Locative media workshop
29 March-3 April 2004, Helsinki
The deep-local Helsinki culture of mobility, systems and networks is manifested
at the site of Rautatieasema (Railway Station). With it's interior, exterior,
surrounding subterranean public-spaces, it is a centrepoint of urban Finland;
A cartographic and temporal framework for partings, convergences, paths
and destinations, all wrapped up in objective data and personal story.
The tangible, intangible, physical and informatic.. The static and mobile..
PUBLIC PROGRAMME
at MUU Gallery, Nervanderinkatu 10, Helsinki
www.muu.fi/gallery/index.html
Wednesday 31st March 1700-1900
Performance-related presentations
Mike Pearson (University of Aberystwyth Wales UK):
"Who are you looking at?" - presentation
reflecting upon recent multi-site performances 2000-2004 that intend not only to problematise
notions of site-specificity based solely upon 'place' but also to pose questions about the
documentation of ephemeral events.
Angela Piccini (University of Bristol UK):
"Guttersnipe: a micro-road movie" - short film with
live oral soundtrack that makes the familiar gutter and pavement strange, weaving its detritus and
landmarks together into an archaeology of the street that has global implications.
Tuesday 30th March - Friday 2nd April
1000-1700
Ongoing process
The locative media workshop activity follows on from the pixelACHE signal|process workshop and parallel
exhibition also in MUU gallery
(22nd March - 3rd April), which explores the sonic landscape in
the local area. Come to visit the ongoing process during gallery opening hours.
Saturday 3rd April 1200-1500
Workshop results
A selection of presentations, installations and activities done by participants during the
locative media and 'signal|process' workshops. Potentially inside and outside the gallery space - be
prepared!
CONTEXT
The Locative media workshop held during pixelACHE 2004 Festival is the
first event in the series of 6 "Trans-Cultural Mapping" workshops initiated
by RIXC Centre for New Media (Riga, Latvia). Each workshop will have a
specific focus on outskirts and interregional networking, in the context
of an enlarged Europe. Addition goal is to discover specific, deep and
relevant layers of the local cultures, involving specific local communities
in the process.
www.rixc.lv - www.pixelache.ac
Locative media may be understood to mean media in which context is crucial,
in that the media pertains to specific location and time, the point of
spatio-temporal 'capture', dissemination or some point in between. The
term locative media has also over the last year been associated with mobility,
collaborative mapping, and emergent forms of social networking.
locative.org - locative.x-i.net
WORKSHOP
The workshop is a community of interest, where members of different communites of practice come
together. In this case, an international group of artists, writers, and researchers will gather in
Helsinki with disciplines of expression ranging from textual, aural, digital film, performance,
architecture, and contemporary archaeological theory. The workshop process will - through practical
engagement - elaborate the relationships between documentation, content, and context.
To this aim, a large portion of the scheduled workshop time will be dedicated to exploring the
specific site, subterranean and surrounding area of the Rautatieasema.
This site may be understood as a 'boundary object'. A boundary object is interpreted by different
communities, with an acknowledgement and discussion of these differences, that allows a shared
understanding to be formed. It is a common point of reference for conversation; a means of
coordination and alignment; a means of translation.
So in this case Rautatieasema will be the common locus for activity and interaction, to engage,
document, and problematise notions of site-specificity and place. However, it will be surely be a
gathering for points of overlap between emerging media, performance and archaeological practices. A
place for exploring relationships between critical fieldwork, site-specific performance,
temporality, mediated memory, material culture, psychogeography, collaborative and multiple-
perspective documentation.
The participants are encouraged to bring their own desired tools and technologies for gathering
data: laptops, pens and sticky paper, digital movie/image cameras, mobile phones, handheld GPS,
human voice, microphones and sound recorders, among others.
However, not to be forgotton but emphasised, the participants bring their body to the site of
interest. Concerned with positioning, visibility and performance, we locate our physical being among
others, negotiating the spatio-temporal context.
As part of this orientation the participants also bring their emotional and intellectual self to the
site. Time, space and emotions are invested in fieldwork, connecting the personal, professional and
political. Indeed it is difficult to disengage the situated and emboddied self. Those specific
identity and context perspectives brought - age, gender, sexuality, history, nationality, class,
politic - mingles with the stories, subjectivites, and histories of others present in the field. By
documenting other places and the people within, the participants are also writing part of their own
story in relation.
As part of the process of developing and expanding the locative media discourse, the workshop design
aims to include the situated, the embodied and the temporal.
PARTICIPANTS
Victor Buchli (UK), Izolde Cesniece (LV), John Evans (FI),
Alison Gerber (SE), Pete Gomes (UK), Usman Haque (UK),
Wilfred Hou Je Bek (NL), Margot Jacobs (SE), Mari Keski-Korsu (FI),
Teemu Kivikangas (FI), Sara Kolster (NL), Sophea Lerner (FI),
Kiril Panteleev (LV), Andrew Paterson (FI), Mike Pearson (UK),
Angela Piccini (UK), Jodi Rose (AU), Ben Russell (UK),
Adam Somlai-Fischer (SE), Lotta Svinhufvud (UK), Pall Thayer (IS),
Marc Tuters (CA), Ophra Wolf (US)
ORGANISERS
Locative media workshop in Helsinki is a part of pixelACHE 2004 Festival,
organised by Piknik
Frequency and Kiasma
Theatre. Workshop program designed by Andrew Paterson / Media
Lab UIAH.
The "Trans-Cultural Mapping" workshop series is coordinated by RIXC
Centre for New Media, and is realised with the support of the
Culture 2000 Programme of the European Union.
Other partner organisations are TEKS/Trondheim, LORNA/Reykjavik,
ELLIPSE/Paris and Projekt Atol/Ljubljana.
For further information contact: locative at pixelache.ac