Sousveillance Culture Panel

Sousveillance Culture panel at Conflux 2007 (NY), with Amy Alexander,
Jill Magid and Hasan Elahi, moderated by Marisa Olson

Saturday, September 15, 2007
2:30pm - 4:00pm

Luna Lounge
61 Metropolitan Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11211
718.384.7112
http://lunalounge.com

Rhizome presents this panel, in conjunction with Conflux, New York's
annual festival for contemporary psychogeography, the investigation of
everyday urban life through emerging artistic, technological, and
social practice. The panel centers on "sousveillance," the practice of
watching from below (sous-) rather than above (sur-). A diverse group
of artists whose work engages surveillance will explore the cultural
and political implications of sousveillance, which tends to be
discussed as empowering when manifest as a "taking-back" of cameras or
the rising-up of "little brother," but which also unfolds in an era of
increased self-surveillance, encouraged by both the government and the
culture of participatory and 'transparent' media. Panelists include
artists Amy Alexander, Jill. Magid and Hasan Elahi, and moderator
Marisa Olson, Editor and Curator, Rhizome.

Participant Bios:

Amy Alexander is a software and performance artist and VJ. Her work
has been presented on the Internet, in clubs and on the street as well
as in festivals and museums. She is an Associate Professor of Visual
Arts at the University of California, San Diego. She is also a
co-founder and moderator of the Runme.org software art repository, and
is active in software art curation. Amy's latest software project,
SVEN: Surveillance Video Entertaiment Network, with Wojciech Kosma and
Vincent Rabaud, is a real-time computer vision and video system that
detects likely rock stars in public places, an installation version of
which was on view at the Whitney Museum during Summer 2007.
http://www.plagiarist.org/

Hasan Elahi is an interdisciplinary artist whose work examines issues
of surveillance, simulated time, transport systems, borders and
frontiers. His work has been presented in numerous exhibitions at
venues such as the Venice Biennale; the Centre Georges Pompidou,
Paris; the Kulturbahnhof, Kassel, Germany; The Hermitage, St.
Petersburg, Russia; and The Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center in
New York. Elahi recently was invited to speak about his work at the
Tate Modern in London, Pop!Tech, and at at the American Association of
Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University. His work has been
supported with significant grants and numerous sponsorships from the
Creative Capital Foundation, Ford Foundation/Philip Morris, and the
Asociacion Artetik Berrikuntzara in Donostia-San Sebastian in the
Basque Country/Spain among others.
http://trackingtransience.net/

Jill Magid is a visual artist working in a variety of media including
literature, video, sculpture, and performance. Magid received an MS in
Visual Studies from MIT in 2000, was a resident artist at the
Rijksakademie in Amsterdam 2002, and currently lives and works in both
Amsterdam and Brooklyn. Solo exhibitions in include With Full Consent
at Gagosian Gallery (NYC), Sparwasser HQ (Berlin), Centre d'Art Santa
Monica (Barcelona), Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam. Recent
performances in New York at The Bowery Poetry Club, Eyebeam, The
Poetry Project , Orchard. Her work has been included in group
exhibitions at Storefront for Art and Architecture (NYC), De Appel
(Amsterdam), Balance and Power (Rose Art Museum), Naked Life at MOCA
Taipei (Taiwan), Positioning statement | Image Cairo 3 (Cairo), Egypt,
DMZ 2005_Korea, and at the Liverpool Biennial International '04. She
has written two novellas: Lincoln Ocean Victor Eddy (2007), and One
Cycle of Memory in the city of L (2004).
http://jillmagid.net/index.php

Moderator Marisa Olson is Rhizome's Editor & Curator and a practicing
artist. She has organized exhibitions and programs at the Guggenheim,
SFMOMA, the Getty, White Columns, Artists Space, the Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts, and elsewhere, including SF Camerawork, where she
was previously Associate Director. She's written for Wired, Mute,
Afterimage, Flash Art, ArtReview, and others. Her own work has
recently been presented by the Whitney Museum, the New Museum of
Contemporary Art, the Pacific Film Archive, and the New York
Underground Film Festival. Marisa is currently an Adjunct Assistant
Professor in the ITP graduate program at NYU's Tisch School of the
Arts and a PhD Candidate in Rhetoric/ Film Studies at UC Berkeley.