LA DIABLITA

WORKSHOP - May 20-22, 2019

La Diablita (devil robot from the Andes) is an animatronics puppet with the ability to interact with people and its surroundings through artificial vision, and natural language processing. It is part of a VR and Immersive installation, PRISON X, supported by Sundance Talent Forum, Tribeca and now, Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab, with the support of JustFilms at Ford Foundation.

The workshop will be a two days encounter with participants from all fields at the Co-Creation Studio to help develop the features of La Diablita.

The workshop will be a two days encounter with participants from all fields at the Co-Creation Studio to help develop the features of La Diablita.

 

Lara Baladi

21st May

Artist talk Baladi will present a selection of artworks that stemmed from the Vox Populi archive she gathered since the 2011 Egyptian uprisings and other social global movements.

Artistic Advisor for the development of the project

 
 

PERSONAL ROBOTICS GROUP

The Personal Robots Group focuses on developing the principles, techniques, and technologies for personal robots. Dr. Cynthia Breazeal and her students conduct research that advances the state-of-the-art in socially intelligent robot partners that interact with humans to promote social and intellectual benefits, work alongside with humans as peers, learn from people as apprentices, and foster more engaging interaction between people. More recent work investigates the impact of long-term, personalized Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) applied to quality of life, health, creativity, communication, and educational goals. The ability of these robot systems to naturally interact, learn from, and effectively cooperate with people has been evaluated in numerous human subjects experiments, both inside the lab and in real-world environments.

 

Open Documentary Lab

MIT Campus, Weisner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge, MA 02142

 

!!!Act [No.22] ART Section - Paquete Semanal - Cuba Biennial, 2019

Today is the opening day of the Havana (Cuba) Biennial of Contemporary Art. “ABC: A Lesson in History”, the latest project which stems from the Vox Populi archive, is part of this event and can be found in the !!!A R T Section of the ‘ Paquete Semanal.’

The Weekly Package (Paquete Semanal) is an informal medium for the circulation of information, which specializes in entertainment content. With 1 TB of capacity, the WP has national distribution through a weekly subscription service. This initiative has no institutional support; behind the compilation and circulation of this database, there is a widespread network based on a hand-to-hand distribution system. The cost of the Weekly Package is approximately 2 dollars. 

!!!A R T Section reproduces the Weekly Package concept; both are based in a folder/directory structure to be consumed while offline. !!!A R T Section follows the Weekly Package rules, avoiding the use of pornography or political materials. However, because of its artistic nature, !!!A R T Section pushes the limits of what can be understood as both pornography and political content. Inside !!!A R T Section takes place a circulation of art news, current and upcoming gallery openings, books, documentaries and open calls for artists.

!!!A R T Section includes a virtual gallery, the F O L D E R =gallery=, which is designed as a space for artworks specifically created to be displayed in the context of the Weekly Package. To make this possible, artist Nestor Siré, in collaboration with the guest artists, also becomes the curator of these works. Since 2015, artists, writers, designers, filmmakers, and curators, both Cuban and foreign, had participated in the en F O L D E R =gallery=. These guests have taken into account for the creation of their works, not just the Weekly Package particularities, but also its national reach, and the devices that these audiences use to consume the artworks –mostly in computers or television sets with USB ports.

In the context of the Havana Biennial, !!!A R T Section will launch a daily work through its F O L D E R =gallery=. As a whole, these works will consist of a collective exhibition under the title “!!!Act [No.22]” (or in English “The Update”).

Taking advantage of the recent evolution of the Weekly Package into a daily updated database, we will make the artworks available in the street stands which are also selling spots for the Weekly Package. However, the artworks will also be available through the regular weekly subscription. For practical reasons, and only for this month, !!!A R T Section will be reduced to 1 GB.

The works distributed in The Weekly Package will fall into the public domain and at the same time, reach approximately ten million people throughout the country.

Facebook - Instagram: @seccion_arte

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ARCHIVES & ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

At the end of the Fall 2018 semester, I took part in a Microsoft , Met Museum and MIT hackathon in Cambridge, MA. The objective was to apply AI to the open source archives of the Met’s collection and invite the public to actively engage with the museum’s collection.

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“A unique event took place at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Museum curators, engineers, designers, and researchers gathered in The Met’s iconic Great Hall to explore and share new visions about how artificial intelligence (AI) might drive stronger connection between people and art. A highlight from the festivities was the “reveal” of a series of artificial intelligence prototypes and design concepts, developed in collaboration across three institutions: The Met, Microsoft, and MIT.”

Chuck Leddy, Office of Open Learning, MIT Daily News, Feb 5th 2019.

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MIT Daily News, On Campus and Around the World, February 5th 2019.

DOCUMENT JOURNAL X PRADA

At Art Basel in Miami Beach, Document Journal hosted two panels which explored different perspectives from around the globe to reveal the inner workings of society and technology.

