The Rhizome Digest merged into the Rhizome News in November 2008. These pages serve as an archive for 6-years worth of discussions and happenings from when the Digest was simply a plain-text, weekly email.

Subject: RHIZOME DIGEST: 2.27.08
From: list@rhizome.org (RHIZOME)
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:23:20 -0500
Reply-to: digest@rhizome.org
Sender: owner-digest@rhizome.org

RHIZOME DIGEST: February 27, 2008

Content:

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1. Rhizomer: European Sound Delta
2. Rhizomer: Elsewhere 2008 Summer Residencies
3. Rhizomer: DEADLINE EXTENDED - Eyebeam Summer 2008 Residency
4. Jennifer: Climate Clock San Jose

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5. Tom Hapgood: Private Property
6. Marc Garrett: Distant

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7. Lauren Cornell: Interview with Nato Thompson

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1.

FROM: Rhizomer
DATE: February 22, 2008
SUBJECT: European Sound Delta

--------------CALL-------------------------------------------------

Sound Art - Call for projects & residencies - summer 2008
--> Deadline 15th of March 2008

EUROPEAN SOUND DELTA is a mobile project on the Danube & Rhine Rivers focusing on radio-art using sounds of European cities. Two teams will be travelling on both rivers this summer, recording sounds, producing live performances and radio broadcasts with local sound-artists. A final exhibition is scheduled in Strasbourg-F by the end of September 2008 as part of http://www.ososphere.org International sound artists are invited to apply with a project meant to be created on one of the trans-European floating labs.
>> keywords : radio, sound art, media art, field recordings

Main Objectives:
--> To give young people the experience of a professional mobile project
--> A documentary artistic research on cultural identities of European cities
--> Built a new european network in the field of sound art
--> Experiment ICT via innovative artistic practices

Participating countries:
--> Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary, Netherlands, Romania, Serbia & Slovakia

Associated curators:
Valerie Vivancos (www.vibrofiles.com) and Joachim Montessuis (www.autopoiese.org)

Participating artists & residents (list not closed) :
Aymeric De Tapol, Tonic Train, Dinahbird, Jopo Stereo, SIC: Hori Cosmin Samoil, Ewen Chardronnet, Alejandra Perez Nunez, Julien Ottavi, Chris Watson, Vincent Epplay, Alejandra & Aeron, Robert Hampson, Kassel Jaeger, AGF, Jorg Piringer, Yannick Dauby, Christian Zanesi, Phil Niblock, Charlemagne Palestine, Jean-Philippe Roux, Gael Segalen, Philip Griffiths, Joachim Montessuis

Full project Description & Application Form : www.sound-delta.eu

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Theatre/Video: Assistant Professor (tenure track to begin August 2008). MFA required, Ph.D. or equivalent professional and academic experience considered. Teaching responsibilities may include, but are not limited to, courses in: acting; voice/diction; on-camera performance; directing; script analysis and script writing; digital video production and editing. Other duties may include directing Theatre/Video productions; collaborating with colleagues on other productions and activities, mentoring students with their creative processes; departmental and institutional support. Qualified applicants must submit letter of interest (include email address if applicable), vita, unofficial transcripts, evidence of teaching effectiveness, recent examples of personal work and at least three letters of reference (to be sent directly by references or confidential placement file) to: Dr. Marilyn D. Hunt, Chair, Department of Communication Studies & Theatre, Missouri Western State University, 4525 Downs Drive, St. Joseph, Missouri 64507. Deadline: December 1, 2007 or until filled. Review of applications will begin immediately.
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2.

FROM: Rhizomer
DATE: February 23, 2008
SUBJECT: Elsewhere 2008 Summer Residencies- Deadline March 7th

Elsewhere Artist Collaborative
2008 residencies for artists, writers, and cultural producers

Elsewhere, set within a former thrift store housing a 58-year collection of American surplus, thrift, and antiques, invites experimental creators to utilize the immense collection of objects to pursue site-specific material, conceptual, and/or technologically-based projects. Elsewhere's building—two storefronts on the ground floor, a 14-room boarding house on the second, and warehouse on the third—provides dynamic architectures for the creation and installation of works. Artists live and work within transforming installations; these interactive environments become platforms for re-conceptualizing the theory and practice of art-making as an ongoing process of exchange in community. Experimenting with museum-as-medium within a store where nothing is for sale, Elsewhere offers an unparalleled framework for art practices, processes, and productions outside the traditional gallery, museum, and residency systems. The complete call for artists, residency brochure (PDF), and application deadlines are available at http://www.elsewhereelsewhere.org/residencies.html. Email George Scheer, Collaborative Director, at residencies AT elsewhereelsewhere.org for an application.

