Join us this evening at 7:00pm for Nicoline van Harskamp's Expressive Power Series Part 1: Max Bonner on the Phenomenology of Speech, a New Silent Series event. This new performance builds upon an expansive body of work focused on politics and language. This ambitious, hour-long theatrical piece centers on an Interpersonal Dynamics consultant named Max Bonner and members of his audience, including a human rights activist, an academic, and a dogmatic anarchist, whom he attempts to convince of popular psychological models for social persuasion that are used variously by the Pentagon, corporations, and NGOs worldwide. The evolving discussion demonstrates, in the artist’s words “the impossibility of political consensus by way of verbal interaction”—a situation that is here framed productively, with generative meaning to be found in points of dissonance, paradox, and negotiation. Cast includes Greg Shapiro, Liz Bolton, Mark Bellamy and Sheila Evans.

Last week, we published an interview with van Harskamp in which she discusses Expressive Power Series and her practice. Read it here.

Friday, June 18, 7pm
at the New Museum
$10 Members/$12 General Admission
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Visit the Seven on Seven site for videos of the conference on April 17th, including all the presentations that were given that day. Seven on Seven paired seven leading artists with seven game-changing technologists in teams of two, and challenged them to develop something new -- be it an application, social media, artwork, product, or whatever they imagined -- over the course of a single day. The seven teams worked together at locations around the New York City on April 16th, 2010, and unveiled their ideas at a one-day event at the New Museum the following day. All the videos are courtesy of Wieden + Kennedy New York.

Dutch artist Nicoline van Harskamp will present the US premiere of Expressive Power Series Part 1: Max Bonner on the Phenomenology of Speech (2010), a new performance that builds upon an expansive body of work focused on politics and language. This ambitious, hour-long theatrical piece centers on an Interpersonal Dynamics consultant named Max Bonner and members of his audience, including a human rights activist, an academic, and a dogmatic anarchist, whom he attempts to convince of popular psychological models for social persuasion that are used variously by the Pentagon, corporations, and NGOs worldwide. The evolving discussion demonstrates, in the artist’s words “the impossibility of political consensus by way of verbal interaction”—a situation that is here framed productively, with generative meaning to be found in points of dissonance, paradox, and negotiation.

Friday, June 18, 7pm
at the New Museum, New York, NY
$10 Members/ $12 General Public
BUY TICKETS

This event is part of Rhizome’s New Silent Series at the New Museum.

There's still time to place your bid in Rhizome's silent auction. All proceeds will go towards Rhizome's programs - commissions, exhibitions, publications, events, resources and more. Mark Essen's multi-player PC game Jetpack Basketball [above] is for sale, along with other original works by Kerstin Bratsch, Paul Chan, Brody Condon, Mark Essen, Amy Granat, Steven Lambert, Julie Mehretu, Emily Roysdon, Michael Smith, AIDS-3D, and Eteam.

Proceeds from the auction support Rhizome's programs, including commissions, exhibitions, events, criticism, and resources! Give today and feel good about getting something great for your wall or screen.

PLACE YOUR BID TODAY!

Come out and celebrate another great year of Rhizome with dancing, reveling, and perusing of artworks and unusual art merchandise developed especially to benefit Rhizome. This year, the Benefit is not ticketed (that's right, free!), but we ask that you RSVP for yourself, and guests.

There will also be a silent auction, with original works by Kerstin Bratsch, Paul Chan, Brody Condon, Mark Essen, Amy Granat, Steven Lambert, Julie Mehretu, Emily Roysdon, Michael Smith, AIDS-3D, and Eteam. Online bidding will be up on the benefit site soon - so stay tuned!

EXPRESSIVE POWER SERIES: CASTING CALL

SEEKING ACTRESS (aged 45+) and ACTRESS (aged 25-35) to perform in a one-night performance entitled EXPRESSIVE POWER SERIES organized by director and artist Nicoline van Harskamp. The production centers around a Personal Dynamics consultant who offers four different models for argument and persuasion.

Casting by internet and/or telephone from May 6, 2010 to May 15th, 2010. Rehearsal will require 3 half days (4 hours) between June 11-17th, 2010. Performance will take place June 18th at 7:30pm as part of Rhizome’s New Silent Series.

