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Edward Hopper in Wien
For a moment let’s forget that yesterday was the Austrian election. Everyone in Austria and, perhaps, the whole world are waiting what’s gonna be the possible outcome. The People’s Party has a new head in the name of Josef Pröll. The right-wingers are praying that they are gonna be in the new government.
I digress.
Automat by Edward Hopper, 1927
Do you know this painting? I bet you do. More than a decade ago I saw it on a page of a book. Then as a part of a film. It was from Cameron Crowe, “Singles,” which many people misconceived as his ode to Seattle and the music revolution that was grunge.
I searched and searched until I forgot that I was searching for the name of the painter and the title of the work.
Finally, and hopefully, this painting is included in the upcoming exhibition of works by Edward Hopper at the Kunsthalle Wien, Halle 1 in the 7th District starting on Oct. 3.
The Mustache (Part 3)
He is back!
Seen along the Margaretengürtel, Fifth District, the last of the series. The Jörgi is back. He has promised he would only go to Vienna if the Austrians made him their chancellor. Your choice.
Tomorrow is Election Day. So go out and vote my dear Austrian friends.
Time Travel On 8 Bits A Day
Jason Scott will talk about time travel. A special kind of time travel: “8 Bits A Day”!
Computer History, once a somewhat strange idea, has now taken the world by storm; a magazine or newsletter merely has to dip their ladle into the piles of nostalgia and older images of computing technology to guarantee readership, commentary and links. But what is it like to live in this just-past world of unusual keyboards, cartridge slots and 256 colors?
Jason Scott describes the process by which he became a collect of online artifacts, the strange twists and turns his journey has taken (both legal and financial) and the lessons he has learned towards the goal of “saving everything”.
Jason Scott is a digital historian and documentary filmmaker based out of the Northeastern US, focusing on bulletin board system culture of the 1970s and 1980s. He often finds himself well outside of that realm and has collected many archives of general computer and software history, which he makes available on various parts of his online archive, TEXTFILES.COM.
- When: Thursday, September 18 2008, 8:30 PM
- Where: Metalab, Rathausstrasse 6, 1010 Vienna
A Personal Journey Towards Datameaningfulness
Rachel Lovinger will give a talk at metalab about a “Personal Journey Towards Datameaningfulness”.
Everything you could possibly want is out there, and soon it will all be digitized. The problem isn’t whether it exists, it’s how you find it. This is the challenge that has plagued the speaker and motivated her to pursue an ambiguous occupation called “Content Strategy.” Her idealized vision of the future of the Internet is the Semantic Web, with its promise of smarter sites that actually understand what content means. In an attempt to answer the question “How did you become interested in datameaningfulness?” Rachel will take a very personal look at the formation of that dream, exposing the cultural, environmental, and historic factors that put her on this path.
Rachel Lovinger works at Avenue A | Razorfish as a Senior Content Strategist, developing ways for global clients to help connect users to the quality content they want and need. She’s particularly interested in relevance, findability, signification, and inherently funny words.
- When: Thursday, September 18 2008, 7:30 PM
- Where: Metalab, Rathausstrasse 6, 1010 Vienna
The Mustache (Part 1)
The world's stereotype view of Austria, along the Gürtel
The Mustache and the Freedom Party leader HC Strache
Once there was Hitler, an Austrian-born naturalised German who tried to rule the world, and his (in) famous mustache. That everything evil embodies him and his facial hair. That if they put this particular mustache on someone else’s face it is a way of offending that person. Little did the people know that it was a trend sometime in the 1920s. Or they might be aware of it but it doesn’t matter anyway. What is important is that they showed their anger or disagreement by allowing themselves to manipulate or vandalize the face.
Taugshow #16!
++TAUGSHOW #16++
Divine Special (Paraflows 08 festival special)
Wednesday, September 17, 2008 / 8:00 PM @ Metalab, Vienna
We are not allowed to talk about the special guest hosts… yet!
But who are our guests?
/// TREVOR PAGLEN
Trevor Paglen is an artist, writer, and experimental geographer working out of the Department of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. His work involves deliberately blurring the lines between social science, contemporary art, and a host of even more obscure disciplines to construct unfamiliar, yet meticulously researched ways to interpret the world around us./// JASON SCOTT
Jason Scott is a digital historian and documentary filmmaker based out of the Northeastern US, focusing on bulletin board system culture of the 1970s and 1980s. He often finds himself well outside of that realm and has collected many archives of general computer and software history, which he makes available on various parts of his online archive, TEXTFILES.COM./// RACHEL LOVINGER
Rachel Lovinger works at Avenue A | Razorfish as a Senior Content Strategist, developing ways for global clients to help connect users to the quality content they want and need. She’s particularly interested in relevance, findability, signification, and inherently funny words./// Regulars:
EVELYN FÜRLINGER, MA.
Evelyn presents “Wicked Wordz”, our regular column about lingustics./// Showband
THE INCOHERENT DEITIES
Oh yes.
Books! Books! Books!
Another book flea market at the Library Donaustadt
Don’t pity yourself if you missed yesterday’s book flea market at the Main Library.
Maybe it is only me but, obviously, the people who stormed the event were hungrier like the pack of wolves browsing the books. They ripped off the unopened boxes like mad without returning the books back. A woman in front of me, serious-looking, white-haired, tore the openings of a huge carton. She was so disappointed when she discovered the contents inside, stood up and left immediately. They bumped with one another as if everyone didn’t exist. It was horrible, especially if you tag along an impatient child.
