Rhizome organizes monthly events at the New Museum called the New Silent Series. The series includes screenings, performances and presentations of artists work, as well as a critical conversation. We also collaborate with peer organizations to produce events in other venues, cities, public spaces, and online. If you'd like to pitch a partnership or event, contact events at rhizome dot org.

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The Headless Conference

Friday, March 19th at 7pm
at the New Museum, New York, NY
$6 Members, $8 General Public
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"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 Univeristy

"I have to say, the timing is good, if probably accidental, 'cause there will have to be a political engagement within offshore in the resolution of the financial crisis. So having Headless running parallel in the next couple of years to whatever effort governments will be making to try to address these things, will create some interesting parallels and crossovers."

--Angus Cameron in an interview with curator Kim Einarsson

The Headless Conference is organized by Brian Droitcour and Ginny Kollak.

We would like to thank the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies for their support of this event.

Triple Canopy: The Medium Was Tedium

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

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.

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

Cinema Fury: A New Performance by Caden Manson / Big Art Group

Friday January 15th, 7pm
at the New Museum, New York, NY
$10 Members/ $12 General Public
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Rhizome presents Cinema Fury, an action-media performance created by Caden Manson / Big Art Group. Organized by Nick Hallett, Cinema Fury will be an immersive installation and a participatory performance that is designed to bring the audience into the action.

In Cinema Fury, Big Art Group will explore the idea of corruption in the information age, and the chaotic possibilities that arise through errors, glitches, and interruptions within digital transmissions. By reinterpreting models of data transmission and decomposition as performance strategies, Cinema Fury opens new interpretive pathways to understanding the process of contemporary “media-ization.” Concepts of transmogrification, both of the folkloric and post-digital varieties, recur throughout. Big Art Group will draw on material from two upcoming major productions: Flesh Tone (2010) and No Show (2011).

Rhizome Commissions 2010

Thursday January 14th, 7pm
at the New Museum, New York, NY
$6 Members/ $8 General Public
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Each year, Rhizome awards grants to eleven emerging artists for the creation of original works of new media art. Established in 2001, the Rhizome Commissions Program has awarded sixty-four grants throughout its history to projects that have gone on to have a great impact in the field of contemporary art. At this event, recently commissioned artists Kristin Lucas, Joe McKay, Angelo Plessas, Maria del Carmen Montoya and Kevin Pattonwill present and discuss their works in progress.

This program has been made possible with the support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

Case

Sunday, November 22, 1-6pm
at the New Museum, New York, NY
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A Rhizome Commission, presented in collaboration with Performa 09.

Brody Condon will premiere Case, a performance and installation based on the classic cyberpunk novel Neuromancer by William Gibson. The one-day event will combine the dated futurism of Gibson, minimal Bauhaus inspired sculptural props, live electronic music, and readings by non professional actors in a casual installation that will feel like a live dress rehearsal. Gibson’s novel tells the story of the drug addicted computer hacker Case, while exploring the ideas of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, genetic engineering, and multinational corporations overpowering the traditional nation-state, long before these ideas entered popular culture. The book Neuromancer points to a specific and charged cultural period in American culture in the early 1980’s when the countercultural ideologies of the 1960’s and 1970’s were waning as a new generation of conservative political policy was put into place. Evolving from these older countercultural ideologies, “new age” spiritual culture then combined with a technological fetishism that promised a now defunct and dated “virtual reality." Condon’s adaptation will trace the ways Gibson’s futuristic fantasies have played out and connect to the present day.

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

Variety Evening at the New Museum

Friday, October 30th @ 7pm
at the New Museum, New York, NY
$10 Members, $12 General Public
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Berlin-based collective VVORK present a contemporary variety show, composed of daring and experimental translations of original artworks. Variety is inspired by how culture of all kinds--sound, moving image, graphics--cycles easily between states and forms. For this one-night event, local performers will stage works by artists Wojceich Kosma, Adrian Piper, Kristin Lucas, ladimir Nikolic, Tao Lin, Pierre Bismuth and Claire Fontaine. Containing readings, video, performance, dance and music, Variety will present the acts together in a dramaturgy that can be understood as a single performance, allowing for new interpretations of each piece. When finished, the evening will be carried on as a single score, with instructions for how it can be repeated at different venues in the future. VVORK is a website (vvork.com) and curatorial project by artists Aleksandra Domanovic, Oliver Laric, Georg Schnitzer and Christoph Priglinger.

