Call for participation



kooky

Spin doctoring, politics, media



Kookiness seems to be a current tendency in both politics, media and art.
But how do images, films, works of art or campaigns reveal their specific
reaction to this daily spiral of absurdies? Even critical strategies are no
longer transgressive, for they are nor longer directed 'against' anything,
but tend to be kooky in their specific way of repeating accustomed things
within a new context - so as to make the result seem crazy enough. How can
both science and art reflect upon such insanities? Couldn't it be fruitful
for them, to explore kooky thinking figures themselves?

I is globalized, you is globalized, so is we. How should it be possible then
to exaggerate things, if our globe is encircled from within? If we suppose,
that the realization of scientific and technological transgressions in nano-
or cosmic sciences are regularly discussed as being only a matter of time?
The 'Handbook of Communication Guerilla' has recommended to adopt strategies
of power such as, e.g. to exploit the concept of hyper-affirmation to hold
an hyperbolizing mirror up to the system: "Dear citizens, would you please
join the tomorrow gen screening for the index-linking of pensions.
Sincerely, your Federal Government". Soon, not only Tony Blair will be
engaging his spin doctors to twist and turn the news in favour of a
pro-governmental attitude. We are already our own doctors, regarding
ourselves as absolutely normal, but never really going too far.

Is it still possible to escape self-regulation or is everybody just borg?
Camouflage equals fashion, casting equals identity measures. Being gay means
being cool and at the same time, the re-biologization of gender roles is
pretty en vogue: Why men are better in parking and women are better
listeners ... But even the differentiation of roles, such as, e.g., the
increasing hype of transgendered persons as casted by afternoon TV shows,
might easily result in normalization: it feels like an infinite rabbit and
hedgehog story. This kind of transgression is evenly distributed via
networks, it is easily accessible via mobile phone, and thus, this kookiness
is perfect to be promoted as novelty. In which cases is kookiness not just
mis-kookied into normalization?

One might agree that the seventies were rebellious, the eighties
psychoanalytical and text-paradigmatic, the nineties lascivious and queer in
identity. Once, being excessive has been exclusively reserved to the fields
of avant-gardistic art and avant-gardistic film - nowadays, Hollywood
presents us with men-beating women, blockbusters claim catastrophies as
their stars and intertextual references ironically display their
citationality. Even technology gets more and more untwisted/kooky: digital
special effects, multiplex cinemas, gigantic sreens, dolby sensurround ...
Supposed that cinema itself has become kooky, do we then still need kooky
readings? Has Camp become obsolete or has it never been more than a practice
of normalizing self-regulation anyway? Do feminist film studies and queer
theory equallly contribute to this system? In which aspects and how do films
unsettle us in these days? Which kind of images leave us overwhelmed?

Even though criticism cannot claim a position beyond the system - and
despite of all its inevitable involvement - there are good reasons to be
'anti'. We have become familiar with mimcry and falling viewing figures
(nothing against gender mainstreaming here). But it is time for new
agitprop-strategies, for our own spinning, the quality of which must be
continually on the agenda.

To search for a new governmentality of the Self, to explore its inherent
media prerequisites and subversive opportunities, to check its instabilities
and to occupy mechanical and electrical tensions and rotations anew, this is
what the search for kooky aims at.



Propose us with works, events, theories, of which is to say: this is too
much! Present us with ideas for the film workshop, an artistic campaign or
the symposium.



Potential topics include:

-          communication guerilla, flashmobs, appropriation of national
symbols

-          governor Schwarzenegger; Mars: the new frontier?

-          normality

-          screwball comedies, disaster movies, blockbuster

-          reality TV, Jackass, Ali G. .

-          branding, sponsoring, adbusting .

. and many more



curated by: Ulrike Bergermann, Christiane Hanke und Andrea Sick



****

Organization:

The thealit-laboratory kooky includes a symposium, various art
campaigns/exhibitions, and a film series, starting with a film workshop, the
contributions of which might be discussed online until the beginning of the
symposium.



Dates:

Filmworkshop Beginning of december 2004

Symposium May 20th-22 th 2005

Artistic Prasentations/exhibiton/campaigns: January-May 2005





We invite women artists and scholars to hand in their suggestion for the
film workshop, the symposium or the artistic campaigns/exhibitions.
Contributions aiming not to fit art into the exhibition only, talks into the
symposium or film into the cinema are very welcome. Selected projects will
be presented; to a large extend, travel expenses and money for the overnight
stays are gonna be paid, and there will also be a small financial reward.



Deadline: June 15th, 2004



Formalities: Please outline your proposed lecture by giving a brief abstract
(2000 characters maximum), your ideas for your performance, art campaign or
exhibition by supplying a written and/or visual concept (it is also possible
to give an abstract in the short text and/or to hand in different versions
in forms of vhs, cd, dvd etc.). Additional notes on hitherto projects,
web-adresses, cds, dvds and all sorts of other texts are explicitly welcome.



Please contact [log in to unmask]

or thealit Frauen.Kultur.Labor, Im Krummen Arm 1, D-28203 Bremen

Website: http://www.thealit.de/lab/kooky/kooky.htm

Find out more about thealit at www.thealit.de