Research Journal of Armin Medosch

Since more than 10 years the Croatian media artist Darko Fritz has been researching the archives of the Museum for Contemporary Arts Zagreb to gather material about the New Tendencies series of exhibitions and events in Zagreb, Ex-Yugoslavia, now Croatia, from 1961 to 1973 and the Bit International journal published by that same art movement. An exhibition in 2007 at Neue Galerie Graz and now at ZKM Karlsruhe shows the works of this important but almost lost art movement, were it not for the effort of Darko Fritz. For the Graz exhibition a little catalogue came out with contributions by Peter Weibel, Jesa Denegri and Margit Rosen. I have data mined those articles and present this material in the manner of a literature review for other researchers to study it and draw their own conclusions. All translations from German are my translations.

Thanks to Doll Yoko for making us aware of Caliban and the Witch - Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici. In Caliban and the Witch, Silvia Federici looks at the transition from feudalism to capitalism from the point of view of 'women, the body and primitive accumulation'. Her key thesis is that the witch hunts of the 16th and 17th century were instrumental to establishing a new capitalist order through 'the development of a 'new sexual division of labour subjugating women's labour and women's reproductive function to the reproduction of the workforce.' Yet by telling the story also from Caliban's point of view, symbol of the 'trans-Atlantic' proleterian, Federici achieves what she claims: to transcend the dichotomy between "gender" and "class". This book is also a brilliant description of the process of primitive accumulation, in particular the enclosures of the common land starting at the end of the middle age and the various forms of resistance to that by renegade women and the 'motley crowd' of the working classes.

In his essay All problems of Notation Will be Solved by the Masses, Simon Yuill claims that the emergent practice of livecoding 'most directly embodies the key principles of FLOSS production into the creation and experience of the work itself.' Unfortunately this claim is supportet by an argumentation which is elitist, draws on the criterium of virtuosity and thereby stands in stark contrast to the culture of particpation that FLOSS has engendered. While his central argument is not supported, the piece offers enough food for thought to be considered interesting reading.

Interesting piece about creative city policy in Amsterdam in Variant by Merijn Oudenampsen
http://www.variant.randomstate.org/31texts/issue31.html#L6

The following quotes are from "Back to the Future of the Creative City
An Archaeological Approach to Amsterdam’s Creative Redevelopment" by Merijn Oudenampsen in Variant, issue 31, Spring 2008

The exhibition "Waves" is part of a long term research project into analogue and electromagnetic waves. "Waves" uses the process of making an exhibition as a form of practice based research. This research journal entry starts with a new abstract regarding Waves related research, and then introduces the two exhibitions in Riga 2006 and Dortmund 2008. This should be shortly followed by a new summary of the research project. There is also a new waves image gallery and these efforts are all combined by the fact that they use the second Waves exhibition for taking stock of what came from this research so far.

The exhibition Waves has been opened on Friday 9th of May. Some first press coverage from:

Artdaily.org - The First Art Newspaper on the Net