Using various non-traditional materials—from jet engines to bovine parts to chemical nitrates and salt—Roger Hiorns’ sculptures, performances, and installations broadly investigate the possibility of transformation in objects, social encounters, and urban situations. Hiorns is well-known for his 2009 ArtAngel commission, Seizure, in which the artist pumped 75,000 liters of copper sulfate solution into an abandoned South London council flat to create a crystalline growth on the walls, floor, and ceiling. Transformation, by way of such chemical and organic processes, is central to much of his work and is often connected to considerations of meaning and rhetoric. For his talk, Hiorns considers this subject in relation to new works.

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Born in 1975 in Birmingham, England, Roger Hiorns lives and works in London. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Aspen Art Museum, Colorado; The Art Institute of Chicago; Tate Britain; Camden Arts Centre, London; and UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. In 2009, Hiorns was nominated for the Turner Prize for his installation Seizure.

Public Art Fund Talks at The New School are organized by the Public Art Fund in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.

* Presented on occasion of the Vera List Center’s 2011-2013 focus theme “Thingness.”

What is radical media? What has it been in the past? What can it be in the future? What is media’s relationship to social justice and movement building?

Paper Tiger Television, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and the School of Media Studies at The New School for Public Engagement present a two-day conference of activists, artists and media makers to celebrate, reflect and build on thirty roarin’ years (and counting!) of media art and activism.

In 1981, Paper Tiger Television (PTTV) pioneered a truly radical public access show, raising awareness amongst workers in the communication industries of the economic, political and social power structures perpetuated through the profit-driven mainstream media. Ever since then, the collective has been making fun, yet incisive video that demystifies the information industry and provides a platform for underrepresented perspectives. Collaborating with activists and artists, PTTV videos take many forms — from critical performative readings of the mass media & popular culture, to traditional style documentaries on social justice issues.

Thirty years later, how can we harness collaborative culture, critical analysis, participatory technologies and aesthetics to incite social change?  What content and platforms can we create that will respond to the limits and possibilities of the ever-shifting contemporary media landscape?

We invite artists, activists, scholars and media makers, movers and shakers of all stripes to explore these questions. Participants are challenged to collaboratively design prototypes for a new rrradical media, building on the ideals of non-hierarchical-participatory culture, critical analysis, activism and innovative aesthetics. A broad cross section of individuals, working together with varied proclivities, interests and abilities, opens up the potential for something truly revolutionary to develop.

Follow the links to detailed event schedules: DAY ONE and DAY TWO.

*Presented by Paper Tiger Television, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and the School of Media Studies at The New School for Public Engagement, on occasion of the Vera List Center’s 2011-2013 focus theme “Thingness.”

“The power of mass culture rests on the trust of the public. This legitimacy is a paper tiger.”
–PTTV Manifesto

Borne of the residual political optimism from the sixties and a flush of infatuation with small-format video, Paper Tiger Television (PTTV) began as a series on Communications Update on public access. Featuring Herb Schiller tearing apart the New York Times’ “all the news that is fit to print,” Paper Tiger’s penetrating and playful critiques of Time, Rolling Stone, National Geographicand Cosmopolitan soon followed.

The public access movement took root at a moment of disillusionment with network television, generating hope that cable would offer a genuine alternative to TV wasteland. Over the last thirty years, the accessibility of public access TV centers has significantly declined, while for-profit corporate media consolidated from fifty into five companies that control 90% of the public’s media consumption.

Yet, with the growth of the internet and the proliferation of consumer grade production equipment, social media, crowd sourcing, online video, live streaming, and wireless technology, today’s media environment is rife with opportunities for innovation and collaboration.  Still, from the digital divide, to online filter bubbles, to the echo chamber of social distribution of mass media, to SOPA and Net Neutrality, an analysis of how these developments are used coupled with the threats coming from the policy level reveals that even these seemingly promising trends are nuanced.

Given these developments, what does a vibrant, radical media look like, how could it function? What lessons can we apply from Paper Tiger’s innovative media activism?  How can we use media strategically and creatively in the pursuit of social justice?

Moderated by Daniela Capistrano, Multi-Platform Producer of DCAP Media, the festive event features a keynote address, a screening of Paper Tiger Television’s Greatest Hits, selected by current Tigers, followed by a panel discussion on the future of rrradical media.