DEADLINES

Summer: June 1st to August 31st (final deadline March 7th)
Fall: September 1st to October 31st (final deadline May 23rd)

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Film/Video/Theatre: Assistant Professor, (tenure-track position to begin August 2008) – dynamic individual to teach courses in progressive integrated video/film and theatre department with emerging interdisciplinary graduate program in applied media arts. Department requires innovative professional to oversee the technical production of video, film, and live production and assist in curricular development of graduate classes. Required: M.F.A. in film, video, multi-media, theatre or closely related field. Must demonstrate evidence of quality teaching/advising and commitment to undergraduate and graduate education. Applicant must have expertise with cinematography, lighting, sound and live theatrical production. Applicant must also have a working knowledge in the Macintosh environment, including the major non-linear applications utilized in post-production. Applicant will teach courses as needed but must be able to teach film, video and live technical production. Qualified applicants must submit a letter of interest including e-mail address; vita; recent examples of personal work; and at least three letters of reference (to be sent directly by references or confidential placement file) to: Dr. M. D. Hunt, Chair, Department of Communication Studies & Theatre, Missouri Western State University, 4525 Downs Drive, Murphy Hall 207, St. Joseph, Missouri 64507. Deadline: December 1, 2007 or until filled. Review of applications will begin immediately. AA/EOE.
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3.

FROM: Rhizomer
DATE: February 26, 2008
SUBJECT: DEADLINE EXTENDED- Eyebeam Summer 2008 Residency

You've got big ideas. You're yearning to join NYC's art and tech elite. You could use a little time and money, not to mention support and inspiration, to create a visionary project. If any of these apply to you, then apply now for Eyebeam's Summer 2008 Residency cycle. Residents are granted a $5,000 stipend and 24/7 access to Eyebeam's Chelsea facility.

Eyebeam residencies support the creative research, production and presentation of initiatives querying art, technology and culture. The residency is a period of concentration and immersion in artistic investigation, daring research or production of visionary, experimental applications and projects. Past initiatives have ranged from moving image, sound and physical computing works to technical prototypes, installations and public interventions.

Link:
http://eyebeam.org/production/onlineapp/join_detail.php?program_id=524739
Deadline: March 8, 2008

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4.

FROM: Jennifer
DATE: February 27. 2008
SUBJECT: Climate Clock San Jose

Climate Clock Global Initiative Call for Ideas

The Climate Clock Global Initiative is seeking ideas from artist-led teams to create a major artwork entitled Climate Clock, which will measure changes in greenhouse gas levels, and be the first in a series of global projects calling attention to climate change. Climate Clock will be an instrument of long-term measurement and will collect data for 100 years. The artwork will be located in downtown San Jose, California, Silicon Valley’s city center, and will be a collaboration between an artist-led team composed of artists, international and Silicon Valley engineers and other creative professionals who are working with climate measurement and data visualization. It is anticipated that the budget for the construction of Climate Clock will be between $5 and $15 million, depending upon the scope of the final proposal.

To view the call, visit http://cadre.sjsu.edu/fuse/strategem.html. For a PDF of the call and the additional prospectus on the Climate Clock Initiative, please visit http://www.sanjoseculture.org/?pid=4500. To apply, go to www.callforentry.org and register a username and password, navigate to "Apply to Calls", and search for "San Jose Climate Clock". It is free to register.

There are no geographic limitations to applicants country of residence/employment.

You are welcome (and encouraged) to post this Call for Ideas to appropriate boards, user groups, websites, blogs and other sites. We would appreciate being notified of or directed to any posting at climateclock AT sanjoseca.gov.

If you have questions please write climateclock AT sanjoseca.gov.

The Climate Clock Initiative is a collaboration between FUSE: cadre/montalvo artist research residency initiative and the City of San Jose Public Art Program in cooperation with ZERO1.

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Organizational memberships with Rhizome

Sign your library, university or organization up for a Rhizome organizational membership! Give your community access to the largest online archives of digital art and new media art-related writing, the opportunity to organize member-curated exhibitions, participate in critical discussion, community boards, and learn about residency, educational and professional possibilities. Rhizome also offers subsidized memberships for qualifying institutions with limited access to the Internet. Please visit http://rhizome.org/info/org.php for more information or contact sales AT rhizome.org

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5.