The Future of Offline Media and Online Identities

Miami Beach may be known for countless art fairs like Art Basel in Miami Beach, NADA, Design Miami, and Untitled, and the infinite amount of parties each night that can take you well into the next morning. But, what may be less discussed, are the talks that seek to enlighten, educate, and provoke. For this year’s Art Basel, Document Journal curated a series of talks for Prada Mode, its three-day takeover of The Freehand Miami Beach, that included poolside lounging, drinks, a restaurant, and parties each night. The discussions showed different perspectives from around the globe to reveal the inner workings of society and technology.

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On December 5, Document hosted the first talk, “Digital Exhaust: The Art of Data and Surveillance,” which probed the limits of human communication and its relation to human identity. Art in America associate editor Brian Droitcour moderated the discussion, which featured artists Lara Baladi, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, and Franco Mattes. by Ann Binlot

READ MORE 

REVOLUTIONIZE!

‘Revolutionize’ opens tonight, November 21st at Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kiev, Ukraine. It is an international research and exhibition project that brings together art museum and cultural institutions from Ukraine and the Netherlands. 36 contemporary artists and art groups from 15 countries, through the language of installation, painting, multimedia, video and photo, speak about revolutions as a social phenomenon. The exhibition focuses a personal, critical, and retrospective view the recent Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity.

Among the participants are Francis Alÿs (BE), Lara Baladi (EG), James Beckett (ZA), Harun Farocki (CZ), Lev Manovich (RU), Olaf Nicolai (GE), Wolfgang Tillmans (GE), the Planning for Protest, Mystetskyi Barbican, Strike Poster, Aftermath VR: Euromaidan and more.

READ MORE

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ETHICS & ARCHIVING THE WEB

This National Forum on Ethics and archiving the Web (#eaw18) will take place at the New Museum in New York City and will consider how web archives can better serve their publics and historical records. It will run from march 22 to 24th 2018 and will be open to the public.

The dramatic rise in the public’s use of the web and social media to document events presents tremendous opportunities to transform the practice of social memory.

Web archives can serve as witness to crimes, corruption, and abuse; they are powerful advocacy tools; they support community memory around moments of political change, cultural expression, or tragedy. At the same time, they can cause harm and facilitate surveillance and oppression.

As new kinds of archives emerge, there is a pressing need for dialogue about the ethical risks and opportunities that they present to both those documenting and those documented. This conversation becomes particularly important as new tools, such as Rhizome’s Webrecorder software, are developed to meet the changing needs of the web archiving field.

The National Forum on Ethics and Archiving the Web (#eaw18) will bring together activists, librarians, journalists, archivists, scholars, developers, and designers to talk about how to create richer, non-oppressive web archives—archives that will better serve their publics and the historical record.

#WHATIF

Kunsthal Charlottenborg, #WhatIf is part of the CPH Dox festival and runs from 16th of March until May 21st 2018

[...] Inspired by the impact that social and political experimental projects have had on society, particularly in the 1960s-70s, #whatif presents a number of contemporary artists who attempt to rethink and change current political and social structures through their practice. [...]

Curator Irene Campolmi invited a number of contemporary artists selecting artistic projects that, by unfolding this topic with critical insight, answer to the hypothetical question ‘what if’ within a range of problematic current political and social issues.

Featured artists
The exhibition presents sculpture, installations and films by Larry Achiampong, Lara Baladi, Forensic Architecture, CATPC & Renzo Martens, Naeem Mohaiemen, Marcus Lindeen and Tomás Saraceno [...]

 

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AFFECT ME. SOCIAL MEDIA IN ART.

Exhibition runs from November 2017 to March 2018

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KAI 10 / Arthena Foundation, Dusseldorf, Germany

Artists participating: Lara Baladi, Irene Chabr, Forensic Architecture, Lynn Horseman Leeson, Thomas Hirschorn, Randa Maroufi, Rabih Mroué, Thomas Ruff, D.H.Saur. 

Review of the exhibition 'Affect Me', KAI 10, Arthena Foundation, Dusseldorf, Germany, in the daily newspaper 'Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung' by Georg Imdahl, January 2018

Review of the exhibition 'Affect Me', KAI 10, Arthena Foundation, Dusseldorf, Germany, in the daily newspaper 'Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung' by Georg Imdahl, January 2018

THE SCREEN MEDIA READER

A chapter by artist and MIT ACT lecturer Lara Baladi in The Screen Media Reader: Culture, Theory, Practice, edited by Stephen Monteiro (Bloomsbury, 2017).

Excerpt: [In recent years], as cameras made their way into mobile phones (smart or not), webcams were embedded in laptop and desktop screens and people uploaded millions of images to social media sites, the global democratization of photography took on a new dimension. With the emergence of social media, mass media lost even more ground on the distribution of information. Social media, in which the user could participate in the process of selecting and distributing information and make images instantaneously available worldwide, overshadowed traditional visual media. It competed with mainstream media, thus further sharing the power by shifting the hands holding it. “The power of letters and the power of pictures distribute themselves and evaporate into the social media such that it becomes possible for everyone to act instead of simply being represented,” observed the influential media artist and theorist Peter Weibel, in a recent article, ‘Power to the People: Images by the People.’”

