Events & Expeditions
A Case for Boston as a Liquid and Not a SolidThis is the Truth and Nothing but the Truth
Corporate Commands/In Network: Artist talks with iKatun & Michael Mandiberg
Glowlab: Open Lab
Dudley youth unveil map of Corporate Commands in Dudley Square, Roxbury, MA
PROVFLUX 2005 :: MAY 27-29
Boston Cyberarts Festival: "Corporate Commands' at Space 200
Version 05: Invincible Desire: April 22nd to May 1, 2005
"Rollover" -- a public microperformance by the Institute for Infinitely Small Things
October 16 & 17, 2004: The Institute @ Fort Point Open Studios
Spurse returns from the coasts of Maine
The Institute @ MASSMoCA
February 24, 2006
A Case for Boston as a Liquid and Not a Solid
kanarinka will make a case for the city of Boston as a liquid during the 2006 CAA conference in Boston as part of a panel entitled: "Interrogating Boston as a Site for Contemporary Art" organized by Dr. Cynthia Fowler and Dr. Dena Gilby. Other panelists include Bill Arning, Jerry Beck, Christina Lanzl, Judith Leeman and Jessica Marks.
DETAILS:
TITLE: Interrogating Boston as a Site for Contemporary Art
WHEN: Friday, February 24, 9:30 AM–Noon
WHERE: Hynes Convention Center, Third Level, Room 312
The following projects will be discussed as part of the paper: The Fort Point Artists Community, The Bunker Hill Monument, Sifting the Inner Belt, Corporate Commands, Glowlab: Open Lab, and Itinerant.
If you do not have the money to register for the conference but want to attend this session, contact the Institute for Infinitely Small Things at info@infinitelysmallthings.net.
Excerpt on Excess:
All of these projects are experiments in navigating excess. Not only do they attempt to navigate the complexity of excess -- the insurmountable task of creating any kind of site-specific work – but they also work to “complexify”: to actually produce more questions, to create new connections between disparate entities, and to introduce new, often unrecognizable structures of public participation at particular sites. We often talk about places as if they were things: Boston, Central Square, the South End, the Boston Public Gardens. But places are not things and they are not solid. These projects destabilize notions of solidity in favor of a liquid understanding of the potentiality of place and its possible rupture and reinvention at any given moment.
Posted by kanarinka at 12:00 PM
November 07, 2005
This is the Truth and Nothing but the Truth
On Wednesday, Nov 9th, 2005, the Institute conducted research at the opening reception for SOME SORT OF UNCERTAINTY at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.
Officially part of the exhibition, the Institute's project consisted of telling lies to the public for two hours about what constituted the Institute's project.
LIST OF LIES TOLD BY THE INSTITUTE:
- The Institute installed the show.
- These lights are the Institute's work.
- The Institute's work is on the ceiling - it's up there.
- Each member of the Institute is carrying an artwork in their pocket.
- The Institute's project is to fix the work that is broken (Institute members would move pieces of other artists' work around without permission).
- The Institute put the salt on the pretzels.
- The temperature of the room changes from one side to another. The Institute did this.
- The Institute's artwork is in the bathroom - go look for it.
- The Institute's project is to raise money for a curator fee ( We raised $3.60).
- The Institute is secretly recording your conversations and will podcast them tomorrow. Don't tell anyone I told you this.
- The Institute did a collaborative work with all the artists in the show. The results are distributed throughout this building.
- The Institute pumped oxygen into the air to test what people's reactions would be.
- The Institute claimed credit for other artists' works (one video work by adriana rios, one floor piece by liz nofziger).
- The Institute's piece is in the mailbox labeled 666 and the combination is 12345. Open it to see the work.
- The Institute's work is distributed throughout the entire building - 1 piece in each room.
- The Institute's artwork is in the bathroom. If you go you will find it there.
SOME SORT OF UNCERTAINTY
EXHIBITION INFORMATION
Some Sort of Uncertainty
An exhibition curated by Adriana Rios
November 7-11, 2005
RECEPTION
Wednesday November 9th 6-8 pm
With one-night performances.
WORKS BY
The Institute for Infinitely Small Things
Douglas Weathersby
Lina Maria Giraldo
Nathalie Miebach
Bruce Campbell
Merritt Johnson
Matthew Lane
Adriana Rios
Liz Nofziger
ADDRESS
Massachusetts College of Art
Doran Gallery at the Artist's Residence
600 Rear Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
additional information
617-818-2446
Posted by Pirun at 07:08 PM
November 01, 2005
Corporate Commands/In Network: Artist talks with iKatun & Michael Mandiberg
WHAT: Corporate Commands/In Network: Artist talks with iKatun & Michael Mandiberg
We would like to invite you to join us at the Center for Cultural Studies for an artist talk with a new media artist Michael Mandiberg.
