Saturday April 19, 2008

NFO XPO OPENING

1pm @ Viaduct Theater • 3111 N. Western (link)
Hours: 1pm to 3am • $8 ($10 for 2-day pass)
(entry fee covers all programming and daily bar-bq!)

The NFO XPO (pronounced “info expo”) brings art groups, community organizations and artists together to exchange information and ideas. We view it as a trade show for experimental art, emerging spaces, and radical exchange. It’s our version of what an art fair should be and it’s a big part of the festival and the Dark Matter that is Version. Come see emerging artists’ visual works, and participate in artist-run spaces and projects. Learn how to XYZ. Watch some great new videos, meet future historians of the counter public sphere, and party with us like its 2099. View the NFO Directory for a list of participants.

Groups, projects, people and spaces representing this year are:
Space 1026 (philly), Harold Arts, Green Lantern, Trendbeheer (NL), Jim Duignan, Polvo, Secret Order of the Lamprey, Suburban, Earthman (Texas), Stop Trying So Hard (NY), Manifestation Gestation Station by Team Lump (North Carolina), Nato Thompson, The Plaines Project, Corpus Corpus, Reuben Kincaid, Country Club Gallery, Incubate, Knock Knock Gallery, The Gay Utopia, National Lawyers Guild, Gregory Sholette, Neighborhood Watch (FL), Center for Tactical Magic, Jack Bratitch, The Finch Gallery, Dill Pickle Food Co-op, Dungeon Magesty, Mantra Trailer, Art Shanty (MNPLS), Three Walls, Plush Gallery/ Randall Garret (TX), Daniel Demchuck, Kristen Cox, Der Weiße Salon (Berlin), Requiem, Nsumi Collective (NY) The Think Tank that is yet to be Named, People Project, Platypus Review, Project Focus, Wheat Paste Collage (NY), Get Knifed, and many others. Please view NFO XPO Program Page for more details.

NFO XPO Fair and installations will be located in the main theater room. It opens at 1pm and will close around 9pm.

Talks, Screenings, and live music happen simultaneously to the Fair in the Studio room until 3am.

Program Details:

1pm NFO XPO opens:: Free University programs start

1:30pm 10 Chairs. 1 Baseball Field. Part workshop. Part conversation with Kristen Cox and Salem Collo-Julin
Kristen Cox and Salem Collo-Julin, both local cultural producers and class
investigator, conversationalists, will lead a fun exercise - part interactive workshop, part conversation - designed to spur discussion about class.

We are indeed living in very dark days, the Second Gilded Age in fact, a time of extreme economic inequality. Using the map of a baseball field to talk about class stratification, and ten chairs to personify who has benefited and who has not over the past thirty years, we'll segue into a larger discussion about privilege, inequality, our activism and cultural work - how they interact with each other and what we can do about
it.

3:00pm Making Darkness Visible: The Politics of Popular Occulture and Secret Agency with Jack Bratich
The indigenous Tibetan tradition known as Bon contains a rite of passage known as the Dark Retreat. A sensory deprivation technique, the Dark Retreat involves solitary living in a pitch-black cave for weeks on end. It is a time of transformation, a rebooting of the self through contact with thought-forms, ancient and emergent. Could our culture be said to be undergoing such a process, collectively and unconsciously? This presentation examines the recent popularization of the occult and secrecy, or popular occulture, in order to think about political strategies. Scientific bestsellers include titles like The Invisible Century and Shadows. Professional journalism regularly displays the art of leaking and disinformation. Cable documentaries on secret societies and pirates work in tandem with their fictional counterparts. Kid culture narrativizing ninjas and wizard schools mix with adult fare glamorizing spies (especially their recruitment). The swarming of stage magic into reality TV and everyday spaces (e.g. Phenomenon, Mindfreak, and Mind Control with Darren Brown) brings the ancient arts of deception and legerdemain close to home. Finally, a video and book simply titled The Secret spreads like wildfire in self-transformation and therapeutic circles. This popularization cannot simply be equated with the exposure of things hidden.

4:30pm Keynote presentation about Dark Matter by Gregory Sholette

6:00 pm Virtual Jihadi: Why did I cast myself as a suicide bomber in a video
game? with Wafaa Bilal
In the widely marketed video game “Quest for Saddam,” players fight stereotypical Iraqi foes and try to kill Saddam.

Al Qaeda did its own take, creating an online video game using the structure of Quest for Saddam but adding a new “skin” to turn the game into a hunt for Bush: “The Night of Bush Capturing.”

