Furtherfield Gallery
Saturday 15 Sep until Sunday 21 Oct 2018

Private View: Friday 14 September 18:00 – 20:00 (Register)

Open Sat – Sun, 11:00 – 17:00 or by appointment
Admission Free

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Transnationalisms is an exhibition exploring changes in how we think about territory, border and movement in an age of increasing digital connectivity and nationalism. Curated by James Bridle at Furtherfield Gallery from 14th September to 21st October 2018, it is part of a series of events belonging to the EU-funded State Machines project on new relationships between states, citizens and the stateless.

PHYSICAL BORDERS

‘Jus sanguinis’ or ‘right of the blood’ refers to the way Spain aligns physical and geographical bodies by giving people citizenship only if they contain Spanish blood. It is also the name of a performance and installation (2016)  by Peru-born and Spain-dwelling artist, Daniela Ortiz, who arranged a blood transfusion from a Spanish citizen while 4 months pregnant. From deep inside her, infused by liquid Spain, her baby transcends national borders and her own body becomes a complex cultural terrain. The use of blood reminds us of the real violence of immigration laws, while the video installation recalls the ease at which mortal harm can flow through media veins.

Physically traversing Europe, the exhibition arrives by way of State Machine partners Aksioma & Museum of Contemporary Art, Slovenia and Mali salon, Croatia. At Furtherfield Gallery in Finsbury Park it occupies land straddling its own official and vernacular boundaries. Sitting within Islington, Hackney and Haringey, Finsbury Park is described as ‘superdiverse’ with over 180 languages spoken and high levels of ‘churn’ as people come and go.

Daniela Ortiz, Jus Sanguinis, 2016. Photo courtesy of the artist

DIGITAL BORDERS

If Ortiz represents a radically open border, then VPN (2018) by Critical Computer Engineering Group (Julian Oliver, Gordan Savičić, and Danja Vasiliev) is about protection. The work considers how VPNs can ‘sheath’ our private (data) parts during social intercourse online. Audience members will be able to use the repurposed condom machine to select an international destination for rerouting their data and then download a completely undetectable VPN to a USB for personal use. This is the first showing of the work which was commissioned as part of an artwork open call by the State Machines partner organisations.

CULTURAL BORDERS

Journeying ‘home’ to Furtherfield – where it was made and first shown in 2017 – is video installation We Help Each Other Grow by collective They Are Here (Helen Walker & Harun Morrison). It features former Tamil refugee, Thiru Seelan, seen only as his thermal signature from a heat-sensitive camera. He motions to a past and present he has no ‘right’ to – a dance that belongs to Tamil women; a city that belongs to the blood of British people. Yet there he is, at least temporarily, warm and well in both ‘spaces’ at once.

OTHER WORKS INCLUDE

Movables (2017) is a series of images by Jeremy Hutchison which look at the fashionable world of refugee disguise design.

CNI (2017) by Raphaël Fabre is the entirely digital portrait the French government accepted as photographic proof of Fabre for an ID card.

New Unions / After Europe (2016-) by Jonas Staal is a campaign and system for a new trans-democratic union in Europe.

They Are Here, We Help Each Other Grow, 2017. Film Still from Video shot on thermal imaging camera. Photo courtesy of the artists

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

James Bridle is an artist, writer and curator and one of Wired’s ‘100 most influential people in Europe’ (2017). He is  the author of New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future (Verso: 2018). He is based in London.
jamesbridle.com

Critical Computer Engineering Group is a collaboration between Julian Oliver, Gordan Savičić, and Danja Vasiliev. Their manifesto begins: “The Critical Engineer considers Engineering to be the most transformative language of our time, shaping the way we move, communicate and think. It is the work of the Critical Engineer to study and exploit this language, exposing its influence.”
criticalengineering.org

Raphaël Fabre works on the interference of fictions and narrative storytelling in the real world, using techniques ranging from digital 3D technologies to set decoration. Born in 1989, he lives and works in Paris.
raphaelfabre.com

Jeremy Hutchison explores with situational performance in sites of production and consumption – often collaborating with factory employees, migrant labourers, online workers – to explore unequal human relations constructed by global capital. He was recently a member of the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York.
jeremyhutchison.com

Daniela Ortiz generates spaces of tension in which the concepts of nationality, racialization, social class and gender are explored in order to critically understand structures of inclusion and exclusion in society. Daniela gives talks and participates in discussions on Europe’s migration control system and its ties to coloniality in different contexts. Born in Cusco, she lives and works in Barcelona.
daniela-ortiz.com

Jonas Staal has studied monumental art in Enschede and Boston and received his PhD for research on art and propaganda in the 21st century from the University of Leiden. His work includes interventions in public space, exhibitions, theatre plays, publications and lectures, focusing on the relationship between art, democracy and propaganda. He lives and works in Rotterdam.
jonasstaal.nl

They Are Here is a collaborative practice steered by Helen Walker and Harun Morrison (f. 2006). Their work can be read as a series of context-specific games through which they seek to create ephemeral systems and temporary micro-communities that offer an alternate means of engaging with a situation, history or ideology. They are currently based in London and on the River Lea.
theyarehere.net

ABOUT FURTHERFIELD

Furtherfield is an internationally-renowned digital arts organisation hosting exhibitions, workshops and debate for over 20 years. We collaborate locally and globally with artists, academics, organisations and the public to explore digital culture and the changing world we live in. From our unique venues in Finsbury Park we offer a range of ways for everyone to get hands on with emerging technologies and ideas about contemporary society. Our aim is to make critical digital citizens of us all. We can make our own world.