Basic actors fees available.

Expressions of interest to Nicoline van Harskamp: aobinfo[AT]gmail.com

Rhizome will be participating in this year's No Soul For Sale: A Festival of Independents at the Tate Modern. From May 14-16th, more than 70 independent arts organizations from all over the world will present films, performances, exhibitions, and more within the Turbine Hall. If you live in London or happen to be there during that weekend, please drop by and say hello.

For the festival, Rhizome has teamed up with artist David Horvitz to present "Mail Nothing to the Tate Modern. This project invites anyone to track and mail empty packages to the Tate Modern, where they will be displayed unopened in the Rhizome space. The website for Mail Nothing to the Tate Modern will display the movement of all these packages, creating a "mental picture of the vast global infrastructure of shipping." Visit the website Mail Nothing to the Tate Modern for instructions about participating in this exhibition -- all packages must be received by May 10th or 11th.

One of the participants in Seven on Seven, Matt Mullenweg, took some nice shots of last weekend's event. We thought we'd share some of them here, below. Thanks to Matt for letting us reblog them!

Our one day conference on Saturday, Seven on Seven, was packed with provocative ideas, projects and conversation, thanks to the 14 participating artists and technologists! We snapped some shots of the initial working groups, presentations, and more. Thank you so much again to everyone involved and our sponsors. (Note: We will post video from the event soon!)

Please save the date for Rhizome’s Annual Party on Tuesday, May 25th. This year, the Annual Party is un-ticketed—that’s right, free! Just come out and be prepared to celebrate another great year of Rhizome with dancing, reveling, and perusing of artworks and unusual art merchandise developed especially to benefit Rhizome. Location and time to be announced soon.

Join us for the Headless Conference this Friday March 19th at 7pm in the New Museum's Theater. Tickets are $6 members, $8 general, and they can be purchased here. Description of the event below, for additional reading please check out Ginny Kollak's "Putting the capital in decapitation" as well as Brian Droitcour's "Interview with Goldin+Senneby" from Rhizome News. Ginny Kollak and Brian Droitcour are the co-organizers of the Headless Conference.

“I was still living in Gibraltar, working through my notice at Sovereign Trust, an offshore management company. [...] One of thousands of companies that Sovereign manages is called Headless. It was incorporated (i.e. registered) on the Bahamas through our Gibraltar office. Headless is a strange name, and it got me thinking. Then we got a call from Goldin and Senneby, two Swedish artists. They said they were looking into Headless Ltd. This definitely was strange. Companies like Headless are not really ‘open to investigation,’ so I didn't really understand Goldin and Senneby's angle here.”

—In Search of Story: A journal in eight parts by K.D.

Goldin+Senneby are Swedish artists. They are also characters in Looking for Headless, a novel they commissioned, a detective story involving a murder (by decapitation, of course) that has been published serially since 2007. In it, Goldin+Senneby appear as shadowy figures, remotely controlling the action as it unfolds in exotic locales like the Bahamas and Gibraltar—glamorous but bureaucratic hubs of the offshore finance industry.

“While they implicate art institutions in the narrative they enact, G+S are ultimately interested in how the virtual world of global finances performs a sleight of hand to fictionalize the boundaries between public and private interests, in order to make them disappear.”

—Gregory Burke, director of the Power Plant, Toronto

The lectures, documentaries, and didactic displays that have accompanied the presentation of Headless at art institutions share little of the heady cloak-and-dagger suspense found in the fictional texts that the project spawns. The Headless Conference is no exception to this rule. Co-organized by Rhizome and the Office for Parafictional Research, the event will take the form of an academic symposium on issues pertinent to the discourse surrounding Goldin+Senneby's work. Up for discussion are topics as diverse as the economic theories of George Bataille and the nature of virtual spaces built by offshore finance networks. Participants are to include Angus Cameron, lecturer in human geography at the University of Leicester and Goldin+Senneby's chosen emissary; Brian Droitcour, Rhizome staff writer; Keller Easterling, associate professor at the Yale School of Architecture; Ginny Kollak, director of the Office for Parafictional Research and second-year graduate student at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College; and Allan Stoekl, professor of French at Penn State University.