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

This New Silent Series program is made possible by the Austrian Cultural Forum NYC, and the Experimental Television Center, New York.

The Art of Blandman: An evening with Michael Smith

Throughout his career, Michael Smith’s original approach to video, installation, and performance has broken artistic ground—albeit subtly. Steering away from the transgressive actions associated with avant-garde performance, Smith employs the idioms of popular entertainment and comedy to critique culture at large. His eponymous alter ego Mike, who is known for pathologically banal behavior, sends up cultural normalcy and spotlights the ways people consume ideas and lifestyles marketed to them. For this event, New Museum Adjunct Curator and Rhizome Executive Director Lauren Cornell will talk with Smith about his use of comedy, both as a way to engage and quantify audience response and to generate new work. Their conversation will cut through Smith's expansive body of work by focusing on pieces that have been exhibited at the New Museum, including Down in Rec Room, shown in “Not just for Laughs: The Art of Subversion” in 1981; Government Approved Home Fallout Shelter Snackbar (made in collaboration with Alan Herman), shown in “The End of The World” in 1983; and Open House, a site-specific installation by Smith and Joshua White created for the New Museum in 1999.

Image courtesy of Michael Smith

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

New Music Greats: An Evening with Rashaad Newsome

New York artist Rashaad Newsome creates powerful, original collage and performance through composite parts. His practice is based in sampling and interested in the ways picking apart and recombining culturally specific material, like a hip-hop track, can, in the artist’s words, “elicit emotional and visceral responses that can be universally recognized and felt.” For this event, Newsome will discuss his new work, The Conductor, an ambitious six-part video installation that breaks down and re-composes the visual and aural language of hip-hop music videos and top hits. The artist will also discuss his ambitious, recent project Shade Compositions, a live performance featuring a chorus of more than twenty black women that was simultaneously recorded and remixed in real time using a hacked Nintendo® Wii™ game controller.

Image courtesy Jamie Diamond

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

The World Is Flat

Rhizome at X Initiative’s No Soul For Sale: A Festival of Independents

June 24 - 28, 2009, 1-9 pm
Opening reception: June 23, 6-9 pm

548 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011

Free to the public.

Rhizome is pleased to present "The World Is Flat," an exhibition to be included in X Initiative’s No Soul For Sale: A Festival of Independents. Featured artists and collectives include B'L'ing (Chris Moukarbel, Anne Eastman, Amy Yao), Anna Lundh, Oliver Laric, Lizzie Fitch, Alexandre Singh and David Horvitz. Two artist-centered publications, Private Circulation and Free Internet by AIDS-3D, will also be displayed. The exhibition takes the perceived flatness of culture, or the free availability and distribution of information enabled by the Internet, as its departure point. Works included celebrate this availability, such as Oliver Laric’s Touch My Body (Green Screen Version) (2008), a green screen template of Mariah Carey’s hit song which was remixed widely by YouTube users, or B'L'ing’s bootleg trading station and video RGB (2008), while others reveal paranoid fantasies that have emerged in response to increased accessibility of information, as in Anna Lundh’s Hollywood Internet (2008), a video installation that compiles footage from Hollywood films that represent the Internet as a threatening decentralized network. “The World Is Flat” includes installation, collage, sculpture, video as well as internet-based works along with a limited, reading library and a poster. Events include the HEXA_FLEXAGON_F_EVER workshop/performance by Anna Lundh on Saturday June 27th from 2-3pm on the first floor, which will walk participants through the process of hexaflexagon construction and present a short history of the hexaflexagons in the form of a corporate seminar. The workshop is an extension of the artist’s HEXA_FLEXAGON_F_EVER (2008), which investigates the interconnected people and stories surrounding the hexaflexagon, in analog and digital contexts. The event is free.

Curated by Lauren Cornell, Brian Droitcour and Ceci Moss for Rhizome

Silver & Gold: New Performance by Nao Bustamante

Friday, June 19th, 7pm
at the New Museum, New York, NY

An internationally renowned performance artist, Nao Bustamante produces spectacular and witty work that investigates and explodes stereotypes and fantasies about identity. In this ambitious new performance, Bustamante will combine live performance, original costumes, and video to evoke the muse of legendary filmmaker Jack Smith: 1940s Dominican movie starlet Maria Montez.