FROM: Tom Hapgood
DATE: February 27, 2008
SUBJECT: Private Property

This is a gallery exhibition opening reception. The exhibition runs 20 February through 14 March, 2008. Private Property examines ambiguous interpretations of privacy and ownership in modern life. Video, digital media and sculpture are used to create a unique exhibition which will impact the viewer on many levels. Hapgood’s work includes a piece titled “Raw Sewage” in which projection of video footage taken a sewage treatment plant is set to a “porn movie-style” soundtrack, as a statement on the effects of unrestricted access by today’s youth to debasing pornographic imagery. Hapgood’s other works include “Stop Sign Preacher” — an interactive installation that will allow gallery visitors to create their own messages to be projected onto a real STOP sign — and “Stick it to Father,” a commentary on the portrayal of the father (and men in general) on television and in advertising.

“Flyover Territory” by Bethany Springer also utilizes computer-generated images, this time taken from Google Earth, and interviews with Memphis residents of nursing homes and rehabilitation centers. When asked the question: “If you could fly anywhere in Memphis, where would you go and why?” most interviewees chose not be in Memphis. The testimony of one resident, James Mitchell, has been paired with aerial imagery in Springer’s work. “Showcase Showdown” is an installation created from demolition site materials with an overlay of carpet and vinyl animal hides as a commentary on the unseen losses related to urban development.

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6.

FROM: Marc Garrett
DATE: February 21, 2008
SUBJECT: Distant

Distant, a new Net Art work by Marc Garrett.

Distant:
http://www.furtherfield.org/mgarrett/distant/

Statement about why I am Making Net Art Once More:

I have been going through some changes regarding what type of personal, individual artwork that I wish to explore these days. Even though I am involved in various high-tech projects which are mainly collaborations, that are related to larger projects. I wish to return to making Net Art, reconnect to what has always been my favourite form of creativity and expression.

The reasons that I have decided to do this is, because I feel that it is time for me to re-explore what Net Art can really be now, as part of my varied practice. Times have changed, Net Art is dead as far as many others have been concerned, who originally made useful careers in writing about it and becoming 'heroic' artists from it. I intend to rebuild my own practice on an Art that was killed by its own culture. Those who loved it also decided to kill it even though other Net Artists around at that time were still making it, less considered in regard to the repercussions of what it meant to them and culture as a whole. For me, history is really not enough to define a creative culture as magnificent and dynamic as Net Art. It may be fine for those who were represented at that time, but surely there are even moments of doubt, a lingering spectre that says that it all went wrong. I feel that those few who were selected to be part of the (ironic) 'Heroic Period', have limited their own expansion. I know that many who have made Net Art in the past do not wish to be left behind, lost in the history books, as ghosts and may find this interesting themselves, as well as a budding contemporary generation of new Net Artists.

Rather than be part of a past mythology, I wish to be part of current reality. I am of course very aware of the contemporary technologies that control the Internet via corporate means, and how the rabid thirst of those who wish to be technologically determined, by this mannerist behaviour, are more interested in being led by others who are not interested in Art, and rather are more interested in being in positions of power over Media Art culture, via creative industry imposed protocols. To me, on the whole it says more about spectacle and how money is dictating people's intentions and causing diversions from seeing what is of value culturally. As far as I am concerned, it is more important to make Art.

Perhaps Net Art was destined to die, may be it had to die so that others could explore their own perceptions, reasons and creative voices without the pressure of having to conform to dictates that proposed ideas which in reality meant nothing to many Net Artists out there, other than to those who instigated such power-related gestures in the first place.

So, even though I am not expecting any great come back of a new Net Art consciousness from my own future ventures in reclaiming a practice that I believe was killed before its time, mistakenly. I am asking those who had decided to moved away from making Net Art (some of course moved on naturally) to respect my decision in embarking in something that was and is still an expression that I feel offers the world, contemporary experiences and ideas, that are still unique which can be given a second chance by actively and consciously engaging in the now.

