Artist Talk, Catherine D’Ignazio (a.k.a. Kanarinka)

Artist Talk, Catherine D’Ignazio (a.k.a. Kanarinka)

Mapping impulses, locative media projects and psychogeographic investigations of place and community have proliferated over the past decade.

There is a rich, interdisciplinary field of practice and new strategies.   Tactics and tools are being invented all the time. However, there is also the need for critical evaluation and discussion of the relevance and impact of these cultural projects. Factors of race and class are often overlooked. Connections to the material (often military and corporate) circumstances of the development of technologies deployed in these projects are often swept aside. Through the increasing corporatization and militarization of participation and play (Web 2.0, Joint Red Flag military war game), it is clear that more participation and play does not mean more democracy and freedom. On the contrary, participation and play are also deployed as mechanisms of social control.

Catherine D’Ignazio a.k.a. kanarinka discussed several collaborative projects from her practice, showed other examples of contemporary psychogeographic investigations and then opened the forum for others to do the same.

THREE QUESTIONS DISCUSSED
1) Is locative media/psychogeography work just entertainment for white, middle-class, gadget-oriented consumers?
2) What is at stake in the corporatization and militarization of “play” and “participation”?
3) What kind of agency do these projects have? i.e. What do they really do?

ASKED TO BRING
Failures & successes. Bring a psychogeography/locative media project to share with us, including your commentary about what kind of agency it produces, how it addresses its audience, and so on. Both failures and successes — and the numerous projects that have both — are useful.

LATER
They proceeded to the opening for the Conflux Festival at Supreme Trading Post to continue the conversation.

This event was held in conjunction with CONFLUX, September 14–17, 2006. The annual NYC festival for contemporary psychogeography where international artists, technologists, urban adventurers and the public put investigations of everyday city life into practice on the streets.R

Related Links – iKatun