Curated by Marisa Olson

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

No Fun: Infinite Sound and Image

Saturday, May 16th,3pm at
the New Museum, New York, NY

In its sixth year, the No Fun Festival has emerged as one of the most unique and vital festivals for experimental music worldwide. Curated by No Fun organizer and label head Carlos Giffoni, this special screening will present moving image work by a selection of artists performing in the 2009 Festival. Jim O'Rourke and filmmaker Makino Takashi collaborate on The Seasons, a dense abstract film that fluctuates in tandem with O'Rourke's dramatic and resonant score. Robert Beatty (of Hair Police and Three Legged Race) will provide a live soundtrack to artist Takeshi Murata's hypnotic videos and animations. Experimental filmmaker and sound artist Sarah Lipstate (of Noveller) presents Interior Variations, a collage of 16 mm hand-painted film, black-and-white super 8mm, and found footage, which will be accompanied by a new Noveller composition titled Telecine. Dominick Fernow/Prurient will screen spins the worlds wheel again, a short film inspired by his 180-page hardcover book of collages, Rose Pillar published by Heartworm Press,which deals directly with mortality within the family structure. Sound artist/composer C. Spencer Yeh (of Burning Star Core), known for his arrangements that draw on both aural and physical experience, will premiere a new work using voice as its central component. Megan Ellis and Carlos Giffoni will also showcase a new piece, created specifically for this show, which will pair minimalist visuals with an evolving electronic sound score.

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

Experimental Geography: An Aesthetic Investigation of Space

Saturday, March 21st, 3pm at
the New Museum, New York, NY

Creative Time curator Nato Thompson will lead a discussion of Experimental Geography with Lize Mogel and Damon Rich, two artists who participated in his exhibition (for Independent Curators International) and book (Melville House) of the same name.

The discussion will focus on the creative use of landscape hacking, cartography, locative media, and radical urbanism as a means of engaging with the politics of contested spaces. In presenting work from the show and book, the panelists will explore the distinctions between geographical study and artistic experience of the earth, and the juncture where the two realms collide.

Jill Magid: Permission as Material

Friday, February 20th, 7PM at
the New Museum, New York, NY

Jill Magid is a visual artist working in a variety of media including literature, video, sculpture, photography, and performance. Magid seeks intimate relations with impersonal structures. She is intrigued by hidden information, being public as a condition for existence, and intimacy in relation to power and observation.

At this event, Magid will discuss recent projects and touch upon her new body of work currently in progress. Magid has had solo exhibitions at Stroom, the Hague, Gagosian, New York, Yvon Lambert, Paris, Centre D'arte Santa Monica, Berlin and Sparwasser in Berlin. She has lectured and performed widely at venues including Orchard, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Eyebeam and the Bowery Poetry Club.

Naeem Mohaiemen: Young Man Was No Longer A...

Friday, January 30th, 7PM at
the New Museum, New York, NY

Naeem Mohaiemen will present excerpts from a project in progress that investigates failed 1970s revolutionary movements. This event will be a lecture where Mohaiemen presents his research tied to our present moment through personal anecdote and historical commentary.

Mohaiemen is a writer and artist based in Dhaka and New York City, whose work has been shown internationally at the UK House of Lords (Human Rights Commission side-session), Berlin Transmediale, Finnish Museum of Photography, Dhaka Gallery Chitrak, Dubai Third Line and Singapore Flying Circus. He also works on activist projects around religious and ethnic minorities in Bangladesh, particularly army-occupied Chittagong Hill Tracts. Portions of Young Man Was No Longer A... is a Rhizome 2009 Commission.

Craft Hackers

Friday, December 12th, 7:30
the New Museum, New York, NY

Craft Hackers is a panel discussion among artists who use crafting techniques to explore high tech culture and the relationship between needlework and computer programming.

Featured artists include panelists Cat Mazza who translates moving images into knit stills; Christy Matson, who uses Jacquard Looms (some of the earliest computers) to knit landscape images from computer games; Ben Fino-Radin, whose witty needlepoint sculptures translate the world wide web into yarn and plastic, one pixel at a time; and Cody Trepte, whose embroidery of retired computer punch cards rekindles an old-fashioned love affair with the hand of the artist.

Continual Partial Awareness: Premiere of a new performance by Cory Arcangel

Friday, November 14th at 8:30pm
the New Museum, New York, NY
$8 General/ $6 Members

"This performance is going to be about 'Continuous Partial Awareness' -- a phrase that was first described to me as meaning 'you know, like, when you have 3 IM windows open, 2 email inboxs dinging away, are txting 5 different people, and also have 5 tabs open on your browser, each with updated content.' It is about paying attention to everything all the time, but not really concentrating on anything. It is different from multitasking, because with multitasking, one actually is expected to concentrate on tasks at some point, even if in small doses.

