Blog

The German-language educational DVD, which includes short film ALGO-RHYTHM (with German subtitles), is available at EZEF

And yet another streamed festival at 31 degrees Celsius – while the option of listening in while lazing in the shade of a tree is a positive thing (actually did that yesterday), the participation through zoom/YouTube stream from a baking hot studio and without a sense of who’s watching requires my maximum self-discipline! – endow rant – check out the Angewandte festival programme, recommended!

This shoot during lockdown took the idea of productive limitations to new extremes – I recruited cast and team amongst family and neighbours, with talented Quentin (picture) in the role of Nano. CONTAGIOUS WHISPER is a collaboration with Scott Kildall, S.F. based artist and host of my residency at Xenoform Labs last year. This commission by Open Austria for No-Place like the Future invited us to imagine a post-corona future. The resulting short film will be premiered online on 18th June 2020.

Data Loam (Sometimes Hard, Usually Soft): The Future of Knowledge Systems – only a trio like Johnny Golding, Martin Reinhart, Mattia Paganelli could possibly come up with such a poignant but playful book title. I am putting finishing touches to my contribution to this publication (expected to be published this November by De Gruyter), which “will be a landmark publication in the digital humanities broadly speaking. It emphasises the role of contemporary art and practice-led research as the primary mover in re-thinking artificial intelligence, digital environments, software systems, and with it, new knowledge systems. The impact will include the library information sciences, computing software, crypto-economics, gaming. It re-thinks the role of curatorial practice(s), archiving, and ethics. It is playful, hard-hitting, and hopefully, will enable new systems of pedagogy and radical forms of political practice. ” Very excited and proud to be part!

Camera and city. Scenes of modernity, curated by Florian Ebner, chief of photography of the Centre Pompidou Paris, in collaboration with La Caixa Banking Foundation, brings together major works from different departments of the Centre Pompidou and photographs and films from Spanish collections, in order to shed light on the way in which the camera shaped the idea of urbanity. The extensive exhibition catalogue is available in Spanish and Catalan. (My speculative film FACELESS is included in the show and book)

On invitation by artist Scott Kildall and with the support of Open Austria, I am spending October 2019 as artist in residence at Xenoform Labs, getting to know the very particular spirit of the Bay Area and continuing to write a film script.
Below, at a panel discussion about arts residencies, how they originated and what they offer – with: Tony Grant (Sustainable Arts Foundation), Vero Bollow (Stochastic Labs), Kija Lucas (The Growlery), Clara Blume (Open Austria), Scott Kildall (Xenoform Labs), Manu Luksch (artist), Dale Djerassi (Djerassi Resident Artists Program)

Last week, the film enthusiasts of Anarchivia (founded by documentary filmmaker Gregorio Rocha) & ULTRAcinema (founded by pre-digital experimental film specialist and filmmaker Michael Ramos-Araizaga) hosted a couple of screenings of my films on surveillance, hyper regulation and manipulative micro-targeting. It provided me with the wonderful occasion to visit their space, which is located inside the Estudios Churubusco. While Anarchivia is a kind of documentation centre and workshop space, dedicated to keeping celluloid alive, ULTRAcinema is Michael’s film festival project, which takes films beyond the mainstream to audiences outside the Cineplexx. Subscribe to their news feed to make sure you’ll catch a future event!

Last year, we filmed ALGO-RHYTHM in Dakar a hiphop musical about electioneering with Senegalese rappers Xuman OMG, King Kruh, Lady Zee.  This Aljazeera TV report by Nicolas Haque about Sunday’s elections entwines its reporting with questions about free choice, manipulation and the role of social media as posed in the film. A great tandem! 

Manu Luksch – Art controls the controllers

Surveillance Studies. A Reader: Congratulations, Torin and David! (… proud for legal readymade FACELESS (2007) to be included in the Art and Culture section in Andrea Mubi Brighenti‘s text Artveillance: At the Crossroads of Art and Surveillance, p389ff, on surveillance art and visibility regimes)