WHEN: Friday, October 28 / 5 PM
WHERE: Oakes Learning Center. UC, Santa Cruz
Events sponsored by the Center for Cultural Studies at UC Santa Cruz for the week beginning October 24, 2005:
EVENTS IN BRIEF (details below):
- Weds, Oct 26 / Helene Moglen and Sheila Namir / "The Dis-Eases of
Otherness: Psychoanalysis and War" / 12:15pm, Oakes Mural Room
- Fri, Oct 28 / Corporate Commands/In Network: Artist talks with iKatun &
Michael Mandiberg / 5pm, Oakes Learning Center
- Sat, Oct 29 / States of War: the geopolitical logic of contemporary
capitalism / 1pm-5:30pm / Oakes 105
For more information Cultural Studies Fall talks and events, please see
http://humanities.ucsc.edu/CultStudies/EVENTS/events.html
OF INTEREST:
- Tues, Oct 25 / Brainstorming Meeting: Feminist Anger, Social Rage / 4pm,
Stevenson Silverman Conference Room
- Tues, Oct 25 / "Books, Budgets, Buildings: State Fiscal Crisis &
Educational Equity in California" / 4:30pm, Merrill Cultural Center
(formerly known as the Merrill Dining Hall)
- Weds, Oct 26 / Patricia Viseur Sellers / Seminar, "Culture Values of Sexual Violence" / 6-8pm, Coast Hotel
- Weds, Oct 26 / CGIRS Film Series: Black Markets & Survival at the Margins: New Balkan Cinema / 7pm, Thimann 3
- Thurs, Oct 27 / Edith Hall / "Iphigenia and her Mother at Aulis" / 2pm,
PERFORMING ARTS CENTER E-100
- Thurs, Oct 27 / Michael A. Gomez / "Call and Response: Africa, Diaspora, and History" / 4pm, Alumni Room, University Center
- Thurs, Oct 27 / Circe Sturm / "Claiming Redness: The Racial and Cultural Politics of Being and Becoming Cherokee" / 4:30pm, Oakes Mural Room
- Thurs, Oct 27 / Patricia Viseur Sellers / Lecture, "Feminism Rightin' Humanitarian Law" / 7pm, Media Theater
- Mon, Oct 31 / Jackie Brown / "On Being Born Here: Race, Place, and
Immigration Politics in Liverpool/Britain" / 3:30pm, Social Sciences 1, Room 261
Posted by Pirun at 06:16 PM
October 15, 2005
Glowlab: Open Lab
iKatun is proud to be one of the sponsors and supporters of Glowlab: Open Lab, a psychogeography festival opening at Art Interactive in Cambridge.
The Glowlab: Open Lab festival kicks off this week with a full schedule of walks, workshops and events.
For a complete calendar see:
http://www.artinteractive.org/shows/glowlab/
Glowlab: Open Lab
Curated by Christina Ray
In Fall 2005, Art Interactive is conducting a nine-week-long experiment. We have invited artists affiliated with Glowlab, a network of psychogeographers, to use the Central Square neighborhood as the site of their research and fill the exhibition space with the results of their investigations. PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY, a term coined by the Situationist International in the 1950s and appropriated by contemporary artists, is used to describe projects that produce affect in relation to the geographic environment. Rather than making maps in the traditional geographic sense, these artists utilize maps and geography to conduct located experiments with (among other things) people, trash, bikes, clothes, the sky and the gallery space itself. Often making use of mobile technologies and existing in the hybrid spaces of the Internet and the physical world, their projects produce new understandings of location and identity as shifting, fluid, singular and irreducible.
CENTRAL SQUARE, CAMBRIDGE, MA, WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN.
Join us for nine weeks of public walks, talks, tours, workshops, concerts, group bike rides, and other ways of exploring the Central Square neighborhood. Each weekend of the festival, different Glowlab artists will be present to lead participatory public events inside and outside the Art Interactive space.