'Continuous Partial Awareness' is the eroded degenerate modern version of multitasking. I still dont know how this performance will take shape, it might be a lecture, a music show, a broadcast, a chess game, etc, etc, but what I do know is that the feeling of 'non-concentration' that has seeped into today's life through our flat screen displays and wifi will be its starting point." -- Cory Arcangel

Next Level: New Independent Gaming

Friday, October 10th, 7:30pm
the New Museum, New York, NY

Bringing together prominent game designers, artists and critics, Next Level takes a look at the recent rise of indie gaming: a vibrant new culture of individually made and self-distributed video games that blur the line between digital art and creative entertainment.

Featuring artist and game designers Mark Essen, Jason Rohrer and Greg Costikyan. Moderated by Rhizome staff writer Ed Halter, an author, critic, and curator whose book From Sun Tzu to Xbox: War and Video Games was published in 2006.

Part of the New Silent Series

Rhizome Commissions '08

Saturday, October 11 at 3pm
the New Museum, New York, NY

The last in a three-part series that features presentations by artists awarded grants through Rhizome's Commissions Program. Founded in 2001 to support artists working with technology, the Rhizome Commissions Program has awarded fifty-four commissions to date. Projects realized through the Program represent some of the most forward-thinking and innovative works of media and Internet-based art.

In this evening's program, the artists will discuss their commissioned projects and larger bodies of work. This event features Will Pappenheimer, John Craig Freeman, Annie Abrahams, Nadia Anderson and Fritz Donnelly, Lee Walton, Marek Walczak, and Martin Wattenberg.

The Scale of Intervention

Co-organized by Conflux
Moderated by Wooster Collective with CutUp Collective, Leon Reid IV (of Darius + Downey), Betsey Biggs, Roadsworth

Friday, September 5th, 7:30pm
the New Museum, New York, NY

Co-organized by Conflux, an annual festival dedicated to psychogeography, and moderated by the founders of the celebrated street art website Wooster Collective, this panel will look at possibilities for artistic disruption within urban environments. Taking its name from a film by the London-based Cutup Collective, which plays with the viewer's perception of a street scene, the panel will feature artists whose work ranges across a variety of mediums and materials. From reformulation of billboard advertisements into powerful, politically-oriented collages to the subversive reformulation of street signs, such as pedestrian crossings and bike lanes, the featured artists will demonstrate how they dislodge the customary navigation and perception of urban space.

Rhizome Commissions 08: Conversations with Mushon Zer-Aviv, Dan Phiffer, David Nolen, Carolyn Strauss and Melanie Crean, Moderated by Rhizome Editor Ceci Moss

Friday August 8th, 7:30pm
the New Museum, New York, NY

The second in a three-part series that features presentations by artists awarded grants through Rhizome's Commissions Program. Founded in 2001 to support artists working with technology, the Rhizome Commissions Program has awarded fifty-four commissions to-date. Projects realized through the Program represent some of the most forward-thinking and innovative works of media and internet-based art. In this evening's program, the artists will discuss their commissioned projects and larger bodies of work.

The Technology Readings

Friday July 11th, 7:30pm
the New Museum, New York, NY

A group of New York comedians perform readings on the joys and pitfalls of a technology-saturated culture. The evening will include Chelsea Peretti, Amy Poehler, John Roberts, Joe Mande, Anthony Atamanuik and Laura Krafft, many whom are notable for gaining fame on the internet, from Roberts' Youtube monologues to Peretti's episodic online shows including the 6-part series "All My Exes."

Net Aesthetics 2.0

Friday June 6th, 7:30pm
the New Museum, New York, NY

Convening leading artists, critics and curators, this panel will look at the state of contemporary art engaged with the internet art today. The second in a series of Net Aesthetics 2.0 events, the panelists will explore the newest directions and greatest challenges faced by this expansive field. Panelists include artists Petra Cortright, Jennifer and Kevin Mccoy, Tom Moody, Tim Whidden and Damon Zucconi and will be moderated by curator, critic and Rhizome staff writer Ed Halter.

Presented in conjunction with

Rhizome Commissions 08: Conversation with Rafael Rozendaal, Evan Roth, Eteam and Steve Lambert

Thursday May 22nd, 7:30pm
the New Museum, New York, NY

The Rhizome Commissions Program was founded in 2001 to provide support to emerging artists working with new technologies. The forty-four works commissioned to date represent some of the most innovative, pioneering efforts in the field. At the New Museum on May 22nd, several artists who received support in the 2008 cycle will present their finished projects as well as other select projects. Artists to present include Evan Roth, Eteam (Hajoe Moderegger and Franziska Lamprecht), Steve Lambert and Rafael Rozendaal.