Furtherfield Gallery
McKenzie Pavilion
Finsbury Park, London, N4 2NQ
Visiting Information

The post Transnationalisms curated by James Bridle at Furtherfield Gallery appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Furtherfield Gallery
Saturday 14 Jul until Sunday 19 Aug 2018

Open Sat – Sun, 11:00 – 17:00 or by appointment – Admission Free

Would you like to monetise your social relations? Learn from hostile designs? Take part in (unwitting) data extractions in exchange for public services?

Examining the way that the boundaries between ‘play’ and ‘labour’ have become increasingly blurred, this summer, Playbour: Work, Pleasure, Survival, will transform Furtherfield Gallery into an immersive environment comprising a series of games. Offering glimpses into the gamification of all forms of life, visitors are asked to test the operations of the real-world, and, in the process, experience how forms of play and labour feed mechanisms of work, pleasure, and survival.

What it means to be a worker is expanding and, over the last decade, widening strategies of surveillance and new sites of spectatorship online have forced another evolution in what can be called ‘leisure spaces’. From the self-made celebrity of the Instafamous to the live-streaming of online gamers, many of us shop, share and produce online, 24/7. In certain sectors, the seeming convergence of play and labour means work is sold as an extension of our personalities and, as work continues to evolve and adapt to online cultures, where labour occurs, what is viewed as a product, and even, our sense of self, begins to change.

Debt: Bad Spelling, an Adult Problem, Cassie Thornton

Today, workers are asked to expand their own skills and build self-made networks to develop new avenues of work, pleasure and survival. As they do, emerging forms of industry combine the techniques and tools of game theory, psychology and data science to bring marketing, economics and interaction design to bear on the most personal of our technologies – our smartphones and our social media networks. Profiling personalities through social media use, using metrics to quantify behaviour and conditioning actions to provide rewards, have become new norms online. As a result, much of public life can be seen as part of a process of ‘capturing play in pursuit of work’.

Although these realities affect many, very little time is currently given over to thinking about the many questions that arise from the blurring between work and play in an age of increasingly data-driven technologies: How are forms of ‘playbour’ impacting our health and well-being? What forms of resistance could and should communities do in response?

To gain a deeper understanding of the answers to these questions, we worked with artists, designers, activists, sociologists and researchers in a three-day co-creation research lab in May 2018. The group engaged in artist-led experiments and playful scenarios, conducting research with fellow participants acting as ‘workers’ to generate new  areas of knowledge. This exhibition in Furtherfield Gallery is the result of this collective labour and each game simulates an experience of how techniques of gamification, automation and surveillance are applied to the everyday in the (not yet complete) capture of all forms of existence into wider systems of work.

In addition to a performance by  Steven Ounanian during the Private View, the ‘games’ that comprise this exhibition are:

• Public Toilet by Arjun Harrison-Mann & Benjamin Redgrove, which asks visitors whether the Furtherfield building should be a gallery or a toilet… and also who has the right to make this type of decision.
• Treebour by Marija Bozinovska Jones (with special thanks to Robert Gallagher) is a sound work in which three anthropomorphised ‘trees’ personify the different kinds of work trees are required to do in contemporary society.
• Feminist Economics Yoga (FEY) by Cassie Thornton, The Feminist Economics Department (FED), invites us to think about how our screen addictions connect us to the predatory workings of the economy at large.
• Hostile Environment Facility Training (HEFT) by Michael Straeubig enables visitors to create their own ‘hostile environment’, a design approach used by governments in a variety of settings – schools, banks, universities, hospitals, places of work – to make staying in this country as difficult as possible for migrants.

Lab session leads and participants: Dani Admiss, Kevin Biderman, Marija Bozinovska Jones, Ruth Catlow, Maria Dada, Robert Gallager, Beryl Graham, Miranda Hall, Arjun Harrison Mann, Maz Hemming, Sanela Jahic, Annelise Keestra, Steven Levon Ounanian, Manu Luksch, Itai Palti, Andrej Primozic, Michael Straeubig, Cassie Thornton, Cecilia Wee, Jamie Woodcock.

Curated by Dani Admiss.

For more information visit the Furtherfield site

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