The Art and Politics of Netporn
Institute for Network Cultures
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
6-7 October 2005
Abstracts for papers/panels or art/media projects are due by March 15. Click here for the full CFP.
WHAT IS NETPORN? Web-based media and environments that filter porn images and traffic between industries and art/indie cultures, corporations, ISP’s and net users; involving daily (female and male) activities such as blogging, webcamming, chatting, binging on porn
portals, p2p porn, live journals, confession boards, mailing lists and zines.
THEORY AND POLITICS: New waves of netporn censorship have a clear affect on artistic freedom and our sexual bodies. We would like to engage in discussions of globalization, freedom of speech, (self) censorhip and government/institutional surveillance of traffic, of sex cultures and networked minorities. Does netporn corroborate the image regimes of ‘cruelty,’ a wide-spread creation of appetite for violence, terrorism, war on innocence and sexual otherness, openness. What are the alternatives?
ART PROJECTS: We are looking for new openings, new definitions and articulation of pornography, ‘art’ as solo path or collaborative wisdom, a tactical media approach to netporn for belly wisdom and processing media histories. As Matteo Pasquinelli ponders in ‘Warporn Warpunk! Autonomous Videopoesis in Wartime,’ we are grinning monkeys who seek war and torture news as a type of pornography, but can we use netporn to nurture our inner beasts and media intellects?
DISCUSSIONS: Netporn is an intricate fabrication of desires and mechanisms of repression. Debate means recognizing and re-drawing the contours of hype and hysteria, of polemics and polarization, discussing netporn as local and global phantasms, or cross-fertilization between economies, desire and art/queer politics. Discussions will be opened February 2005 on a web-based mailinglist and will continue in plenary sessions at the conference.
Please submit 250-word abstracts for papers/panels, or art/media projects about the following topics. In your abstracts indicate what type of media you need for your presentation, and please include an address where you can be reached.
Censorship
Representation
Aesthetics
Traffic
Games
P2p
Economy
Politics
Queer/gender/gay
Feminism
War porn
Punk Porn
Media-archeology
Geographies
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DEADLINE: March 15, 2005
PLEASE SEND YOUR ABSTRACTS to:
The Institute of Network Cultures (INC), which was set up in June 2004, caters to research, meetings and (online) initiatives in the area of internet and new media. Not only will the INC facilitate, but also initiate and produce a range of projects. Its goal is to create an open organizational form with a strong focus on content, within which ideas (emanating from both individuals and institutions) can be given an institutional context at an early stage. Based on the fusion of old and new media, the INC aims to organize both public and internal meetings and to formulate new research.
Katrien Jacobs, guest scholar-curator for the Netporn Conference. Jacobs is a scholar in the field of digital art and culture who has published on netporn, sex art, censorhip and lectured widely on related topics. She has a Ph.D. degree in comparative literature and media from UMCP, with a thesis on dismemberment myths and rituals in 1960s/1970s art and media. She has worked as web presence(s) and recently finished her book ‘Libidoc: Journeys in the Performance of Sex Art.’ (Parlor Press) www.libidot.org
Geert Lovink, founder of the Institute of Network Cultures. Geert Lovink is a Dutch-Australian media theorist and activist. Since January 2004 appointed as senior researcher/associated professor at Amsterdam University (HvA/UvA). He is organizer of conferences, festivals and (online) publications and the founder of numerous Internet projects such as www.nettime.org and www.fibreculture.org . He recently published Dark Fiber (2002), Uncanny Networks (2002) and My First Recession (2003). Email: geert@xs4all.nl. For more information: www.laudanum.net/geert.
Sabine Niederer, producer and researcher Institute of Network Cultures. Sabine Niederer graduated in 2003 as an art historian at Utrecht University, with a thesis on manipulated art photography from Dada – now. In 2003, she worked as producer of the internationalgames conference Level Up. From 2001-2004 she worked as curator of Hoogt4, the platform of film-related arts at Filmtheatre ‘t Hoogt in Utrecht. Until recently she taught (media) theory at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. Sabine Niederer is one of the editors of the bimonthly film and video program ‘Cinematiek’. Email: sabine@networkcultures.org. For more information: www.niederer.info
