by: Ricardo Domínguez
place: Medialab-Prado. Plaza de las Letras, C/ Alameda, 15 · Madrid

Lecture by Ricardo Domínguez within the frame of the Seminario Interactivos'09 Garage Science, an event celebrated at Medialab-Prado January 28 and 29, 2009

By 2015 the first cheap rapid prototyping fabricator hardware flows into the streets and quickly creates global networks of nano_Garage(s) that make up the first layer of future matter hacking tactics. All the usual suspects start to push towards the development of an Open_matter(s) Group that set the stage for the first true nano_fab engine technologies complete with uncooked nano_blocks that become available. While the dream of A.I and the singularity do not happen with the wide area distribution of nano_fab engines - the nano_Garage(s) around the world (especially in the southern cone) taking rapid advantage of adding this new method of lobal and horizontal production to shift away from the locked down economies of past. It also allows the emerges of a *science of the oppressed* as a strategic mapping of the tactical advances being side_loaded by the nano_Garage(s) movement(s).

Becoming Dragon was recently presented at Supersonic 2009 in Los Angeles and at the "Engineering Reality of Virtual Reality" conference in San Jose. If you're in Egypt, come to this upcoming screening...

Gender and Performativity — A Curated Film Program by Lasse Lau

January 30, 2009; 7:00 - 10:00 pm Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), 10 Hussein Hassab Street, Flat 6, Azarita, Egypt.

Gender in this film series curated by Lasse Lau is about the notion of the stylized and performed. What Jacques Lacan described as the mirror stage (le stade du miroir), the place where we are informed by the norm of the mirror, which becomes the core identification of the subject ontology. A body constantly changes character by moving between private and public, physical and virtual, performed and real. The subject relates to this fragmentation and disharmony through the reflection of the mirror, relating to what we are wearing; how we act and what we desire. The essential question then becomes - who am I in this world?

This Show is my Business by Mahmoud Khaled (EG): A film based on a meeting with Ozgen, a London based Turkish performer who has performed, taught, choreographed and directed for the last 14 years. His reputation as a male belly dancer and teacher has taken him across Europe. / English, Duration 16 min, 2008 /

From Shadow to Dust by Lasse Lau (DK): What would happen if a performer emasculated himself in front of an audience? The artists answer is depicted in this short spectacular take on one of the backbone ideas of psychoanalysis / Duration 1 min, 1998, No dialogue /

Solveig by Lars Erik Frank (DK) & Gitte Villesen (DK): Solveig, formerly known as Niels, used to live entirely as a macho man. Once in a while, mostly at night, Niels dressed up as a woman and sometimes went out for short walks in his neighborhood. Today Solveig struggles with the politics of being a woman. / Danish with English subtitles. Duration 20 min + 10 min, video installation, 2002 /

Gender Geography Tijuana by Felipe Zuniga (Mex): The body image - present and absent - in the social space where the emergence of elusive identities troubles and plays with traditional bionomic gender labels. The content of the interviews with Pan, Cris and Abby in juxtaposition with the visual documentation echoes the mobility of the region Tijuana-San Diego where even traditional or stereotypical rolls and values are put into question due to the cultural friction of bodies and stories coming back and forward, gaining and losing, trading signifiers in each crossing. / Spanish with English subtitles. Duration 12 min, 2007 /

Becoming Dragon by Micha Cardenas (US): Becoming Dragon questions the one-year requirement of ‘Real Life Experience’ that transgender people must fulfill in order to receive Gender Confirmation Surgery, and asks if this could be replaced by a one year period in the virtual environment of ‘Second Life’. For the performance, Micha Cardenas lived for 365 hours immersed in Second Life with a head mounted display, so that all she saw was Second Life and with a motion capture system to map her movements into Second Life. / English, Duration 5.5 minutes, 2009 /

Two Movies by Jessie by Gitte Villesen (DK): In this film Jessie tells of two different ideas she has for a short movie. One she had for a long time, another that she makes up on request. They both deal with the anger directed at, and the fear of the abnormal within society. They also deal with the strength to fight back and not to give up, no matter what the surroundings might say and do. / Danish with English subtitles, Duration 15 min, 2003 /

Bijli by Jaishri Abichandani (US): Bijli, is an accomplished performer from Pakistan who sought asylum under the grounds of her gender. The screening offers viewers the opportunity to experience an intimate and personal performance of a traditional folk song about love and longing. / Urdu. Duration 2.5 min, 2006 /

Particles of Interest
*particle group*

*an interactive installation of multilingual meditations
on nanotechnology, culture, and property*

Opening Reception: Wednesday, January 14, 5-7pm
Exhibit Dates: January 14 - February 4
CALIFORNIA NanoSystems Institute (CN(S)I) UCLA

As part of the *Scalable Relations* series of networked exhibitions that
present media artworks by faculty of the UC Digital Arts Research Network
(DARnet) across UC campuses from January 9 - March 14, 2009. The
exhibition takes place at the BEALL Center for Art + Technology at UC
Irvine as well as other venues at UCDARnet institutions. Scalable
Relations brings together works that explore digital media's capability of
representing a growing amount of data in constantly evolving relations.
Addressing a range of issues, the projects in Scalable Relations
illustrate the complexities and shifting contexts of today's information
society.

http://www.ucdarnet.org/scalablerelations/venue_ucla.php

*particle group* is a collective consisting of Principal Investigators
Ricardo Dominguez, artist Diane Ludin, interactive sound/installation
artist Nina Waisman, poet/critic Amy Sara Carroll and pd programmer
Marius Schebella, with a number of other collaborators flowing in and out
of the project since 2006. The collective draws inspiration from
sonification, performance, poetry, critical theory, popular culture, and
the hard and social sciences to develop installations that engage with
the politics and poetics of nano-science and its markets. *particle
group* aims to shed light on both the lack of regulation of nanoparticles
in consumer goods and the emergence of the nano-sublime.
The group combines digital technology, investigative research, and
multimedia formats in works that forge subversive relationships with the
twenty-first century's frontiers of nano-science and the para/literary.
*particle group* has exhibited at ISEA 2006; House of World Cultures
(Berlin) and San Diego Museum of Art in 2007; O Futuro (Brazil) and
Gallery@CALIT2 (UCSD) in 2008. The *particle group* is funded by CALIT2
and the UCSD Division of Arts and Humanities.

Project website: http://www.pitmm.net/