Couch.club
Lectures
The Impakt Festival has created the couch.club to focus on the backgrounds of the program. It will feature short presentations by the artists and explanations of their ideas. The audience will be presented with ‘sneak previews’ of new work and get the chance to engage in discussions with the makers.
URBAN.SPACE/DATA.SPACE
Wednesday, 4 June, 20.00h, Cinema
“Urban.Space/Data.Space” is the idea of mapping a physical space using information normally applied to other spaces [walking the streets of Utrecht using a map of Paris is one example, while surfing the streams of wireless security cameras is another] to gain fresh insight into one’s physical terrain. It can also be seen as a revolutionary method of restructuring reality and a means towards realizing social awareness and change. In this panel, Michelle Teran, Marc Tuters (GPSter) and Wilfried Houjebek (Social Fiction) will discuss the idea of psychonavigation, and show various ways of enact- ing it -from the simple to the technologically complex.
Moderation: Derek Holzer
This couch.club is part of the ‘Breaking Out of the Box’ program.
GHOSTS
Thursday, 5 June, 16.30h, Cinema
An artists talk by filmmaker Mike Hoolboom, including o.a. the screening of his new film Carol.
Join Canadian fringe media artist and author Mike Hoolboom for a very special afternoon seance on the couch. Before your very eyes he will raise from the dead past icons from the avant kingdom. True lies. News from the other world. Confessions and secrets revealed. Is there sex after death? All will be exposed in this once only LIVE reading. An afternoon to forget forever.
This couch.club is part of the ‘Mike Hoolboom’ retrospective.
JOHN OSWALD, MARC GUNDERSON
Saturday, 7 June, 16.30h, Cinema
Over 20 years ago, John Oswald may have single-handedly created a style of music—called “Plunderphonics”—which is now known to millions through the work of Negativland, Evolution Control Committee, Girls on Top, 2ManyDJs and a growing number of bootleg producers and DJs around the world. We’ve invited John Oswald and Mark Gunderson (Evolution Control Committee) to present their work and discuss the importance of criticizing the mainstream using its own sounds and images, why all of us should be frightened of the recent boom in “intellectual property” laws, and how they have each taken on the majors, fought the law and won.
Moderation: Derek Holzer
This couch.club is part of the ‘Blatant Plagiarism’ program.
UNLEASHED MISSIONS – WAR AS MASS CULTURE
Sunday, 8 June, 16.30h, Cinema
A lecture by Mark Terkessidis, Cologne. Mark Terkessidis will investigate the present-day state of global mobilization: not just in the current war zones of the world people are called to arms, but also in the supposedly peaceful Western countries. Our consumer culture is dominated by life style recruits, product battles and family wars. The war on terrorism declared after September 11th has no limits, neither inside nor outside. In his presentation, Mark Terkessidis will make connections between neo-liberal agendas, the production of fear and the media spectacle of front line warfare.
Mark Terkessidis has a degree in psychology and works as a freelance writer in Cologne. His most recent book is ‘Entsichert. Krieg als Massenkultur im 21. Jahrhundert’ which he published together with Tom Holert in 2002.
This lecture is part of the ‘Alternative Histories of Modern Conflict’ program.
NET.ART TO NET.ACTIVISM
Monday, 9 June 16.30h, Cinema
In recent years, net.art has changed from pure “browser-art” style formal- ism towards a more socially engaged and politically relevant critique of technological “progress”, globalization, and the ever-present apparatus of surveillance and control which the internet has helped to usher in. This discussion will feature presentations of websites and video from Ed Marczewski of the Version Festival–a recent gathering of rebellious web and media artists in Chicago–and from Nathan Martin (Hacktivist.com/Carbon Defense League) and Tyler Jacobsen from Conglomco.org –a website which offers its visitors a chance to print their own bar-codes and go shopping at any price.
Moderation: Derek Holzer