For me, because there is no longer the hype about a new Internet and because it is a time of trouble in respect of economy depressions around the world, as well as many people only exploring technology for the sake of it, and because we need to be more ecological in our practices. We also need to come to terms in re-evaluating why we are doing what we do now, and how can we reclaim our creative histories and voices in a way that has more meaning, rather than through processes of mechanistic and personality driven motives alone. I want to build something that does not just reflect me being a slave to technology, corporate control and traditional Art world agendas. The Art will have its own voice on its own terms

The latest work 'Distant' is not trying to be clever via the technology, it is Art. An object, a contemporary piece that is well aware that it is no longer in fashion. Therefore, it is authentic.

marc garrett

Other Related News:
On the 29th of this month, Ruth Catlow and myself are going on an artists residency at Banff, Canada. Through the whole of the month during March, we will both be collaborating to make new Net Art together. It will include open source and it will involve much coding. As we explore the possibilities of using contemporary resources that can be used for our Net Art practice, we will set up a portal or blog that displays our research as it happens. As well as the Art that we both create.

We are, of course interested to hear from those who are also re-engaging in the making of Net Art, using free software, free media, open source materials as well as their own ideas about it. It is an exciting time for us, what is there to lose but gaining the pleasure of doing what we really want to do:-)

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Rhizome Commissions Program

In 2009, Rhizome will award seven commissions with fees ranging from $3000-$5000. This year, Rhizome has expanded our scope, formerly focused strictly on Internet-based art to encompass the broad range of practices that fall under new media art. This includes projects that creatively engage new and networked technologies to works that reflect on the impact of these tools and media in a variety of forms. With this expanded format, commissioned works can take the final form of online works, performance, video, installation or sound art. Projects can be made for the context of the gallery, the public, the web or networked devices. This year, all applicants will be reviewed by a selected jury and several awards will be granted through Rhizome's membership in an open, community vote. Proposal submission takes place online. The deadline is midnight on Monday, March 31, 2008.

To Download the Call for Proposals and Submit a Proposal, visit:
http://rhizome.org/commissions/

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7.

FROM: Lauren Cornell
DATE: February 27, 2008
SUBJECT: Interview with Nato Thompson

The term "Experimental Geography" was coined by artist Trevor Paglen in 2002 and has become an umbrella term for a diverse and quickly multiplying range of art practices. Fittingly, Experimental Geography was selected as the title for a new exhibition, curated by Nato Thompson, that explores "explores the distinctions between geographical study and artistic experience of the earth, as well as the juncture where the two realms collide (and possibly make a new field altogether)." The traveling show, supported by the organization Independent Curators International, features an international group of artists, all of whom have made important strides in this new field. I interviewed Nato Thompson over email about the show. -- Lauren Cornell

Lauren Cornell: Nato, thank you for agreeing to do this interview with me. Lets start off with a simple question. Read anything good lately?

Nato Thompson: I have been reading awful science fiction with incredible cover art from the 70s. I'm not usually such an aesthete when it comes to reading, but I am in an anti-theory mood lately.

LC: I understand. Now, lets bring out some context for your work as a curator. When you organized this show, you were in between Creative Time in New York and Mass MoCA. Something that seems consistent in your work, as you operate inside and outside of institutions, is an interest in the connections between art and larger politics or cultural change. But maybe this isn't how you see it. What, if anything, would you say guides your work as a curator?

NT: I have always held the political angle of the avant-garde as a necessary and important history. The political drive behind those ambitious enough to make their dreams a reality does not come out of an interest in art per se, but the interest in producing meaning on a large level. A basic Marxist idea (that I think is quite apparent) is that the way we think is produced in the way we live. So, those interested in producing a more robust form of living must take seriously the economic and social forms that produce our world. These are hardly separate projects.

But I must qualify, that this trajectory isn't in terms of pure ambition but, ultimately, in interrogating the social forms that produce our world. It might sound naïve, but I still am hopeful that we can find a way to produce a system of organization which guarantees equal rights for every one on the planet. At times, artists are interested (not always in the most straightforward methods) in producing this type of world. In others, their actions point toward liberatory gestures and forms of meaning that are resistant in their buoyancy.

Institutional critique was a necessary maneuver to show that the art world, like all other forms of discourse, is run via power. The next step is to contextualize this framework among the various other discourses and try to lay out a specifically strategic campaign for meaning production. It seems naïve to point out that power solely lives in institutions. It is everywhere!

LC: Your recent show "Experimental Geography" seems to me like an informal survey of artists working with mapping. It includes artists/ collectives that have been engaged with alternate cartographies for a long time, as well as new approaches. Certainly, it captures the energy and activity in this area. My first question for you is- why do you think there is so much work being done with "experimental geography" now?