Posted by Pirun at 03:04 PM
July 29, 2005
Dudley youth unveil map of Corporate Commands in Dudley Square, Roxbury, MA
WHEN: Friday July 29th, 4-6pm
WHERE: Arts In Progress, 2201 Washington Street
Dudley Square, Roxbury, MA
Throughout the month of July, the Institute teamed up with youth researchers from the Media Arts Summer Program at Roxbury's ARTS IN PROGRESS to document and perform corporate commands found in their local environment.
A collaborative map of the research conducted by the Institute for Infinitely Small Things will be on display at the Media Arts Summer Program's closing reception on July 29th @ Arts In Progress' Teen Arts Center from 4-6pm.
"CORPORATE COMMANDS: DUDLEY SQUARE" is a research project by The Institute For Infinitely Small Things, in collaboration with Arts In Progress and facilitated by the AIR Satellite Program of the Berwick Research Institute.
"CORPORATE COMMANDS: DUDLEY SQUARE" is a research project by The Institute For Infinitely Small Things, in collaboration with Arts In Progress and facilitated by the AIR Satellite Program of the Berwick Research Institute. This collaboration is supported by the Berwick's newly inaugurated "AIR Satellite Program," a public art initiative that seeks to offer financial, administrative and critical support to artists working in the public sphere. For more info about this collaboration, please visit http://www.infinitelysmallthings.net or the project page @ www.berwickinstitute.org
During the closing, in addition to many works created by the Media Program's students there will be an interactive performance of a newly collected corporate command by members of the Institute along with video and audio documentation of the month long collaboration.
Arts In Progress, located at 2201 Washington Street (on the corner of Ruggles Street) in Roxbury's Dudley Square, is easily accessible via the MBTA.
Take the Silver Line to Dudley Station, and walk north one block on Washington Street. The entrance to Arts In Progress is located on the Ruggles Street side of the intersection. Arts In Progress is also a short walk from Ruggles Station, Orange Line station.
ABOUT THE INSTITUTE FOR INFINITELY SMALL THINGS www.infinitelysmallthings.net
The Institute for Infinitely Small Things is a research organization dedicated to the creation, collection and documentation of all things infinitely small, past, present and future. The Institute's research projects are concerned with creating a critical cartography through which to explore notions of political power, social control, and collective agency. This project is made possible by iKatun [www.ikatun.org], a 501c3 organization that supports artistic research and technological development to facilitate critical inquiry into social and political affairs.
ABOUT ARTS IN PROGRESS
www.artsinprogress.org
Arts In Progress, Inc. (AIP) fosters the education and healthy development of urban youth through the arts. Each July, Arts In Progress offers a full-time media arts program that provides in-depth training in photography, creative writing, video production and journalism. In addition to arts instruction, students participate in community projects and use their developed skills in media arts to capture the many dimensions and voices of the neighborhood.
ABOUT THE BERWICK
www.berwickinstitute.org
The Berwick Research Institute is a non-profit, artist-run space located in Dudley Square, Roxbury, Massachusetts. Founded in January of 2000, the Berwick Research Institute provides emerging artists with a laboratory where they can experiment with new forms and concepts without the pressures of a commercial environment. In our programming, we bring artists and audiences together to foster a community that is based on innovation and dialog.
Posted by kanarinka at 04:00 PM
May 19, 2005
PROVFLUX 2005 :: MAY 27-29
The Institute is going to Providence, Rhode Island, where we will take part in Provflux. We will be conducting a walk for corporate commands on Saturday May 28th, and perform a command on Sunday May 29th.
Contact us if you wish to join us or just come to Provflux and experience works from over 200 artists from 9 countries.
PROVFLUX 2005 :: MAY 27-29
The Providence Initiative for Psychogeographic Studies (PIPS) is pleased to announce its second annual Provflux, a weekend-long event dedicated to artistic and social investigations in psychogeography. Part festival and part conference, it brings together visual, performance, and new media artists, along with writers, urban adventurers and the general public. Events will take place throughout Providence to explore the physical and psychological landscape of the city.
***All events are free and open to public participation***
This year, we are anticipating the participation of over 200 artists from 9 countries, with projects that range from GPS-based mapping experiments to roundtable discussions, banquet dinners to guided walking tours, and public performance to a full gallery show. Please join us and help change the urban shape of Providence.
:: featured events ::
Opening Reception :: Fri 5.27, 6-10p
CUBE2, 230 Westminster St.
Keynote address by Glowlab founders Christina Ray + Dave Mandl
Film screenings, architectural designs, interactive media, and a gallery full of other artistic works kick off Provflux 2005. Over 200 artists from 9 countries will be represented with mapping projects, spatial reconstruction experiments, video/photographic documentaries and more. Performances and registration for weekend activities will take place throughout the evening. Reception is free and open to the public.
