Margin Release

Margin Release is a series of lectures coordinated by Julia Christensen, Luce Professor of the Emerging Arts at Oberlin College and Conservatory, in collaboration with her class, Margin Release. The purpose of this series is to introduce a wide range of the sub-genres of “new media,” in order to provide exposure to a variety of practices that are considered forms of “new media.” This web page will chronicle the series, as we coordinate, produce, document, and take part in this exciting series.

PARTICIPANTS:

February 25th, 2008:
Michael Trigilio of NEIGHBORHOOD PUBLIC RADIO
www.neighborhoodpublicradio.org/

Neighborhood Public Radio is an independent, artist-run radio project committed to providing an alternative media platform for artists, activists, musicians, and community members. Neighborhood Public Radio has been named “Best Super Local Radio Station” by San Francisco magazine and we have been featured in Punk Planet magazine, Artforum, and the Chicago Reader. Neighborhood Public Radio are in the 2008 Whitney Biennial. As a traveling band of guerilla broadcasters, folks from NPR have hosted thematic broadcasts far and wide, including both Artist’s Television Access and Southern Exposure Gallery in San Francisco’s Mission District, Chicago’s Version 5 Festival, and a recent trip to collaborate with the neighborly media folks of kuda.org in Novi Sad, Serbia (a trip made possible by a grant from CEC Artslink). Most recently NPR was the recipient of a Creative Work Fund Grant which will be used for a collaborative series of projects collectively titled Radio Cartography.

March 10, 2008:
STEVE KURTZ of the CRITICAL ART ENSEMBLE
http://wwww.critical-art.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Kurtz

Steve Kurtz is a founding member of the award-winning art and theater collective, Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). Since its formation in 1987, CAE has been frequently invited to exhibit and perform projects examining issues surrounding information, communications and bio-technologies by museums and other cultural institutions. These include The Whitney Museum and The New Museum in NYC; The Corcoran Museum in Washington D.C.; The ICA, London; The MCA, Chicago; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; and The London Museum of Natural History. The collective has written 6 books, and its writings have been translated into 18 languages. Its work has been covered by art journals, including Artforum, Kunstforum, and The Drama Review. Critical Art Ensemble is the recipient of awards, including the 2007 Andy Warhol Foundation, Wynn Kramarsky Freedom of Artistic Expression Grant, the 2004 John Lansdown Award for Multimedia, and the 2004 Leonardo New Horizons Award for Innovation.

March 17, 2008:
PAUL DEMARINIS
www.well.com/~demarini/

Paul DeMarinis has been working as an electronic media artist since 1971 and has created numerous performance works, sound and computer installations and interactive electronic inventions. He has performed internationally, at The Kitchen, Festival d’Automne a Paris, Het Apollohuis in Holland and at Ars Electronica in Linz and created music for Merce Cunningham Dance Co. His interactive audio artworks have been shown at the I.C.C. in Tokyo, Bravin Post Lee Gallery in New York and The Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. He has been an Artist-in-Residence at The Exploratorium and at Xerox PARC and has received major awards and fellowships in both Visual Arts and Music from The National Endowment for the Arts, N.Y.F.A., N.Y.S.C.A., the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. Much of his work involves speech processed and synthesized by computers, available on the Lovely Music Ltd. compact disc “Music as a Second Language”, and the Apollohuis CD “A Listener’s Companion” Major installation works include “The Edison Effect” that uses optics and computers to make new sounds by scanning ancient phonograph records with lasers, “Gray Matter” that uses the interaction of body and electricity to make music, and “The Messenger” that examines the myths of electricity in communication. Public artworks include large scale interactive installations at Park Tower Hall in Tokyo, at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and Expo 1998 in Lisbon and an interactive audio environment at the Ft. Lauderdale International Airport in 2003.

APRIL 23, 2008:
NAO BUSTAMANTE
www.naobustamante.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nao_Bustamante

Nao Bustamante is an internationally known performance and video artist originating from the San Joaquin Valley of California. Her (often precarious) work encompasses performance art, sculpture, installation and video. Bustamante has presented in Galleries, Museums, Universities and underground sites all around the world. Her work has been exhibited, among other locales at, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts, and the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki. In 2001 she received the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship and in 2007 named a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow, as well as a Lambent Fellow. Most recently she was one of four winners of the Chase Legacy Film Challenge grant in partnership with HBO and Kodak, presented at the Sundance Film Festival 08. Currently Bustamante is on sabbatical as a visiting scholar at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. She holds the position as Associate Professor of New Media and Live Art at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

May 9, 2008:
PAPER RAD
http://www.paperrad.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_Rad

Paper Rad is a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania/Northampton, Massachusetts American art collective that makes comics zines, video art, net art, MIDI files, paintings, installations, and are in a variety of bands. The three primary members are Jacob Ciocci (Oberlin alum), Jessica Ciocci, and Ben Jones. Although they continue to publish their own zines, music, and online content, they are represented by Foxy Production gallery in New York and have shown at several major galleries including Pace Wildenstein, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, and Deitch Projects. They also published a book, Paper Rad, BJ and da Dogs in late-2005 as well a DVD on Load Records in 2006 (Trash Talking).