2008 Commissioned projects:
http://www.rhizome.org/commissions/2008/

This event was generously supported by the Consulate General of the Netherlands.

Rhizome Benefit

May 15th, 7:00pm
Participant Inc
253 E Houston Street

To purchase tickets:
Online: http://www.rhizome.org/benefit
By phone: (212) 219-1222 x 232

Founded in 1996 as a leading organization for digital art, Rhizome continues to break new ground through presenting and supporting emerging art forms that engage new technologies. On May 15, the Rhizome Benefit will celebrate the organization's singular mission with a night of performance and live music, featuring Shana Moulton, High Places, and MEN, and will honor two individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the field of art and technology: Lynn Hershman Leeson, pioneering artist, and Joshua Shachter, influential founder of the web application, del.icio.us. A special silent Benefit auction will offer works by a group of exciting artists.

All event proceeds go towards Rhizome's programs, including commissions, exhibitions & events, criticism, and resources, such as their active website which serves as a connecting point for the artists, curators and community that is dynamically moving this field forward.

Blank Spots on a Map: State Secrecy and the Limits of the Visible

Friday May 9th, 7:30 PM
the New Museum, New York, NY

Geographer and artist Trevor Paglen takes us on a road trip through the world of hidden budgets, state secrets, covert military bases, and disappeared people: through a landscape that military and intelligence insiders call the "black world." Over the course of his talk, Paglen leads us from "non-existent" Air Force and CIA installations in the Nevada desert to secret prisons in Afghanistan and to a collection of even more obscure "black sites" startlingly close to home. Using hundreds of images he has produced and collected over the course of his work, Paglen shows how the black world's internal contradictions give rise to a peculiar visual, aesthetic, and epistemological grammar with which to think about the contemporary moment.

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Part of the New Silent Series

Election '08: How the Internet is Re-shaping National Politics

Friday April 11th, 7:30 PM
the New Museum, New York, NY

Grassroots organizations like MoveOn.org and Meetup.com played a significant role in the lead-up to the 2004 presidential election. Campaign '08 has thus far been a very different project, with some of its most crucial points playing out across YouTube.com, viral marketing, and blogs. For Election '08, leading critics, artists, and media strategists will address the increasing role the Internet and digital technologies have come to play in national politics and focus specifically on the ways new media have been used for advocacy in the run-up to the election.

The panel will be moderated by Jason Pontin, Chief Editor of the MIT Technology Review; Panelists include Farai Chideya, host of NPR's News and Notes, and founder of PopandPolitics.com; Jonathan Askin, a strategist on Barack Obama's Technology Advisory Board and Professor at Brooklyn Law School; Beka Economopoulos, artist and founder of Not An Alternative; and Liza Sabater, founder and publisher of Culture Kitchen and Daily Gotham.

Part of the New Silent Series

Media Art in the Age of Transgenics, Cloning and Genomics

Friday, March 14, 7:30 PM
the New Museum, New York, NY

Police may be given power to take DNA samples in the street; Patent sought on ‘synthetic life;’ First designer babies to beat breast cancer; Bacteria that grow nanoscale electronic wires; Race to be first to ‘hibernate’ human beings; Skimmed milk direct from the ‘magic cow’.

These lines above are headlines taken from the BBC News, The New Scientist, The Guardian and The New York Times, amongst others sources. Each of them speaks to the increasingly pervasive role biology is seen to play in international society and our lives – a role that artists are responding to with a diverse array of practices. Some have started to collaborate with research labs to engage with organic materials; others buy DIY biology sets reminiscent of the early computer kits of the late 70s. All are getting their hands into the material of life itself to reflect upon some of the most complex issues society has to deal with the integration of biotechnology in quotidian life processes and the ethical, cultural, and even political consequences of scientific discovery.

Organized and to be moderated by Regine Debatty, blogger of we-make-money-not-art.com, this panel will explore what is commonly known as 'bio-art' through presentations by four bio-artists Caitlin Berrigan, Adam Zaretsky, Brandon Ballengee and Kathy High.