NT: Actually, it isn't only artists working with cartography although there is plenty of that. The exhibition is more about a broad sense of geography ranging from the geologic to the urban, from the didactic to the poetic. I agree we live in a bizarre but compelling cartography zeitgeist. Maps seem to be everywhere! Chicago just had a festival of maps and museums all over the city have cartographic exhibitions. This project is certainly related but I am hoping to push the category beyond visualizing of information and space. Artist Yin Xiuzhen produces these sewn cities that emerge from a suitcase. Artist Ilana Halperin boils milk in the steam of a hot spring. There are more, but the idea is that the field of experimental geography (a phrase coined by one of the artists in the exhibition, Trevor Paglen) is more about the interpretation of space in a variety of forms.

In terms of why the field itself seems to be growing (in particular cartography), I would hazard to say that inter-disciplinary practices are still finding their feet. Artistic production, as it wades its way through a variety of disciplines, is best at discovering new forms for conveying ideas or impulses. Not only in the field of two-dimensional imagery but also in walking tours, sound art, video installation, lectures. The ability to play with a form allows those that produce knowledge to bring information to a viewer in a more compelling manner, and also to interrogate the possibility that ambiguity is a productive intellectual tool. Ambiguity (that favorite tool of art) often feels antithetical to a practice of empiricism, but in fields where the post-modern turn has truly sunk in its teeth (like geography), ambiguity becomes a productive tool for engaging a variety of perspectives. Because geography has taken on the broad understanding that the world creates us, and we (people) create the world, it has been more susceptible to complicated forms of knowledge presentation.

LC: I would agree that inter-disciplinary practices are finding their feet and becoming more prevalent. I think this tendency reflects, in part, a culture structured by, as scholar Henry Jenkins puts it, "convergence culture" or the convergence of ideas distributed across many different platforms. Projects, even people, can exist simultaneously, if slightly varied, in multiple contexts at the same time. Media art manifests in endless forms, in some cases one piece will exist as an installation, a lecture and online and yet have the coherence of a single work of art. Specifically, for "Experimental Geography", what kind of outside non-artistic practices do you see encouraging this kind of work?

NT: The field of geography became quite inspirational to many practitioners I know. Starting with writers like Henry LeFebre and Michel DeCerteau and even the Situationists for that matter. Particularly, their interest in being ambulatory in the city and the way in which one negotiates the forces which structure movement. The city is a space that produces us. These thinkers began to pave the way for a new form of practice. Then writers like Edward Soja, Manuel Castells, and Mike Davis began to write about the city and economies in a way that pointed to specific instances which exemplified the concept that ideas exist in space. Most wrote about Los Angeles, but the effort to situate theory appealed to those coming out of an increasingly abstract post-modern hangover. After Derrida, it felt good to be able to walk to a street corner and say, here is a story of how power operates here. This method of interrogation was surely inspirational to the highly influential Center for Land Use Interpretation who tackled the forms of site-seeing as a medium to bring the mystery that is the built-environment forward to an audience. It is unnecessary to call it art. It is an investigation (both poetic and didactic) of the world we live in.

LC: Are these ideas what motivated you to organize this show?

NT: I am a believer in the impact of cultural production. I have never been a fan of the myopia by which most contemporary art is understood as a specific discourse tucked inside the much larger cultural fields. Let's bring in the whole bag of cultural production since the production of information in all its forms is not only a major form of capital, but also a primary manner in which we understand the world. "Experimental Geography" is an opportunity to test out some ideas of a truly inter-disciplinary practice that produces new rules and expectations. As much as it can be interpreted from the lens of contemporary art, it benefits from the lens of multiple other disciplines as well. It is a beginning effort in trying to imagine what an institution that studies the world in a variety of forms and that embraces ambiguity and didacticism might look like. It is too reductive to say a neo-wunderkammen, but it gets closer to the point. It is an effort to imagine new forms of thinking after the collapse of the rigid walls of the enlightenment.

LC: Many of these works address notions of territory, land and borders. Do you think they provide new forms of thinking about international relationships or the tired concept of "globalization" -- which rings of corporate marketing, 90s Clintonian idealism and the idea that roots lack significance.

NT: I wouldn't say that globalization is just that, but surely that is one of them. I mean it was also a way for looking at how markets have expanded under neoliberalism. In fact, the protests in Seattle were a result of an expanded notion of capital as placed in large economic structures like the WTO and World Bank. I think the question of borders comes up and they are productive. When Multiplicity looks at the specific time it takes to drive across Israel as a Palestinian and as an Israeli, it is clearly dealing with the politics of how space is carved up. Clearly discussing the occupied territories is a political and geographic question that makes space and power come together quite deftly. I guess what is particularly poetic, is that for many folks, space and power are different concepts and art projects can do a lot to make it more clear how deeply intertwined they are.

