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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