As an extension of The Cardew Object at the ICA London (November 2009), this celebration of British avant-garde composer Cornelius Cardew (1936 – 1981) is a collaboration between Eugene Lang The New School for Liberal Studies, The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at NSGS. Instigated by 2009-10 Vera List Center Fellow Robert Sember, it is part of an ongoing investigation into practices of radical learning by the sound art collective Ultra-red and the School of Echoes, groups of which Sember is a member.

Based on Cardew’s compositions and writings and his work as co-founder of the radical Scratch Orchestra, the speakers and workshop participants explore contemporary processes of collaborative and critical learning. Three Cardew maxims underscore the interdisciplinary, performative and experimental nature of this celebration:

1. The composer has to visualize the development of his ideas in time
2. Over a long period of time, nothing remains the same
3. The dynamic control of changes in time is a big part of composition

PROGRAM

An Introduction to Cardew
Friday, April 9, 2010 – 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
The New School, Wollman Hall
65 West 11th Street (enter at 66 West 12th Street)
Admission: $8, free for all students, New School faculty, staff and alumni with valid ID

The colloquium will be launched on the evening of Friday, April 9, with focused lectures introducing the work of Cardew. Complete schedule and participants to be announced.

Workshops with New School faculty
Saturday, April 10, 2010 – 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
The New School, Theresa Lang Community and Student Center
55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor
Admission: $8, free for all students, New School faculty, staff and alumni with valid ID

New School faculty Ivan Raykoff and Evan Rapport will host public workshops developed in collaboration with the Lang class New Ears (Raykoff) and the New School for Jazz classes Cross-Cultural Improv and Punk & Noise (Rapport). Sound works produced in the Saturday workshops will be presented in a day-long performance on Sunday, April 11. Complete workshop schedule to be announced.

Performance
Sunday, April 11, 2010 – 12:00 to 6:00 p.m.
Location to be announced
Admission: Free

Sound works produced in the Saturday workshops will be presented in a day-long performance on Sunday, April 11. Complete schedule of events and location of Sunday performance to be announced.

Presented on occasion of the Vera List Center’s 2009-2010 program theme “Speculating on Change.”

Posted on December 21, 2009

CALL: Changing Labor Value
Changing Labor Value, a panel discussion on September 29, 2009, examined the nature of work in the digital era, focusing on the relationship between invisible labor, play, exploitation, pleasure, and the production of value. The speakers, Andrew Ross and Tiziana Terranova, considered the impact of corporate expropriation of value from millions of net users and offered some alternatives. The panel was accompanied by an installation of Web-based projects by Burak Arikan, Ursula Endlicher, Scott Kildall and Victoria Scott, Aaron Koblin, Stephanie Rothenberg and Jeff Crouse.

The Internet as Playground and Factory on Vimeo

RESPONSE: Paolo Carpignano
The response is offered by Paolo Carpignano, Associate Professor of Sociology and Media Studies at The New School and coordinator of the Masters/Ph.D. program in the Sociology of Media. A writer, consultant and producer for production companies in the United States, Brazil, and Italy, Carpignano has published articles on sociology, social history and media theory. He is the co-author of Crisis and Workers’ Organization and The Formation of the Mass Worker in the USA, and the author of the online project Televisuality. He is currently working on a book on the relationship between work and media.

Posted on November 11, 2009

In collaboration with Performa09, the Vera List Center and Parsons The New School for Design present the American premiere of Museum Futures: Distributed, Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska’s new film on the power of cultural institutions. Set in 2058, the film offers a provocative vision of a hyper-globalized art world featuring the future director of the future Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden, which commissioned the piece on occasion of its 50th anniversary in 2008.

Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska have been collaborating since 1995. They have worked with museums, banks, galleries, archives, auction houses, schools, and department stores. They have investigated the smuggling of goods across the Polish-Ukrainian border, documented the lost property recovered in the London transport system in a single day, and impersonated a famous art dealer. Their different projects have consistently engaged with the relationship between art and institutions coupled with other domains such as politics, society and economics.

After the 30 minute-screening, the respondents Jamer Hunt and Christiane Paul offer an analysis of the film from their respective fields, in a joint conversation with Marysia Lewandowska.

Presented by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics in collaboration with Performa09 and Parsons’ Streaming Culture / Art & Politics series, and on occasion of the Vera List Center’s 2009-2010 program theme “Speculating on Change.”

Posted on October 26, 2009

In this re-visitation of John Cage’s 1961 sound work WHERE ARE WE GOING? AND WHAT ARE WE DOING?, sounds of The New School, sampled from recordings collected across campus, are re-configured through processes involving various methods of chance and randomization. Cage was first asked to respond to the questions in the title when he addressed art students at the evening school of Pratt Institute. He has also described the resulting piece as emerging from conversations with friends about the mutually influential relationship between art, science and nature.

