"Woody and Steina Vasulka: aspects of electronic avant-garde"
http://criticalartware.net/evnt/2006.06.13

Lenka Dolanova presents
"Woody and Steina Vasulka: aspects of electronic avant-garde"
PRESENTATION, SCREENING and OPEN DISCUSSION
facilitated by criticalartware
and hosted by Messhall

TUES 2006.06.13

BYOB POTLUCK DINNER begins @ 6 PM
PRESENTATION, SCREENINGS and DISCUSSION begins @ 8 PM

6932 North Glenwood Avenue
Chicago, IL 60626
('Morse' stop on the Redline)

FREE and OPEN

ABOUT "Woody and Steina Vasulka: aspects of electronic avant-garde"

Lenka Dolanova presents "Woody and Steina Vasulka: aspects of  
electronic avant-garde" a presentation, screening and open  
discussion. In the spirit of sharing and open exchanges, the evening  
will begin with a BYOB potluck dinner @ 6 PM with Lenka Dolanova's  
presentation starting @ 8 PM. Join criticalartware, Messhall and the  
experimental Media Arts community in conversation with Lenka Dolanova  
as she offers insights from her extensive and important research on  
Woody and Steina Vasulka. This event offers a rare opportunity to  
hear directly from Dolanova on the critical connections between the  
histories of Video Art and New Media Art as well as an in depth  
analysis of the work of the Vasulkas, artist's who have individually  
and collaboratively shaped our understanding of Media Art.

Dolanova, a visiting scholar and curator from Prague, will present a  
talk that is based on her research on and into the lives and art work  
of the Vasulkas, seminal media artists who have created pivotal media  
art works, organized events and archived histories for over 30 years.  
As Dolanova writes, the Vasulkas ongoing practices are based on  
"openness to incoming information and self-transformation through  
dialog with the machine. They have significantly contributed to the  
formation of theoretical and institutional framework of electronic  
art, trying to interconnect the spheres of technology and culture.  
Their field of research – image processing – existing mostly outside  
galleries – concentrates on experimenting with the parameters of  
electronic signal."

During this presentation Dolanova will screen examples of the work by  
the Vasulkas as well as discuss topics including early histories of  
Video Art, the electronic avant-garde, ethics of sharing and the Open  
Source movement in relation to the Vasulkas' work. In addition to  
these themes, Dolanova will draw from her current research on the  
Vasulkas to discuss a wide range of contemporary issues. She will  
discuss Video Art as self-transformation, revolutionary politics,  
access to the tools of production, personal transformation through  
technology and the histories of alternative art spaces. Woody and  
Steina Vasulka founded The Kitchen, an alternative multimedia art  
space in New York in 1971. Dolanova connects these histories with  
contemporary New Media Art via the "Open (re)sources" developed by  
the Vasulkas. The Vasulka Archive (http://www.vasulka.org) funded by  
the Langlois Fondation is an unprecedented archiving project  
initiated by the Vasulkas. The Vasulka Archive includes decades of in  
depth resources from the Vasulkas personal collections which are now  
freely available online.

ABOUT Lenka Dolanova:

Lenka Dolanová is a Prague-based curator, free-lance art critic and  
PhD. student in Art History at Charles University. Dolanová is  
currently a Fulbright researcher-in-residence at the School of the  
Art Institute of Chicago. She is interested mainly in the various  
aspects of the avant-garde of electronic arts.

ABOUT criticalartware:

criticalartware is an [application/platform/concern] compiled at the  
turn of the twenty first century to address hyperthreaded hystories  
of new media, [software-as-art/art-as-software] and [connections/ 
ruptures/dislocations] between early moments of artware and Video  
Art. By drawing [parallels/paths] between the [concepts/discourses]  
of the early video art movement and the current [artware/newmedia]  
moment, criticalartware hopes to [re]connect the current context to  
its rightful past: a multitude of [personal/subjective] hyperthreaded  
[her/hi/hy]stories.

http://criticalartware.net

ABOUT Messhall:

"Mess Hall is an initiative mostly based out of a storefront space in  
a North Side neighborhood of Chicago called Rogers Park. There exists  
no single way to describe what Mess Hall is because the initiative  
continually enlarges its domain of activity... Many events involve  
presentations of one sort or another: screenings, lectures, readings,  
listening parties, how-to demonstrations, etc. More than a few of  
Mess Hall’s events from the past fifteen months fit into no category  
but their own: for example, a no-cash, clean-out-your-closet swap  
day, a weekend celebration of Eighties speed and thrash metal  
complete with vintage fanzines on display, and a hands-on deejaying  
tutorial."

excerpts from:

title: MESS HALL: What It Is (After the First Year)
dvr: Dan S. Wang
uri: http://www.messhall.org/wimh.html

http://criticalartware.net/evnt/2006.06.13