The Headless Conference
Friday, March 19, 2010
7:00 pm
New Museum Theater
235 Bowery, New York
$6 Members/ $8 General Public
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The Headless Conference is co-organized by Brian Droitcour and Ginny Kollak as part of Rhizome’s New Silent Series at the New Museum, and is supported in part by the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.

The Office for Parafictional Research has been established to study the implications of a body of work by artist duo Goldin+Senneby known as Headless. For the past three years, the Stockholm-based collaborators have been investigating an offshore company called Headless Ltd as part of a larger inquiry into strategies of absence, invisibility, and withdrawal. Their project, also called Headless, has emerged in a number of formats thus far, including lectures and readings, a series of newspaper interventions, an author’s personal journal, a suite of etchings, a number of critical essays, a scattering of stage-like tableaux, a documentary film, and—most importantly—a serial novel-in-progress. But Goldin+Senneby’s own position in this remains elusive, as they outsource all representations of their work to independent practitioners and dispatch spokespeople on their behalf for public events.

One such event is The Headless Conference, which shares little of the heady cloak-and-dagger suspense found in the fictional texts that the project spawns. The conference will take the form of an academic symposium on issues pertinent to the discourse surrounding Goldin+Senneby's work. Up for discussion are topics as diverse as the economic theories of George Bataille and the nature of virtual spaces built by offshore finance networks. Participants are to include Angus Cameron, lecturer in human geography at the University of Leicester and Goldin+Senneby's chosen emissary; Brian Droitcour, Rhizome staff writer; Keller Easterling, associate professor at the Yale School of Architecture; Ginny Kollak, director of the Office for Parafictional Research and second-year graduate student at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College; and Allan Stoekl, professor of French at Penn State University.

The Headless Conference
Friday, March 19, 2010
7:00 pm
New Museum Theater
235 Bowery, New York
$6 Members/ $8 General Public
BUY TICKETS

The Headless Conference is co-organized by Brian Droitcour and Ginny Kollak as part of Rhizome’s New Silent Series at the New Museum, and is supported in part by the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.

Rhizome seeks a focused, responsible and mature candidate for a part-time internship. Responsibilities include assisting with the daily administrative upkeep of the organization, research and production support of the Rhizome website, coordination of organizational projects, correspondence with artists, members, and press, and management of various social media platforms. Interns must be familiar with contemporary art and savvy with the web and new technologies.

The position is 8 - 16 hours per week and can be worked from home or at the Rhizome office, which is located at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Manhattan. The intern will report to the Senior Editor and Associate Director. Candidates must be based in New York and must be able to commit to 3 months. This position is unpaid, but academic credit may be arranged.

QUALIFICATIONS: Candidates must be well versed with social media and the online environment. A keen interest in online marketing is a must. Education or advanced experience beyond the undergraduate level is highly desirable. The candidate should have strong writing and analytical skills. Knowledge of Microsoft Office software is required and basic experience with graphics and video editing programs, like Photoshop and Final Cut, is preferred.

TO APPLY: Please email a cover letter, resume or c.v., to editor[at]rhizome.org. Review of applications will begin immediately.

Join us at the New Museum next Friday, February 19th, at 7pm for the New Silent Series event Triple Canopy: The Medium Was Tedium.

Triple Canopy is an online magazine that explores how the Web informs the experience of reading literature and viewing artworks. The publication’s development has been inspired in part by a critical engagement with the legacy of Aspen magazine (1965-71). Artists and writers contributed projects to Aspen in the form of easily distributable media such as flip books, flexi-disc records, and paper sculpture. These projects coincided with a broader contemporaneous phenomenon: artworks intended to appear exclusively in magazines. The New Silent event, The Medium Was Tedium, examines how this move from the exhibition space to the printed page has been subsequently repeated by artists in relation to other media, such as television programming and the Internet. Triple Canopy’s editors will discuss practices that traverse mediums and the media with artists Mel Bochner, Daniel Bozhkov, and Erin Shirreff.

Friday, February 19, 7pm
at the New Museum, New York, NY
$6 Members/ $8 General Public
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