Part of the New Silent Series

Michael Bell-Smith, William Boling, Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung, and Nina Katchadourian discuss Montage: Unmonumental Online

Saturday, Feb. 16, 3:00 PM
the New Museum, New York, NY
Free with Museum admission but tickets are required*

Rhizome Curator at Large Marisa Olson leads a conversation with four artists from Montage: Unmonumental Online. Michael Bell-Smith, William Boling, Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung, and Nina Katchadourian will give brief presentations of their work and join in a roundtable discussion of their diverse approaches to practices of appropriating, sampling, remixing, and otherwise responding to found material, online.

*This event is free, but tickets are required. Please request a ticket for this event in person at the Visitor Desk the day of the event. Advance reservations are not available.

Nextcity: The Art of the Possible

Friday, Feb. 8, 7:00 PM
the New Museum, New York, NY
$8 general public, $6 Members

Emergent digital technologies are rapidly changing both the face of our cities and our daily experience of them, whether invoked in the production of architectural form, the representation of urban space, or our interface to the locative and other services newly available there. Dynamic maps update in real time; garments and spaces deform in response to environmental, biological and even psychological conditions. We find our very emotions made visible, public, and persistently retrievable. Somewhere along the way, we find our notions of public space, participation, and what it means to be urban undergoing the most profound sort of change.

Featured projects by Stamen Design, J. Meejin Yoon, and Christian Nold blur the boundaries between art, design and technological development. Moderated and introduced by Everyware author Adam Greenfield.

Part of the New Silent Series

Continuing Education for Dead Adults

Friday, Jan. 11, 7:00 PM
the New Museum, New York, NY
$8 general public, $6 Members

Three multi-media performances that riff off the consequences of youth pop culture and adolescent education. East Coast collective Paper Rad premieres two videos: "Problem Solvers" (20 min, 2008) and a short entitled "crank dat spongebob batman dropdead robocop" (3 min, 2008), a ride through Youtube narcissism. New York artist Ben Coonley presents a new performance entitled 'Kindred Spirits is the Working Title,' (15 min, 2008) and Providence-based experimental band Wizardzz (featuring members of Lightning Bolt) will perform in front of a mesmeric animated tapestry composed of images taken from the Web.

Part of the New Silent Series

Nowadays: A Conversation and Screening with Ryan Trecartin

Friday, Dec. 14, 2007 7:00 PM
the New Museum, New York, NY
$8 general public, $6 Members

Riotous and multi-layered, Ryan Trecartin's ambitious videos update moving image practice for the Internet age. His fast-growing body of work explores the impulses and attitudes of a generation whose self-perceptions and relationships are deeply tied to media. Often structured like iChat dialogues, Trecartin’s narratives ricochet between characters and actions, gleaning information and enacting existential dramas at hyper-speed. His characters, all constructed collaboratively with his actors, include independent avatars, people composites, culture collectors, and cyber queers—all twisted and true emblems of what the artist calls "a potential part-cyber today." This conversation between Trecartin and Lauren Cornell, Director of Rhizome, will feature short videos and excerpts from A Family Finds Entertainment (2004) and I-Be AREA (2007).

Ryan Trecartin lives and works in Philadelphia. He has had solo exhibitions at Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York; Crane Arts, Philadelphia; and QED, Los Angeles.

A screening of I-Be AREA will take place on December 8. See that date for details.

Part of the New Silent Series

I-Be AREA, 2007, Ryan Trecartin

Saturday, Dec. 8, 2007 3:00 PM
the New Museum, New York, NY
$8 general public, $6 Members

Trecartin's first feature-length video I-Be AREA extends the artist's singular process and style into new territory. Fast-paced and dense with drama, I-Be AREA relates the intertwined stories of an exuberant ensemble, played by Trecartin and dozens of others, as they cope with themes such as cloning, adoption, self-mediation, lifestyle options, and virtual identities. The film centers around Jaime's Area (played by Lizzie Fitch), a space which functions, in the artist's words, as a kind of "bedroom/classroom/drama department/blog space/Internet-community site where the characters malfunction in the face of everything being everything and come to act on their own creative potential."

Ryan Trecartin lives and works in Philadelphia. He has had solo exhibitions at Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York; Crane Arts, Philadelphia; and QED, Los Angeles.

The artist will discuss his practice with Lauren Cornell, Director of Rhizome, on December 14. See that date for details.

Part of the New Silent Series

Panel Discussion: Sousveillance Culture

Saturday, September 15, 2007, 2:30pm - 4:00pm
Luna Lounge, Brooklyn, NY

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.