Protesters during a speech in Tahrir Square, April 8, 2011. Photo by Mosa’ab Elshamy. © Mosa’ab Elshamy. Shared courtesy of Lara Baladi.

Protesters during a speech in Tahrir Square, April 8, 2011. Photo by Mosa’ab Elshamy. © Mosa’ab Elshamy. Shared courtesy of Lara Baladi.

VOX POPULI AND THE SYRIAN ARCHIVE DOCUMENTING REVOLUTION AND CONFLICT IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Public Debate

Eye Film Museum

Saturday, January 21, 12.00 – 17.00

The program at Eye explores the complicated relationship between the activist moment, increasingly mediated by the participants in these events themselves and increasingly in near real-time, and the static character of the archive and its implicit ‘suspension of time’. We center for this on two ambitious projects under development:  Vox Populi – Archiving a Revolution in the Digital Age, of artist Lara Baladi, and The Syrian Archive, an initiative launched by a collective of human rights activists dedicated to preserving open source documentation relating to human rights violations and other crimes committed by all sides during the conflict in Syria.

Speakers: Lara Baladi (Vox Populi), Hadi Al Khatib & Jeff Deutch (The Syrian Archive), Robert Ochshorn, and guests. Moderated by Annet Dekker & Eric Kluitenberg

This programme is part of a larger project organised by the Tactical Media Files and consists of a travelling exhibition As If. The Media Artist as Trickster / How Much of this is Fiction, a closed workshop ‘Access and Accessibility’ in collaboration with the University of Amsterdam (Archival Studies) and a conference The Society of Post Control.

 

ARCHIVING A REVOLUTION IN THE DIGITAL AGE, ARCHIVING AS AN ACT OF RESISTANCE

Published alongside the essay 'Archiving a Revolution in the Digital Age, Archiving as an Act of Resistance', on Ibraaz platform 010_03, Tahrir Archives, is an index of online archival projects, essentially English websites, on the 2011 Egyptian revolution.

Far from being exhaustive, this info graph is one step towards building an interactive timeline of data on the 2011 Egyptian Revolution.

TRANSMEDIALE / ART & DIGITAL CULTURE

Berlin, february 2016

FIVE YEARS AFTER

Moderated by Oliver Schultz, with Esrra'a Al Shafei, Heba Y.Amin, Lara Baladi, Özge Celiskasian and Alper Sen

“In case you hadn’t noticed, these days a lot of the world is in some form of rebellion, insurrection, or protest,” wrote Rebecca Solnit in 2012, a year after a barrage of movements symbolically grouped around the Arab Spring erupted. These “post-2011” events challenged the sometimes simplistic narratives of the “post-911” world. What linked the events in this cycle of struggles was not organizational coherence but rather a shared global sentiment mediated by a new form of global sensorium. Social energies headed “back to the streets,” bringing up questions about the consequences of physical exposure, organization, strategy, fragmentation, and violence. New media became double-edged weapons, used for and against emancipation. While after 2011 there were some attempts to decipher these “signs from the future,” as Žižek has put it, now in 2015 it seems that the “global moment” has ended. It’s time for a reflective turn, looking into dim corners and listening to the subterranean echoes of what’s happened. And looking ahead.

 

TACTICAL MEDIA AND THE ARCHIVE

Moderated by David Garcia and Eric Kluitenberg with bak.ma, Lara Baladi and Robert M.Ochshorn

Tactical media were identified in the 1990s as a distinct cluster of critical practices at the intersection of art, political activism, and technological experimentation. Tactical media are participatory forms of politicized self-mediation that give voice to the marginalized and excluded. There has always been a deeply troubling, uneasy and strenuous relationship between tactical media and archives. Archives, which are traditionally conceived as capturing living moments and turn them into historical events, as such would constitute the very opposite of tactical media’s dynamic nature. As a result of their resistance to archiving, the proponents of tactical media have succumbed to a severe form of memory loss, making critical reflection difficult. This is a high price to pay. This workshop will explore how documentation and memorialization can persist and be re-conceptualized in the wake of this intense collision.

AFFECT SPACE

WITNESSING THE MOVEMENT(S) OF THE SQUARES

by Erik Kluitenberg, moderator/panelist at Transmediale Berlin.

Eric Kluitenberg analyses the complicated logic of “Affect Space”, as he calls the public gatherings and urban spectacles that have been taking place over the past few years in cities around the world, from Zuccotti Park in NYC to Tahrir Square in Cairo, Gezi Park in Istanbul to the streets of Hong Kong. Kluitenberg attempts to figure out how the massive presence of self-produced media forms, the context of (occupied) urban public spaces, and the deep permeation of affective intensity relate to each other and how together they are able to produce such baffling events.