, Gallery P74, Ljubljana. She is part of Cyberpipe, Ljubljana open source public lab, where she recently co-programmed 4 days worshop event Haip. She worked at Venice Biennial – Individual Systems as assitant curator of Igor Zabel (2003), Ultraskin festival of New Media and architecture with Lucy Orta, Francois Roche, Stefano Boeri etc. as a project manager (2002), at Manifesta 3 as an intern (2000). She received several grants and as a speaker took part at various conferences (2004 Transmediale, Berlin, 2003 Sample Image, Rome, 2003 Open Cultures Conference, Vienna, 2002, British Academy, Digital Art History, 2002 Digital Strategies of the Living world, France, organised by Louis Bec and Sally Jane Norman, 1999, undergraduate study programme Central European Studies, Czech Republic, etc). Currently working in Cankarjev dom Ljubljana as an executive producer.

Nataša Petrešin

Nataša Petrešin (b. 1976, Ljubljana) is a freelance curator and critic. She graduated in Art History and Comparative Literature at the University of Ljubljana. She has been publishing articles on contemporary and new media art in catalogues and in NU: The Nordic Art Review/Stockholm, Springerin/Vienna, Arco Magazine/Madrid, Acoustic Lab Reader/Riga, Frakcija/Zagreb, Framework/Helsinki, Printed Project/Dublin, Artelier/Bucharest and online review ARTMargins.com (Santa Barbara). In 2004 she selected together with Bojana Kunst the Slovene participants at the exhibition ‘Breakthrough’, Den Haag. In 2003 she has worked as assistant curator at the exhibition ‘In the Gorges of the Balkans’, Museum Fridericianum, Kassel, curated by René Block. In 2002 she has participated at the Curatorial Training Programme at De Appel Foundation in Amsterdam, where she co-curated the final project of the programme, ‘Haunted by Detail’. In 2001 she has been assistant of curator of the Slovene pavilion at 49th Venice Biennial. She has curated exhibitions, ‘Our House Is A House That Moves’ (2003, Pavelhaus, Laafeld/Austria; 2004, Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana), ‘You Are Not Alone’ (2002, Pavelhaus, Laafeld/Austria), ‘Sound in Art’ (2001, Gallery Priestor, Bratislava) and a series of electronic sound art events ‘RE-LAX’ (2001-2002, Ljubljana, together with new media artist Marko Peljhan). In 2002 within the frame of Peljhan’s art organisation Projekt Atol, she co-founded the label for experimental electronic music, ‘rx:tx’. Since 2002 she is a member of the jury for intermedia arts at the Ministry of Culture of Republic of Slovenia, since 2004 the jury’s president, and since 2000 a member of the Slovene Society of Aesthetics. In 2004 she organized together with Gregor Podnar the conference about cultural policies and art market in Central and South Eastern Europe (Museum of Modern Art and Škuc Gallery, Ljubljana). Since 2004 she is a contributing editor of ARTMargins.com.