Turntablist Mike Hansen at 'The Communism of Forms'; at the Art Gallery of York University, Toronto Radio/performer and turntablist Mike Hansen is one of more than 50 international artists featuring music video as a lively artistic medium which redefines both Pop music and art on occasion of the exhibition 'The Communism of Forms'. The curators Fernando Oliva and Marcelo Rezende explain the title with a definition by the French critic/curator Nicolas Bourriaud from his publication 'Postproduction' (Les Presses du Réel, Paris, 2003). In this exhibition communism of forms means that artists and spectators interact with the help of new media such as the internet. How much this has to do with communism as a political system or economic theory about eliminating private property isn't further discussed: probably because today's society of a post-communist era has learnt to pick the best from all political directions - even from communism - with the conviction that the elimination of private property would cause the deletion of individuality.
The exhibition isn't propagating the elimination of property rights of music producers, artists, writers...; the inherent meaning of the title 'The Communism of Form' reflects the current trend in our global society to keep up the international interaction between artists, spectators, curators... in an emancipated, 'backcoupling' communication.
"The idea of appropriation, collage, assemblage – as technique, quotation or means of arriving at a pastiche – was a constant in the avant-garde processes established in the first half of the twentieth century. But the Communism of Form was not about returning to or recovering a utopian or revolutionary procedure from the past. Its function was primarily strategic: creating a realm in which artists and spectators could interact, where there was an ongoing conversation; one that was both critical and a symptom of consumption, production and service relations in latter-day capitalism, determined by material abundance, anxiety, disarray and nostalgia."
Introduction, The Communism of Forms, Sound Image Time – The Strategy of Music Videos, by the curators Fernando Oliva and Marcelo Rezende. You can view the exhibition from 8 April - 14 June 2009 at the Art Gallery of York University, Toronto http://www.yorku.ca/agyu.
Check out the video: Mike Hansen, Footlights, 2007, video installation. The installation of Mark Hansen reflects the interactive media world we are living in: the sound you can hear comes from he audience itself; it is scratched on the record while the dancer performs. It is an unknowing participation - listen the throat cleaning, coughing - of the audience. You can compare it with the internet: only a few online users are aware that the media learns constantly from our own behaviour. It is the first time in the history that the masses are structuring a media itself by a common used 'brain'. This 'brain' with its 'thinking memory' makes the real nature of the internet. Mike Hansen presents his work on myspace.com/mikehansenmusic. https://www.fashion.at/culture/2009/communism4-2009.htm
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