carter writes:

Scandinavian Exhibition on American Activist Art

After spending one month in Vancouver, B.C., working with Adbusters I came to New York yesterday. I am curating an exhibition with the name "America vs. America". We want to give activists and artists a medium to speak to an audience of 7 cities in Scandinavia during spring and summer of 2005. The process of this fall's work and the response we get on the exhibition in Scandinavia will be put together into a documentary film. The idea is to try and create contacts across the Atlantic and to show the Scandinavian people a little bit of what the grassroots in the US are doing. We do this because we know that not all americans are stupid, ignorant, lazy Hollywood-plastics who vote for Bush and think that war is a good thing for democracy — many people in Europe and Scandinavia do think that way though.

A Review of "The Take"

Daniel Morduchowicz, ZNet

In the early 90’s, Argentina was largely regarded in the mainstream as
the poster child for neoliberal globalization. Time magazine announced,
in one of its covers, “Menem’s Miracle”, referring to the country’s
president at the time and his success in turning the economy around
after many decades of serious downturn. Moreover, he did so by adhering
strictly to the mandates of the IMF and the World Bank, privatizating
everything in sight and putting every state owned company up for a fire
sale.

"Splendid Isolation: Urban and Rural Flows and Counterflows in Electronic
Music and Related Media"

February 10-12, 2005, Berlin, Germany

Held in conjunction with club transmediale.05 [BASICS]

The relationship between communication technologies and the city has been a
long and complicated one, where the density of communicative activity has
often been taken as defining characteristic of urban life. By contrast,
rural areas have been idealized and marked by the relative absence of these
technologies, a perception which tends to obscure the social and spatial
consequences of communication technologies in rural areas. Out of this
dichotomous set of associations has emerged a constellation of forces,
ideas, images and experiences which have defined both the city and rural
zones in unique and singular ways.

DVDs

The Velvet Light Trap

A Critical Journal of Film & Television

Issue Number 56, Fall 2005

Issue Theme: DVDs

Less than a decade after their entry into the market, the impact of DVDs has already become visible in media production strategies, legal and economic policy, marketing and distribution, exhibition environments, and audience reception habits. Decisions on style and content during shooting of film and television programs increasingly take into consideration possibilities for cross-media consumption. Recent years have also seen increased visibility of short forms such as making-of documentaries and other bonus features. Direct to consumer sales have created lucrative markets for otherwise marginal films and television programs and have affected habits of consumption. The home viewing environment, finally, opens possibilities for interfaces with other end-user entertainment technologies.

The Velvet Light Trap invites papers exploring issues surrounding DVD technology as part of audiovisual culture and practice. In addition to papers focusing on technology, we seek papers that examine DVDs in relation to questions of aesthetics, narrative construction, genre, production, promotion/distribution, exhibition, and reception — including issues of economic consumption and cultural use — from local, national, or global perspectives.