blog
Can’t believe it – I won my case against the King of Bureaucracy aka the German Pension Fund. The €5000+ bill that randomly arrived in my letterbox 18 months ago has been completely cancelled AND they are paying all my lawyer fees. Miracles happen!
Tomorrow night at Boiler Room!
If you’re in Berlin next weekend, join us at Supermarkt for our WORKAROUND Conference on new forms of work, alternative models of self-employment and the evolution of freelancing.
So chuffed to have been selected as one of 45 participants in the European Festivals Association (EFA)’s 2013 Atelier for Young Festival Managers, this October in Beirut. Excited to have the opportunity to be trained and mentored by international festival royalty including Robyn Archer, Rose Fenton, Nele Hertling, Jonathan Mills and many more.
Image: Beirut by Spencer Platt, 2006 World Press Photo of the Year
Here’s a great feature on Illuminations of Wedding in Greece’s OZON Magazine. Kristin Trethewey and I curated this three-day event, consisting of a group exhibition, panel discussion and workshop, in January 2013 at Wedding-based creative resource centre SUPERMARKT. Click on the image to read the article as a PDF (in Greece and English).
Hello! You are invited to a special event in Berlin next Tuesday evening entitled BERLIN’S MEDIA ART COMMUNITY: A Female Perspective, curated and moderated by myself and Ela Kagel. All information on the event can be found below. I hope you can join us. Best wishes, Michelle
—
BERLIN’S MEDIA ART COMMUNITY: A FEMALE PERSPECTIVE
Tuesday 9 April 2013, 18:30—23:00 at SUPERMARKT
Featuring presentations from Tatiana Bazzichelli, Valie Djordjevic, Andrea Goetzke, Kathy Rae Huffman, Claudia Kefer, Julia Kloiber, Lisa Lang, Tina Mariane Krogh Madsen, Diana McCarty & Michelle Thorne // Moderated by Ela Kagel & Michelle O’Brien
Berlin has a rich and long-standing tradition of women engaged in the fields of media arts, media activism and digital culture. Today over half of Berlin’s independent project spaces and initiatives revolving around the themes of tech, media and digital culture are run by women. A broad range of female curators and activists continue to shape net politics – initiating independent programmes, hosting events and leading research at Berlin’s universities. Despite this large female contingent, and in a city where the workforce is generally evenly distributed, it is at odds that the theoretical discourse on media art and net activism, executive roles and directorships, as well panelists and participants at events and festivals, are still male-dominated. In a forward-thinking city like Berlin, this ongoing gap should be addressed so that the wider fields of media arts and activism are fully inclusive of the multitude of female skills and viewpoints on offer.
At this event, SUPERMARKT highlights and showcases a selection of the women who have played an important role in shaping the profile of Berlin as a digital culture city. We will learn more about their history, career paths, and the narratives of their work and life. Ten inspiring women in the field will join us, and answer questions against the backdrop of their own lives and careers, including what drives them to continue the work they do, what have been the crucial moments of their careers, and who are their professional mentors, support networks, and inspirations. This evening will provide an opportunity to get to know this community, share inspirations, identify trending themes in the field, and gauge both common resources and grounds for future collaborations. Whilst the focus of this event will be on the diversity of Berlin’s female media art community, of course anyone is invited to attend.
Language: The language of this event will be English
Cost: This event is free // please email rsvp@supermarkt-berlin.net to register your attendance
Address: SUPERMARKT – Brunnenstr 64, 13355 Berlin (U8 Voltastr or U8 Bernauerstr)
Photo: © Ars Electronica | Susi Rogenhofer, Flickr CC Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 license
The cover of TJ Eckleberg‘s new album This Might Feel Like Home, featuring my photography.
This image was shot on Main Street, in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant district in summer 2012.
Thinking of my beautiful bro-and-sis-in-law Andy Bull & Renee Avgoustinos as they prepare to get hitched in the Hunter Valley tomorrow.
Sending lots of love from snowy Berlin x
“We are in danger of overlooking a simple yet crucial point: the greatest value of the arts – to individuals and to local communities – is through participation in them, rather than merely being exposed to them as spectators … We talk endlessly about the need for ‘balance’, by which we usually mean the balance between work, family and leisure. But there’s another quite magical possibility: balancing the stresses, disappointments and tedium of life with the therapeutic release of tension through some form of regular creative outlet.” – Arts Hub. Read more: http://ow.ly/hWm7y
Smelly homeless folk, corporates in suits, screaming babies, punks with dogs, professors, naughty school kids, hipsters, accordion-playing gypsies, and everyone in between. I love the many walks of life that inhabit Berlin’s metro, day and night. One day I’ll make a documentary about this unique urban space.
Here is a video feature on Illuminations of Wedding, a three-day event I curated in January 2013 at SUPERMARKT, Berlin. The event included a large-scale group exhibition of media, video and sound art installations, a live audio visual performance comprised of user-submitted found sounds and visuals from set GPS coordinates surrounding the venue, a panel discussion and community-focused workshop on themes of urbanism, and artistic expressions of localities in periods of social and economic transition.
Furthermore, here is an editorial feature on the event, published in Greece’s national OZON Magazine.
The Silent City: Digitally Assembled Futuristic Megalopolises by Yang Yongliang. Made from hundreds of photographic artifacts.