Symposium and Forums

INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

The Symposium embodies a space of exchange, dialogue and critical enquiry among distinct theoretical conceptions regarding new media art —assuming this expression refers to a system polarized between local and global issues. Despite their apparent transparency, epistemic devices comprise the most complex socio-cultural phenomena of our times. It is mandatory to create and spread debating communities that will engage in the subject matters discussed at the Symposium: politics, technology, the local, the global and bio-information. Regarding politics, the Symposium is interested in questioning the idea of the current system as a network where differences between the centre and its margins have vanished. The point here is to develop new ways of conceiving the relationship between global and local, as well as to elucidate the influence of art and technology in our understanding of the world. Regarding global reality, we aim to analyze the perspective wherefore it constitutes itself as an important reference when evaluating the meaning and scope of technology-based art. By studying globalism it is possible to understand how capitalistic logic determines art production by means of informational media, communications and technology. “Global” thus designates a series of issues concerning the way in which art’s appropriation of technology works amidst the dynamics of cognitive capitalism, rendering abstract the contexts where the latter operates. Regarding the local, the Symposium attempts to scrutinize the postmodern principle that dictates knowledge is produced in a “non-place”, since it is part of a global process with no nationality whatsoever. On the contrary, the local factor insists on knowledge as a geo-historically and a geo-politically situated product, that is, a product situated in an actual time and place where epistemic difference is exerted. The Symposium’s technological factor seeks to scrutinize the theoretical principles related to the interpretation of time and place, as well as the role played by technology in terms of localness and globalism. Also, the Symposium aims to analyze the possibility of seizing technology from very distinct and local horizons in order to explore the modes of production and organization that raise political and cultural resistances facing global hegemony. Finally, the symposium’s bio-information factor will explore the role of information in the fields of art and culture from a general perspective. In the face of globalism, informational media may set up virtual cooperation networks that promote common good based on the knowledge of regional (i.e. local) differences.

All this is intended to consolidate lines of research and debate groups that promote the various subjects considered by the visiting specialists. The Symposium, conformed by scholars from different parts of the world, fulfills the requirement of turning Transitio_mx03 Festival into a platform for the expression of multiple analyses of the local and global phenomena from a geopolitically defined stance, and of its impact on electronic arts.

Karla Villegas and Pedro Enrique García Ruíz

FORUMS

Forums, workshops and clinics to be held within the framework of Festival Transitio_mx03, Autonomies of Disagreement, aim to deepen our understanding of the problems posited during the symposium, only with a different perspective from that of the thematic presentations. The dynamics of forums consists of showing the activities and projects in which invited artists are currently engaged, and also favoring familiarity with their works.