I can understand that the word “cheap” rings a bell. I am with you. With the current economic situation in Austria, everything you can get almost for free is a good deal. Just think about the first low-priced supermarket (Sozialsupermarkt) in the city.
As soon as the woman left the area, one library employee mumbled angrily putting the loads of books in order.
Compared to the others I only had a medium-sized rucksack. Almost everyone had a shopping luggage, Ikea blue bags, etc. Everything big. Plus plastic sacks.
It was okay but it would be nice if I could have spent more time to scan the books available at the hall. At least I have two books from Graham Greene (English-language), two Ephraim Kishon, two coffeetable books about Christianity and castles and three video tapes. Each one cost 1 euro. My son’s vid was even for free.
Anyway, if you are in the mood for another book flea market, the Donaustadt Library will hold for the first time its own, from 11 to 6 p.m. Located behind the Donauzentrum, one really cannot miss it.
Trevor Paglen: state secrets, covert military bases, disappeared people
Trevor Paglen will give a lecture performance on Monday (8 PM) at Metalab (Rathausstraße 6). It’s part of the Paraflows festival.
Trevor Paglen is geographer and artist and he takes us on a road trip through the world of hidden budgets, state secrets, covert military bases, and disappeared people: through a landscape that military and intelligence insiders call the “black world.” Over the course of his talk, Paglen leads us from “non-existent” Air Force and CIA installations in the Nevada desert to secret prisons in Afghanistan and to a collection of even more obscure “black sites” startlingly close to home. Using hundreds of images he has produced and collected over the course of his work, Paglen shows how the black world’s internal contradictions give rise to a peculiar visual, aesthetic, and epistemological grammar with which to think about the contemporary moment.
More info:
Trevor Paglen’s homepage
FM4
Tommy Schmidt’s "Kreuz am Rand" @ Metalab
Tommy Schmidt’s great project “Kreuz am Rand” (”Cross at the Roadside”) will be presented today 8 PM at Metalab (Rathausstraße 6), as part of the Paraflows talk series.
Jeder kennt die Unfallkreuze am Rande von Landstraßen und jeder kennt das Dilemma ihrer beiläufigen Wahrnehmung: Kaum hat man sie erfasst und sich gefragt, was da wohl passiert sei, ist man schon wieder ein paar hundert Meter weiter gefahren. So lautet die Botschaft des Kreuzes an den einzelnen Verkehrsteilnehmer “halt an, halt inne, gedenke!”
Andererseits lässt die Verkehrssituation genau das nicht zu.
Unfallkreuze befinden sich am Straßenrand und sie befinden sich am Rande der Wahrnehmung. Es sind Kreuze am Rand.
“Kreuz am Rand” macht Unfallkreuze als Symbole individueller Schicksalsereignisse in ihren Details sichtbar – mit ihren Blumen, Gedichten, Porträtfotos und Kuscheltieren.
Und zwar in Form einer interaktiven Straßenkarte (Google Maps) für Unfallkreuze: kreuz-am-rand.de
Auf der Straße ist die Wahrnehmung des Verkehrsteilnehmers auf den Verkehr konzentriert, das “Kreuz am Rand” muss eine Randerscheinung bleiben. Im Internet aber richtet der User seine Aufmerksamkeit auf den dargestellten Inhalt.
Auf der Straßenkarte werden die Standorte von Unfallkreuzen markiert. Bei Berühren der Kreuze mit der Maus erscheint ein Fenster mit Angaben zum Kreuz, ein Foto des Kreuzes und ein Link auf eine Inhaltsseite, die weitere Fotos und Informationen, etc. zum Kreuz enthält: Unfallhergang, Gedichte, Charakterbeschreibung des/der Verunglückten, etc. Diese Inhalte werden von Angehörigen, Freunden, etc. bereit gestellt. Langfristig werden auch Fotos von “neuen“ Kreuzen, etc. von Usern angelegt (also nicht allein vom Künstler als Websitebetreiber). Schließlich wird kreuz-am-rand.de eine Plattform auf der sich Betroffene untereinander austauschen. Die virtuellen Kreuze leisten hinsichtlich Verfügbarkeit und Informationsfülle potenziell mehr als die realen.
Invader invading MQ
Don’t miss tonight’s opening of quartier21’s “Street Art Passage”!
It is pretty much impossible for you to not have come across mosaics done by French street artist “Invader” before, but now he got to - legally - artify an entire part of the MQ complex.
The small bridge between Breite Gasse and MuseumsQuartier is where Street Art Passage is located (this is the third themed passage initiated by quartier21, by the way - the other two are TONSPUR_passage and KABINETT comic passage). Next to the bridge, works by national and international street artists will be displayed from now on, and street art magazine “betonblumen” can be bought from a machine for €2.
Tonight, Invader will be signing the current edition of the magazine from 7-8 p.m.
Paraflows 2008
paraflows, the festival for digital art and cultures in Vienna, is progressing into the third round. By now, paraflows has been able to establish itself as a platform for the young, local scene of digital art and cultures, and this year it will expand on its position as an interface to already established international positions in media art.
With the title UTOPIA, this year’s festival is following up last year’s topic of UN_SPACE. Starting with the already explored ‘non-spaces’, this year will take a prognostic glimpse at the future. Fantastic, longing, and gloomy visions are the tenor of the exhibition, the symposium and of the supporting programme.
September 11th through October 24th 2008.