Now Iraqi-born artist Wafaa Bilal has hacked the Al Qaeda version of the game to put his own more nuanced spin on this epic conflict.

In “The Night of Bush Capturing: A Virtual Jihadi,” to be unveiled at RPI on March 5, Bilal casts himself as a suicide-bomber in the game. After learning of the real-life death of his brother in the war, he is recruited by Al Qaeda to join the hunt for Bush.
This work is meant to bring attention to the vulnerability of Iraqi civilians to the travesties of the current war and racist generalizations and stereotypes as exhibited in games such as Quest for Saddam; along with vulnerability to recruitment by violent groups like Al Qaeda because of the U.S.’s failed strategy in securing Iraq.

The work also aims to shed light on groups that traffic in crass and hateful stereotypes of Arab culture with games like Quest for Saddam and other media.

Wafaa will talk about the recent censorship of his work at the RPI Campus in Troy, NY last March.

6:30 pm Dinner Break! Featuring our annual Korean Polish bar-b-q (tofurkey kilbassa also represented!) and! special Texan mesquite bar-bq-ing with the Earthman (included with admisiion)

7:30 Underground Multiplex
Video screenings of works by Arturo Cubacub and Sarah Weis, Telefantasy Studios and Version shorts.

Featuring:
World Premier of THE MULTINAUTS
From the creators of Dungeon Majesty, Telefantasy Studios presents, THE MULTINAUTS an all new adventure saga, set in an pangalactic post nuke multiverse.

Episode One: Three heroes from different time periods are picked up by a holographic spaceship and sent on a mission to rescue Falco Quasar, a colony pilot, when they are attacked by a mega corporation and it’s mutant empire.

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Greater Than Less Than: Level 2
Greater Than Less Than: Level 2 is a rhythmic and glittery master/slave story about international economics. The two main characters personify The Dollar and The Euro in this heavily symbolic experimental piece (written by and starring Sarah Weis and Kathryn Korosi). Director Arturo Cubacub shot the movie with a recently self-invented camera and infused the final picture with vivid digital color.

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Art ≠ Terrorism
Hudson Mohawk Indymedia has produced a definitive account of the whirlwind of events surrounding Wafaa Bilal's controversial art exhibit, "Virtual Jihadi."

Art ≠ Terrorism goes beyond the sound bites to find out what happened when an Iraqi artist came to Troy, NY only to be censored--not once, but twice.

First, Wafaa Bilal was chased off campus after his artwork was mis-characterized as terrorist propaganda by undergraduate bloggers.

When the exhibition was given refuge by The Sanctuary for Independent Media, the city government responded by shutting down the space.

This short documentary by the award-winning producers of "Independent Media in a Time of War" asks: what was so troubling about this artist's message that University and City officials decided that we would all be better off not hearing it?

10pm UPRISING #4 with Nicole Garneau and you.
UPRISING #4 is the fourth in a series of monthly, site-specific performance works broadly exploring the practice of revolution, presented by Links Hall.

UPRISING #4 will be an audience-participation performance that attempts to maximize the creative and world-transforming energy of the people participating in Version>08.

2008 is 40 years since 1968, a year of worldwide revolutionary activity. In 2008, activists, historians, and cultural workers are contemplating the meanings and implications of this 40-year anniversary. Many comparisons are being made between 1968 and 2008.

Rather than attempting to re-create 1968, UPRISING performances create public demonstrations of the possibilities for a more loving, just and humane present and future. They are attempts at making the world in which we want to live, and then inviting people directly and immediately inside it. Performances are marked consistently by a commitment to flexible structure, ambitious intentions, and sense of humor.

We are currently seeking volunteer performers/participants for UPRISING #4! If you want to be a part of the action, Email Nicole. nicolegarneau13 [at] sbcglobal.net. More info at www.nicolegarneau.com.

10:20pm Live music:

The C*nts
The legendary bridgeport punk band have been playing since the late 70s > firts show in several years

Joe Kisser
Visiting Dutch artist, Joe Kisser, makes noise with children's toys and always has a good story to go with it. Noise with a smile.

Jason Wallace Triefenbach presents NINETEEN INCH NAILS
Midget Hitler VS Dance Jihad: a psycho-sensual invocation and distribution of dark energies. DIZZY MUTAGEN returns to the windy city for ONE NITE ONLY. Prog Punk meltdown. Break your honey shaker.

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