Virtual Banquet :: Sat 5.28, 6p
The Steel Yard, 27 Sims Ave
Relax in an outdoor dining atmosphere mid-weekend and swap stories with other Provfluxers at our Saturday night banquet. With special guest Mark Horowitz (National Dinner Tour) and featured speaker Tahl Kaminer (66 East). *Suggested donation $5
Provflux Lecture Series :: Sun 5.29, 1-6 p
The Steel Yard, 27 Sims Ave
Roundtables, lectures, and other presentations on a range of topics and ideas will be brought to the table. Talks and discussions featuring architectural theories, coalition building, urban discoveries, creating public works, and other ideas will be exchanged. Lecture Series is free and open to the public.
Posted by Pirun at 05:28 PM
April 21, 2005
Boston Cyberarts Festival: "Corporate Commands' at Space 200
"CORPORATE COMMANDS" is part of the official selection of the Boston Cyberarts Festival. As well as continuing our performances, which you can check out every Saturday at 2pm (stay tuned to the website for exact location), we are showing at a Boston gallery Space 200.
PARTICIPATE IN THE RESEARCH
at Space 200, 200 State Street in downtown Boston, April 23 to May 29, 2005
OPENING RECEPTION
Friday, April 29th, 2005, 6-9PM
The average person sees over 8000 discrete advertising messages each day. Many of these messages are CORPORATE COMMANDS - instructions to the consumer in the imperative: "JUST DO IT", "GRAB LIFE BY THE HORNS", "HAVE IT YOUR WAY".
What if we actually DID what the corporate commands told us to do in the LOCATION where they told us to do it?
This is the subject of the latest research project by The INSTITUTE FOR INFINITELY SMALL THINGS, a Boston-based research organization. Members of the public are invited to participate in the Institute's research at Space 200 during the Boston Cyberarts Festival.
ABOUT SPACE 200
Space 200 is located at Marketplace Center, 200 State Street, Boston, MA, Ground floor.
Gallery Hours: Monday - Saturday, 10 am - 6 pm and by Appointment
Space 200 is easily accessible via the MBTA.
Take the Blue Line to Aquarium and exit on the State street side.
For more information please visit www.alternatecurrents.com
Posted by Pirun at 01:13 PM
Version 05: Invincible Desire: April 22nd to May 1, 2005
"The International Database of Corporate Commands" part of Version's Web Selection Program
Version is a festival that focuses on art, media, technology and politics. Our fourth annual convergence, Version>05 Invincible Desire, is an experiment in navigating emerging or sub cultures. The festival combines the visual and performing arts with activism and creative uses of new technologies. It explores strategies and aesthetics of artistic intervention and political change.
Version>05 will expose the activity of countercultures through diverse programs featuring an experimental art expo, networked urban events, video screenings, pirate broadcasts, public interventions, performances, exhibitions, workshops, discussions, parties and street action. We envision a festival through which local and international artists and workers can share interests and projects - a New Renaissance summit of radical cultural workers, a meeting place for friends and lovers.
We will convene in Chicago for a ten-day open laboratory where we will explore a diversity of methods for activating our communities, amplifying our ideas, and ultimately creating viable permacultures parallel to consumer society – and capable of superceding it. The city itself will be used as a map to stage micro-actions. Blueprints for strengthening emerging alliances and counter-institutions will be unveiled. Alternative spaces will be open for exploration and collaboration. Public space, corporate and otherwise, will be our terrain for intervention.
Version>05 Invincible Desire is a forum designed to create and strengthen connections between artists, writers, curators, vigilante gardeners, activists, surrealists, scientists, musicians, pirates, filmmakers, space hijackers, tactical media provocateurs, radical cartographers, students, designers, dreamers, architects, adventurers, critical thinkers and cultural workers of all kinds.
Please join us as we examine rhizomatic systems confronting a monoculture. Join our little utopia and share yours. Participate in a cultural reclamation. Come out and visit us in Chicago April 22 – May Day. We need you to make it happen.
"The International Database of Corporate Commands" included in Version's Web Selection Program
"Corporate Commands" is part of the Web Selection Program.
Hello Is There Anybody Out There? This year Version is recognizing web sites that call for action. These artists are reaching out to see if anyone will join them on the web to share experiences, dialogue, photos, and ideas. Tune in to see a video, comment on a blog entry, upload an image, or enter some data. These pieces are asking for you to assist them in transmission. Will you respond?