RHIZOME BENEFIT CONCERT

Hiro Ballroom in the Maritime Hotel, NYC
April 16, 2007

On April 16, 2007, Rhizome presented a Benefit Concert featuring three genre-bending bands: Gang Gang Dance, Professor Murder and YACHT. Each band integrates a wide range of musical influences and instruments to create innovative sounds and performance styles. This line-up of new music celebrated Rhizome's commitment to emerging forms of art across digital technology and sound. The evening was introduced and emceed by computer artist Cory Arcangel, and also included a Silent Auction with work by artists, such as Kristin Lucas and Alex Galloway, who work with the Internet.

RECEPTION FOR THE COLLEGE ART ASSOCIATION

Foxy Production Gallery, NYC
February 16, 2007

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Last February Rhizome hosted a reception for College Art Association (CAA) at Foxy Production Gallery, where we had the exhibition Networked Nature. This show was selected as this year's CAA Annual Exhibition and also concluded Rhizome's Tenth Anniversary Festival of Art & Technology.

PANEL DISCUSSION 'OPEN SOURCE: ON THE LINE'

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, NYC
Dec. 4, 2006

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The discussion explored open source practice and philosophy in programming, arts and culture, and also touched upon recent threats to its continuation. Panelists included Wikipedia pioneer Daniel Mayer, artists Joy Garnett and Cory Arcangel, our Director of Technology Patrick May and lawyer Laura Quilter.

This event was part of Rhizome's Tenth Anniversary Festival.

A CONVERSATION WITH OLIA LIALINA

Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, NYC
November 2, 2006

In conjunction with the exhibition On and Off at the Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, celebrated artist and net.art pioneer Olia Lialina discussed her work with curator Caitlin Jones. Using her iconic work My Boyfriend Came Back from the War as a springboard, Lialina addressed issues such as the changing aesthetic and thematic landscape of the web, new models of authorship and participation; and the outward expansion of network based ideas and practice into off-line spaces and contexts.

This event was part of Rhizome's Tenth Anniversary Festival.

RHIZOME COMMISSIONS 2005-2006

The New Museum Store, NYC
October 24, 2006

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The Rhizome Commissions Program makes financial support available to artists for the creation of original works of Internet-based art. In 2005, Rhizome awarded eleven grants to an international group of artists. This evening celebrated eleven projects were awarded grants for the 2005-2006 cycle with a one-night installation and presentations by several of the commissioned artists.

SHOW & TELL

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC
Oct. 17, 2006

Activists Tara Mateik, founder of the Society for Biological Insurgents, and the Yes Men, an "identity correction" collective, speak about their use of "disinformation" and tactical media as an attempt to shift balances of power.

This event was part of Rhizome's Tenth Anniversary Festival.

THEY HEART A COMPUTER

The Kitchen, NYC
October 3, 2006

This evening of live performances and video screenings explores forms of expression, desire and anxiety prevalent in a culture increasingly influenced by the Internet. Doo Man Group (made of Ben Jones, Jessica Ciocci, and Jacob Ciocci of Paper Rad) interweaves live percussion with a dense collage of web-based visual emphemera. Jona Bechtolt (of Yacht) and Claire L. Evans combine music, dance and Powerpoint to explore the possibilities and fallacies embedded in online communities. In addition, videos by Michael Bell-Smith, JODI, Shana Moulton, Takeshi Murata, and humorist Ze Frank investigate how the Internet amplifies and exagerates life offline.

This event was part of Rhizome's Tenth Anniversary Festival.

CELEBRATING NEW MEDIA SCHOLARSHIP: Art, Play, and Community

A Book Event
The New Museum Store, NYC
September 8, 2006

Launch party recognizing important contributions to the new media art field. This installment in the CNMS series was a joint release for Alexander Galloway's Gaming (University of Minnesota Press) and Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito's At the Edge of Art (Thames and Hudson).

This event was part of Rhizome's Tenth Anniversary Festival.

BRAVE NEW WORLDS

Scope Art Fair Hamptons
July 14, 2006

Featuring artists: Nate Boyce, VJ Motomichi and Bit Shifter, E*Rock and Takeshi Murata.

CELEBRATING NEW MEDIA SCHOLARSHIP

A Book Event
The New Museum Store, NYC
June 15, 2006

As part of Celebrating New Media Scholapships, release party for From Sun Tzu to Xbox; War and Video Games by Ed Halter.

CELEBRATING NEW MEDIA SCHOLARSHIP

A Book Event
The New Museum Store, NYC
June 2, 2006

Celebrating New Media Scholapships are a series of book releases that recognize important contributions to the new media field. Including works from an international range of new media scholars and critic, this first event was the release party for New Media Art: Art in the Age of Digital Communication by Reena Jana and Mark Tribe.