Echoing the structural elements of Cage’s original piece, this response to the questions “where are we going and what are we doing? ” draws on site recordings made during sound walks through The New School. These recordings are superimposed on each other using chance procedures and amplified as a two-channel composition onto the street around The New School’s main building.  The live ambient sounds function as the performer does in Cage’s work. While drawing attention to ongoing shifts in time they also encourage attention to and reflection on the conditions that produce those shifts–conditions that may themselves, be shifted.

When no events are taking place in the gallery and Parts & Labor lies inactive and mute, these recordings will emanate  from the vicinity of the truck, evocative of the institution and the activities around it.

Presented as part of the week-long exhibition and event series, “By Any Name: Institutional Memory at The New School.”

Posted on October 7, 2009

The Vera List Center is pleased to host a number of web-based artist projects as a prelude to The Internet as Playground and Factory, a conference organized by Eugene Lang faculty member Trebor Scholz that will take place at Eugene Lang College (The New School), from November 12 to 14, 2009 (www.digitallabor.org).

Burak Arikan, Meta-Markets (2007)

Ursula Endlicher, Website Impersonations: The Ten Most Visited #8 – www.facebook.com (2009)

Scott Kildall and Victoria Scott, No Matter (2008)

Aaron Koblin, The Sheep Market (2006)

Stephanie Rothenberg and Jeff Crouse, Invisible Threads/Double Happiness Jeans (2008)

Posted on September 23, 2009

Drawing from critical perspectives on labor, social media, political theory, this panel discussion addresses the nature of the work of Internet users and networked workers, focusing on the relationship between invisible labor, play, exploitation, pleasure, and the production of value. What constitutes work in the digital era? What are some alternatives to the seamless corporate expropriation of value from millions of net users? Is it possible to acknowledge the moments of ruthless exploitation while not eradicating optimism, inspiration, and the many instances of individual financial and political empowerment?

As annotations to the panel, several web-based projects by artists including Burak Arikan, Jeff Crouse, Ursula Endlicher, Scott Kildall, Aaron Koblin, Stephanie Rothenberg and Victoria Scott will be installed in the same lecture hall from 5:30 p.m. onwards through the evening.

This event is presented as a prelude to “The Internet as Playground and Factory,” a conference organized by Eugene Lang faculty member Trebor Scholz that will take place at Eugene Lang College (The New School), from November 12 to 14, 2009 (www.digitallabor.org). The conference will address the massive transformations in economy, labor, and life related to digital media and confront the urgent need to interrogate what constitutes labor and value in the digital economy.

Presented on occasion of the Vera List Center’s 2009/2010 program theme “Speculating on Change.”

Posted on September 20, 2009

For the next few months, Switchboard features an annotated bibliography in development, related to the center’s theme for 2009-1010, Speculating on Change. The project is initiated by 2009-2010 fellow Robert Sember, a member of the sound art collective Ultra-red, and is part of their multi-year initiative, School of Echoes, an examination of procedures of collective investigation and social change.

The bibliography assembles a selection of “classic” texts as well as lesser known works that address philosophical, theoretical and ideological conceptions of change, with particular emphasis given to political and social change and shifting approaches to art and cultural production. The bibliography aims to be generous and wide-ranging rather than comprehensive or canonical, and includes a series of brief annotations written by Sember.

Check back monthly for new annotations and other updates. Recommendations for additions are welcome and can be forwarded to the Vera List Center.

Launch School of Echoes.

Posted on September 20, 2009

This project is forthcoming.

More information on Jaume Ferrete.

Posted on September 20, 2009

The Shape of Change project is a navigable archive of American and Iraqi visions of change. Consisting of two projects, it investigates how U.S. and Iraqi citizens perceive and represent personal and political change. The first is an online archive that tracks citizens desire for political change as the two countries attempt to extricate from one another politically, to be used as the basis for art and discussion. The second project is a smaller more personal work, documenting an infant’s early development as it learns to walk and speak, and thus establish itself as an independent social subject.

The two projects serve as counterpoint to one another to create a portrait of the ephemeral nature of change, independence and identity formation.

View the project online at www.shapeofchange.com.

Melanie Crean is an Assistant Professor of Media Design at Parsons and teaches classes in experimental time-based work, mobile media and gaming. The former Director of Production at Eyebeam, she also designed special effects at MTV Digital Television Lab and produced documentaries in Nepal, on subjects that include women trafficking and the spread of HIV along trucking routes. Crean has received commissions from Art in General, Bronx Arts Council, Harvestworks, NYFA, NYSCA, Rhizome & Creative Time.

More information on Crean’s work can be found at www.melaniecrean.com.

Posted on September 20, 2009