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TEMP
- Temporary Media Lab
Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki,
Finland
October 8 - November
14, 1999
Opening September 15: http://www.kiasma.fi/temp
TEMP stands for temporary media lab, a production facility that
enables groups, networks and, individuals working on the crossover
between new media arts and social, political and economic topics
to discuss, develop, and realize their projects.
Program:
Cross the Border, October 8-16
Opening and No One is Illegal Presentation, October 9
Designing the Future State of Balkania, October
17-23
Linux Land/Nokia Country, October 24-30
Debate: Centers for New Media Culture in Finland, October 28
Night of the Critic, October 29
Debate: Finland and Cultural Technologies, October 30
Baltic Sea Media Space & Net.Radio, October
31-November 4
eko.katastro.fi, November 5-7
Cities on the Move Conference,
November 6
Exhibition of the results, November
9-14
What is a Temporary Media Lab?
The idea of a tmp\ media lab, situated within an existing event,
museum, or similar institution originates from dissatisfaction with
the current forms that presentations of media projects typically
take during conferences and other public events. Exhibiting webpages
still does not make much sense: their lively, layered complexity
gets lost. Even the interactive installation is not the proper medium
to express net.works. In previous years much has been done to introduce
new media to an ever-growing audience. But the networks themselves,
their mysterious and seductive aspects, remained invisible. It is
hard to represent or even visualize what is actually happening on
a mailinglist, a newsgroup, a chatroom. Demo-design can give us
a clue, but it remains soulless, empty and too easily turns flows
and exchanges into dead information. Now that the varieties of virtual
communities are growing, it is no longer enough to merely announce
their existence. People demand substance--not only outsiders but,
most of all, the members of the groups themselves.
The best way to speed up the process of production is to meet in
real space, to confront the loose, virtual connections, to engage
in the complex and messy circumstances of real time-space, to and
present the audience (and possible future participants) with actual
outcomes. And then go back again, in scattered places, on-line.
New media are not merely storing the old. They do not only give
access to exisiting information. Their most lively and attractive
aspect lies in their apect of communication, collaboration, and
exchange. This is the essence of today's computer networks. Large
media corporations, on the other hand, view these innovations differently.
For today's virtual class, new media merely offer new ways of electronic
commerce and e-business, effeciency, and flexibilization of the
labor force and control over the on-line behavior of the masses.
The role of the former welfare state is ambivalent, to say the least.
On the one hand, it was the state which did the groundwork and built
the costly infrastructure, while this very state now is selling
out, cutting social costs to zero, installing a new regime of (private)
control, and policing its populations (mainly young people). Communication
means noise to them, empty exchanges that can be studied to maximize
their attention profit. Users are being reduced to potential buyers
of goods and services, controlled by companies and police units.
This is not a doomsday scenario. It is becoming a reality, despite
all naive, neoliberal talks of bright cyberfutures, dating from
the early days of the Internet hype. People are indeed becoming
aware of this dark aspects of the use of digital technologies. One
way not to give up on these positive, utopian aspects is to increase
awareness, to fight conspiracy mythologies, and, most of all, to
organize scattered users in the struggle against surveillance and
corporate takeover. Should we still dream of interactivity and other,
more accessible interfaces? Access to what? Are portals with the
CNN type of WebTV the only remaining option now that the Net is
rapidly approaching its controlled and regulated status of mass
medium? And is this return of the real closing down our phantasies?
How would we define tactical use of media? Which particular connections
between text, audio, image (and noise) do we find useful? In what
way could radio, Internet, print and real-time/on-line events be
combined?
The idea of temporary media labs were born of the desire to cover
events, conferences, festivals, and demonstrations in search of
a specifically Internet style of reporting. We could mention here
some early examples, such as the live web journals produced during
Next Five Minutes 2 and 3 (www.n5m.org),
the Ars Electronica festivals since 1996 (www.aec.at),
the Euro-protests in Amsterdam, June 97 (www.contrast.org),
or the hackers' gathering Hacking in Progress in August 1997 (www.hip97.org).
The format of the on-line journal is trying to bridge the real and
virtual by building-in interactive elements between on-line audiences
and the actual site. Web journals are exploring unusual ways of
reporting, with image, sound and text, allowing remote participation,
before, during, and after the event.
The Temporary Media Lab concept goes one step further. It no longer
covers an ongoing event but, instead, targets the hands-on production
of content in and around an already-exisiting group or network of
groups and individuals. It is patently clear that networks are good
at discussing and preparing but not at actual production--that has
to be done on the spot, face-to-face. Only in this setting can we
overcome the tensions that so easily build up in virtual worlds
and, thereby, produce small multimedia pieces together using available
resources.