Keynote Speaker
Malkia Cyril, Executive Director, Center for Media Justice

Panelist
Andy Bichlbaum, The Yes Lab
Jamilah King, News Editor, Colorlines
Jennifer Pozner, Founder, Women in Media & News

Follow the links to detailed event description and DAY TWO schedule.

* Presented by Paper Tiger Television, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and the School of Media Studies at The New School for Public Engagement , on occasion of the Vera List Center’s 2011-2013 focus theme “Thingness.”

How can we harness collaborative culture, critical analysis, participatory technologies and aesthetics to incite social change?  What content and platforms can we create that will respond to the limits and possibilities of the ever-shifting contemporary media landscape?

Paper Tiger Television puts theory into practice — participants of the conference are challenged to collaboratively design prototypes for a new rrradical media, building on the ideals of non-hierarchical-participatory culture, critical analysis, activism and innovative aesthetics. A broad cross section of individuals, working together with varied proclivities, interests and abilities, opens up the potential for something truly revolutionary to develop.

Media Intensive: 10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Succinct, fast-paced and provocative presentations on key topics of the design challenge: Justice & Autonomy, New Activism & Movement Building, Collectivism & Collaborative Culture, Materiality & Aesthetics

Lunch: 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.
Presenters and grassroots media advocates host informal discussions dedicated to conference themes.

Design Challenge: 1:00 – 4:30 p.m.
Groups of 8-10 participants will be challenged to collectively create prototypes for a new form of rrradical media.

Team Presentations: 4:30 – 6:00 p.m.
Each group gives 10 minutes to present their rrradical media prototype. Selected prototypes will be featured in Documentary Fortnight 2012: MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media on February 24.

Media Studies Speakers
Jesse Drew, professor, Techno-cultural Studies, University of California, Davis
Pablillo Jose, hacktivist
Shannon Mattern, assistant professor, School of Media Studies, The New School
Martha Wallner, Media & Communications Coordinator, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
Isaac Wilder, Executive Director, Free Network Foundation

Design Challenge Facilitators
Robby Herbst, artist
Tracy Luz, documentary filmmaker
Deep Dish TV, media laboratory since 1986

Democracy Now!, national, daily, independent, and award winning global news program
Housing Is A Human Right, documentary project
Manhattan Neighborhood Network, public access network
Media Action Grassroots Network, local-to-local advocacy network of grassroots community organizations
People’s Production House, journalism training and production institute

Follow the links to detailed event description and DAY ONE schedule.

* Presented by Paper Tiger Television, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and School of Media Studies at The New School for Public Engagement , on occasion of the Vera List Center’s 2011-2013 focus theme “Thingness.”

Vera List Center for Art and Politics and SculptureCenter present Subjective Histories of Sculpture. This program, initiated in 2006, explores how contemporary artists think about sculpture; its history and its legacies. This year, Lucy Skaer, Nairy Baghramian, and Josephine Meckseper present their own take on art history. Citing specific works, bodies of work, texts, or even personal anecdotes taken from inside and outside cultural production, and inside and outside art, these subjective, incomplete, partial, or otherwise eclectic histories question assumptions and propose alternative methods for understanding sculpture’s evolving strategies.

Lucy Skaer’s installations subject the conventional classification of objects and historical references to scrutiny, shifting meaning toward the symbolic and absurd. Often working with pre-existing imagery and found forms, Skaer’s sculptures, films, and works on paper emphasize repetition and variation even as they retain a gestural immediacy. Her surrogate adaptations of Constantin Brancusi’s sculptures, for example, use familiar forms as a decoy for exploring faltering modes of industrial production and distribution, resulting in the collapse of image and object into a shared psychological space a characteristic of much of her work. Skaer’s work re-animates the power of the symbolic that lies beyond obsolescence, as in a recent 35mm film that imagines the memory of a film projector from an abandoned cinema in Leeds, England.

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Lucy Skaer was born in Cambridge, England, in 1975, and currently lives in New York. Skaer works primarily in sculpture, painting, film, and installation. She studied at the Glasgow School of Art and has had solo exhibitions at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, Switzerland, and Chisenhale Gallery, London, among other venues. She has been included in numerous international exhibitions, including the 52nd Venice Biennale, the 5th Berlin Biennale, and recent group exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France, and K21 Düsseldorf, Germany. Skaer was a Turner Prize finalist in 2009.