To see Web Selections click here...
Posted by Pirun at 12:55 PM
February 24, 2005
"Rollover" -- a public microperformance by the Institute for Infinitely Small Things
THIS SAT.: "Rollover" -- a public microperformance by the Institute for Infinitely Small Things
The Institute for Infinitely Small Things would like to invite you to the first in a series of microperformances designed to investigate corporate commands in public space.
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WHAT: Performance of the Cingular Wireless Command "Rollover" (duration: 10 minutes). Researchers from the Institute will enact the command to "Rollover" in Central Sq. and examine the results. Public walking expedition to find corporate commands to follow after the performance. Wear comfortable shoes.
WHERE: Meet at the "Rollover" poster, Cingular Store in Central Sq.,
Cambridge, MA
WHEN: Saturday, Feb. 26th, 2PM
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SCHEDULE for all MICROPERFORMANCES + PUBLIC EXPEDITIONS
Saturday, Feb 26th - 2PM
Saturday, March 5th - 2PM
Saturday, March 12th - 2PM
Saturday, March 19th - 2PM
Saturday, March 26th - 2PM
Note: NO EXPEDITION April 2nd
Saturday, April 9th - 2PM
Saturday, April 16th - 2PM
All locations TBA - Call the Institute at 617-501-2441 or check the website - www.infinitelysmallthings.net -- for more information on location a few days beforehand. All of these expeditions are free and open to the public - people can come along to observe or participate.
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WHAT IS A CORPORATE COMMAND?
A Corporate Command is an instruction work, a call to action in the form of an imperative:
"Just Do It"
"Turn on the Future"
"Live without Limits"
"Tap into great taste"
"Think different"
"Ride the light"
"Live Like You Mean It"
It is the hypothesis of the Institute for Infinitely Small Things that these commands, largely and consciously ignored by a public over-saturated with advertisements, function at the scale of the infinitely small. Tiny events that do not disturb one's consciousness or disrupt one's identity as "free" agents, these commands seep under the surface of the individual and lay claim to the territory of the Deleuzian Virtual. Desire, memory, and future potentiality become territories for conquest and tactics for social and political control.
By compiling, tabulating, concretizing and enacting these commands in the International Database of Corporate Commands (IDCC), the Institute for Infinitely Small Things seeks to better understand the mechanisms behind this deployment of power and its larger cultural ramifications.
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CONTRIBUTE YOUR RESEARCH ONLINE:
www.corporatecommands.com
Posted by Pirun at 08:21 PM
October 17, 2004
October 16 & 17, 2004: The Institute @ Fort Point Open Studios
Visit, participate & experiment the Institute for Infinitely Small Things during Fort Point Open Studios. We will be changing locations throughout the weekend. To inquire about our location, CALL THE INSTITUTE HOTLINE - 617-501-2441.
[
more details ]
Posted by kanarinka at 08:18 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 23, 2004
Spurse returns from the coasts of Maine
[ spurse photos ]
Spurse has returned from their travels on the Vessel Sunbeam V working on the project "MAPPING THE WORKING COASTS: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE WORKING COASTS OF MAINE".
The vessel was at various locations on the coast of Maine between Tuesday, Sept. 14, to Sunday, Sept. 19.
The Institute for Infinitely Small Things published a book "42 or 363 definitions of Cartography" (photo at left) to aid spurse + collaborators in their research.
[ spurse photos ]
Posted by kanarinka at 10:38 PM
August 31, 2004
The Institute @ MASSMoCA
The Institute's first project, "The Analysis of Infinitely Small Things" is on view as part of spurse's "sans terre" project at MASSMoCA's Interventionists show until Spring 2005.
From the spurse introduction to "sans terre":
sans terre is a temporary research institution and archive set up for the rethinking of urbanism. The majority of our work is centered on comparative research in both Mexico City and North Adams. This comparative methodology is based upon our central contention that since currently more than half of the world's population lives in an urban context we have crossed a threshold and entered into a global condition of a new and radically urban geography. North Adams and its seeming small town quality situated in the middle of forests becomes an ideal test site for such a hypothesis. For us crossing this threshold presents an opportunity to re-conceptualize many of our most basic ways to understand place, agency, forms of incorporation, and our place in the world – in sort the very idea of intervention itself.
Posted by kanarinka at 03:00 PM | Comments (2)