LC: At a recent talk that Rhizome held at the New Museum (entitled Nextcity: the Art of the Possible), Eric Rodendeck from Stamen Design called data visualization "a medium". It seemed appropriate to me to frame it this way as picturing information--be it geographic, historic, cultural--is such a powerful way of understanding and conveying the world that, therefore, its essential that it be visualized in multiple ways. Do you see overlap with data visualization and the various approaches to geography presented in EG having the same longevity? I'm thinking specifically of Trevor Paglen's work here but perhaps its connected to other works in the show as well.

NT: I am mixed in my feelings on this. I think that there is an abundance of information visualizing. I suspect that its emergence has more to do with an interest in deploying the fields of one school of thought toward another. That is, for example, net based activism communities using mapping to understand the power structures that be. Or, alternative cartographic maps of displaced communities. I think while the maps are useful to some degree, they come out of an excitement at finding a productive interdisciplinary practice. You can already sense an exhaustion with mapping as we speak. We could be buried in multiple methods for understanding the complexities around us. Nonetheless, I am interested in its continuance. I suspect a weeding out of works will have to occur where people become more selective of what forms of data visualization they find productive or fascinating. There are plenty of absolutely annoying mapping projects out there that feel like architecture students using software to visualize information in an absolutely uninteresting if not incomprehensible manner. But, of course, the political goal is much more enjoyable. If you want to get somewhere, you need a map.

It is interesting that you bring up Trevor's project because I think of his particular set of work as very different than most experimental geography practitioners. His work, I think, productively interrogates the methods that power uses in terms of the visual. That is to say, his work comes out of a simple idea: seeing is believing. So, if the United States hides its prisons, do they exist? This basic line of interrogation (this is one of many), allows us to consider not just photography as a medium of truth telling, but the spatialization of the visual that the US government or power in general, deploys.

LC: I imagine many of these would sit uncomfortably in the gallery--as I know many of the artists' previous projects have included tours or disparate, sometimes networked experiences--not necessarily objects. Can you describe the installation of this show and how it will change as it progresses through different venues?

NT: A big part of my job is to be a showmaker. I need to move people through space via the work in the exhibition. So, I have worked with ICI to produce a project that fits well in a gallery. I have a hunch that many curators that take on these types of interdisciplinary shows lack a certain sense of the seductive. A field like Experimental Geography can easily appeal to the most ascetic of nerds who can't help but fetishize archives and maps. A show of maps and data everywhere- what a nightmare! So, this project attempts to break up that rhythm by vacillating between tone and emotion. Didactic works can actually be edifying, but not if they are the seventh didactic project in a row. The work of Center for Land Use Interpretation will not hum if they are surrounded by tons of studies of spaces in the U.S. They need to remain particular, as do all the works. So, the exhibition runs the gamut of forms with video, sculpture, sound, and maps.

I think you are right that the exhibition would benefit from tours and more participatory projects, but these might not be feasible for some venues. It really depends. Participatory work is hard to put in a box and ship, but it is also one of my favorite types of practice.

LC: Were the works made especially for the show?

NT: Every work in the exhibition previously existed. Some were modified for the purposes of exhibition.

LC: Last, Nato, where next for you?

NT: I am currently working on a project for Creative Time called Democracy in America which unfolds throughout 2008. It is a three-part project that, because I am working with a public arts organization, has the ability to take on a peculiar and exciting form. This project comes at the close of the Bush era, and in a way it is a method to take stock of us as a society. Clearly the country is ready for something new, but at the same time, we must ask ourselves, what happened? The first two parts of the project involve a sort of gathering research with small discussions in five cities, and three wonderful national commissions with artists Sharon Hayes, Mark Tribe, and Rodney McMillan and Olga Koumoundouros. The final state will be a roving space for participation and reflections on democracy to set sail in September and October. It is going to be phenomenal and I am eager to see that come to life.

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Rhizome.org is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and an affiliate of the New Museum of Contemporary Art.

Rhizome Digest is supported by grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.

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Rhizome Digest is filtered by Ceci Moss (ceci.moss AT rhizome.org). ISSN: 1525-9110. Volume 13, number 9. Article submissions to list AT rhizome.org are encouraged. Submissions should relate to the theme of new media art and be less than 1500 words. For information on advertising in Rhizome Digest, please contact info AT rhizome.org.

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