JODI
Max Payne Cheats Only: Demo and Q&A

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), NYC
May 10, 2006

EAI and Rhizome present renowned digital artists JODI in a rare public demonstration of their latest video game modifications, Max Payne Cheats Only. The work is a series of "cheats": alterations to the behavior of a video game that are often built in by the original programmers to help players who have reached an impasse. JODI has compiled cheats from the ultra-violent New York vigilante game, Max Payne. Their live demonstration will be followed by an in-depth discussion and question and answer session hosted by media art curator Caitlin Jones.

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SURGE

January 10 - March 31, 2006

An online exhibition of web-based projects selected from an open call for submissions, organized by free103point9 and Rhizome. Surge includes works by artists 31 Down, Abe Linkoln and Marisa Olson, Angel Nevarez and Alex Rivera, NYSAE (New York Society for Acoustic Ecology), Jim Punk, and Leslie Sharpe. The featured projects employ new media tools to both conceptually and formally address different possibilities for transmission art online. Some consider the nature of signals as they move through the ether; others appropriate forms of wireless transmission, such as the military's aerial 'drone' or the data format ASCII, to propose new kinds of digital communication.

Surge Live, a reception to celebrate the exhibition took place on March 28th, 2006 at Participant, Inc. gallery. Presentations were given by several of the featured artists: 31 Down, Angel Nevarez, and NYSAE (New York Society for Acoustic Ecology)

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ALL SYSTEMS GO

~Scope-New York Art Fair, NYC
March 10 - 13, 2006

Part of the Curator's Choice program at this year's Scope-New York Art Fair, All Systems Go! features high-tech, low-tech, and hybrid work exploring digital, representational, political, and social systems. This exhibition constitutes an expansion of Rhizome's mission to connect art and technology. The artists comment on systems, in their various forms and themes, with works ranging from computer, video, and electronic installations to drawings, paintings, and sculpture. Here, technology is not the sole tool or object at play, but is often an indirect subject -- a backdrop on the social landscape within which all art practice now occurs. The harmony or dischord between these installations pinpoint areas of overlap between the various systems now navigated by each of us living in a technological society. The show is, thus, an update on the established field of 'systems art,' from the perspective of contemporary culture and practice.

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NET AESTHETICS 2.0

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), NYC
February 6, 2006

EAI and Rhizome presented a panel that will consider current expressions of Internet art in light of larger technological and cultural shifts. Over the past ten years, Internet-based art has transformed, moving away from a medium defined by an intimate, international avant-garde towards a more loose and dispersed range of conceptual and formal practices. This development has, in large part, to do with the expanded and diversified terrain of the Web itself. What was previously a thin network of interlinked pages, construction signs, and awkward animated gifs is now a sprawling area, home to some of the best new business models, largest communities, and billions of users both amateur and expert---a second stage some call the "Web 2.0." Now, artists working on, or drawing source material from the Internet, face not only a faster, richer, more complicated landscape, but also one whose parameters for art practice are continually being pushed out by artists and non-artists alike.

For this panel, artists Cory Arcangel, Michael Bell-Smith, Marisa Olson, and Wolfgang Staehle will join curators Caitlin Jones and Michael Connor to discuss how the nature of online practice has changed over Internet art's first decade. Panelists will touch upon current themes and trends including performance, contagion, sampling, blogging, video and animation, and the ongoing challenges of translating Internet-based art into gallery and museum spaces.

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CRAP-TOPS vs. LAPTOPS

MonkeyTown, Williamsburg (Broolkyn)
January 20, 2006

Computer-generated music made with 8-bit and 32-bit technologies come together in this evening of video and multimedia performance. Employing a range of materials, be they hacked Atari consoles or more recent software, the artists demonstrate a common interest in 'dirt style' and bringing the obsolete to colorful and rhythmic life. Presenting opposing ends of the hi-tech (laptops) to low-end (craptops) spectrum, the line-up will reveal how blurry the ratio of bits involved in sound production can become. Can you tell whether the sizzle of static or a chorus of 8-bit bleeps has been made with the Nintendo Gameboy you trashed or the G5 you covet? Join us on January 20th to test your ears and eyes. With videos by Paper Rad, Treewave, and E*Rock. Live performances by LoVid, Bit Shifter, Nullsleep, Y.A.C.H.T. and NOTENDO.

Organized by Ashley Colgate for Rhizome