Conferences are known and respected as effective accumulators and
accelerators. They offer ideal opportunities to recharge the inner
batteries in the age of short-lived concepts. Temporary media labs
are even more effective in this respect: they focus, speed up, intensify,
and exert a longer-term effect on local initiatives and translocal
groups. Meetings in real space are becoming a more and more precious
good for the way they add a crucial stage to almost any networked
media projects, whether in the arts, culture, or politics. Unlike
conferences, though, the role of the (passive) audience remains
open yet undefined. As with any other concept, the broader public
will be confronted with the issue anyway, sooner or later. Temporary
media labs are experimenting with social interfaces, visual languages,
and cultural/political processes. Though the immediate outcomes
can be presented at the end of the session, the real impacts of
such small task forces, perhaps, only comes later, elsewhere.
Hybrid WorkSpace (HWS), which took place during the 1997 Documenta
X in the Orangerie in Kassel, went on for a three-and-a-half-month
period; it received an impressive share of the 620.000 visitors
who came to the event. Fifteen groups stayed for a ten-day period
each; among those groups were the German Innercities campaign, No
One is Illegal, We Want Bandwidth (www.waag.org), some audio initiatives
(which later turned into the Xchange real-audio/net.radio network:
www.re-lab.net),
loosely affiliated or unaffilated tactical media practitioners involved
in focussing on global media (www.n5m.org),
the Deep Europe/Syndicate group from former Eastern Europe (www.v2.nl/east),
a group preparing the nettime _README!_ book, which has now been
published (www.nettime.org),
and finally the first Cyberfeminist International, which brought
out their own documentation (www.obn.org).
The documentation of the Workspace can be found at www.medialounge.net.
Medialounge is a database of 250 small European media art labs,
a result of Hybrid Workspace and other meetings in which bottom-up
networks of European new media culture is being created.
The Revolting Temporary Media Lab in Manchester, which took place
for five weeks in August/September 1998, has been a follow up of
HWS. Revoling, organized by Micz Flor (www.yourserver.co.uk)
took place in very different social environment, compared to Kassel,
away from the big art crowds. It had a similar mix of people, themes,
and low-tech approaches. It brought together local groups and communities
to focus on practical outcomes, small presentations, and debates.
Revolting had a special emphasis on spreading specific content via
different media, such as a regular free newspaper, local radio,
and the Net.
TEMP
The third Temporary Media Lab will take place in the project space
on the fifth floor of the Kiasma, the Helsinki contemporary arts
museum, which opened in June 1998. The media lab will be open for
five weeks. In principle, the space will be open for the general
audience a few times a week when lectures, debates, on-line conferences,
net.radio casts are being given there. The main focus of the lab
will be to produce content and concept offered both by local and
by international groups. Each group could do a presentation, party,
(press) conference at the end of each week to inform the audience
about the outcomes of their working period, perhaps in collaboration
with different halls and institutions outside Kiasma, depending
on the group and the topic. The name TEMP is a reference to the
TEMPOLAB meeting in the Kunsthalle Basel (June 98), a closed session
of a distant though neighboring tribe, the global contemporary arts
scene, curated by Clementine Deliss. It is of course also reference,
and tribute, to Hakim Bey's Temporary Autonomous Zones, a reminder
that revolts of anger and desire, of passionate bodies and souls,
remains an option, despite the overall victory of global capitalism.
TEMP has an editorial board of 8-10 people from Finland. The
group consists of mainly young programmers, artists, designers,
critics, and activists, all working in the field of new media.
The concept has been developed by Geert Lovink. The temporary
media lab has been commissioned by Perttu Rastas from Kiasma,
the new media arts curator, and will be produced by Seppo
Koskela. TEMP is developed in close collaboration with MUU
Mediabase, katastro.fi, kaapeli.fi (The Information Cooperative
Katto-Meny), KSL Media Workshop (The Media Workshop of People's
Cultural Organisation) and Lähiradio.
TEMP
Concept
& Coordination: Geert Lovink <geert@xs4all.nl>
Kiasma contact person: Perttu Rastas <prastas@fng.fi>
Production: Seppo Koskela (seppo.koskela@ksl.fi)
Design: katastro.fi
(juha huuskonen, mikko karvonen, simo rouhiainen)
Address: TEMP c/o Kiasma, Mannerheiminaukio 2, 00100 Hki 10,
Finland
tel. ++ 385-9-17336598, +358-40-5602116
fax. ++ 385-9-17336575 (to: TEMP)
www.kiasma.fi/temp
www.katastro.fi/temp
e-mail: temp@kiasma.fi
Supported by: APEX
Fund, Open
Society Institute Croatia, Finnair,
Arts
Council of Finland.
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