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META exists at the crossroads of art and science and of culture and nature. Tracing the uncommon threads between common topics, META presents its readers with views into the abyss of visual information and with experiments in associative reading. META invites you to browse according to taste.
You may ask, “what?” An archive, a Wunderkammer, a magazine guided by methods of research, collection, preservation, reprint and the linking of topics at their META level.
You may then ask, “why?” To play with information in all its astatic glory. META refrains from attempts at categorization, taking a gamble on dynamic navigation! META eschews the linear in favor of surprise. Each visit starts with a random welcome and ends with an even more random exit.
Attanucci Timothy
TIMOTHY J. ATTANUCCI (1979) was born in Boston, Massachusetts and studies German literature at Princeton and the Humboldt University, Berlin. For META, he contributes his musings on the irony mark in No Irony.
Beth David
DAVID BETH (1974) is a writer and esoteric explorer, and the sovereign Grand Master of the Ordo Templi Orientis Antiqua. Learn more about his Gnostic involvement in XI. ARS DE REX—Sexual Magic, the Art of the King, where he is interviewed by Ailen Roc.
Brenner Summer
SUMMER BRENNER is an accomplished writer of poetry and fiction, based in Berkeley, California. Her writing has extended beyond the borders of print into performative and musical realms, and she is also involved with literacy and community projects targeted at youths. For META, she reads from her critically acclaimed novel and discusses her motivation for the project in Driving I-5.
Breuning Olaf
OLAF BREUNING (1970) is a Swiss artist, living in New York and working in photography, video, sculpture, installation and drawing. For META’s mini interview series, he shares some of his favorite things in accompaniment to a selection of photographic works. See Mini Breuning.
Buchina William
Illustrations by William Buchina
WILLIAM BUCHINA (1978) is an illustrator with a penchant for portraits of political tyrants. In addition, he is a graphic designer and creator of illustrated guides to English grammar, which are viewable at wgb1978.blogspot.com. He currently lives and works in Istanbul. See his work in The Body of the Event.
Bunnell Dave
DAVE BUNNELL (1952) lives in the small gold-rush era town of Angels Camp, California. This professional spelunker and photographer worked on an Imax film about caves, somewhere beneath Mexico. META interviewed him for Far Beyond Stalactites and Stalagmites.
Coronato Petra
PETRA CORONATO is probably the only author in the world who didn’t only read Alexanderplatz, but also swept it. She is the owner of tongue tongue Hong Kong, a company founded in 1993 with dependences in Berlin, Vienna and Zurich, which recycles fiction profitably and unpunished to this day. In 2006, she commenced the ongoing photography project The Poetry of Document.
Dantini Michele
MICHELE DANTINI’s (1966) work is characterized by its handling of trans-cultural practices and their socio-environmental implications. A widely translated essayist and performative lecturer, he holds a position as Professor of Contemporary Art History at the Università del Piemonte Orientale, Italy. See Chronicles of Deaths Foretold.
Doutreluingne Pauline
PAULINE DOUTRELUINGNE (1982) lived in Beijing for four years, where she co-organized the 2006 Borderline Moving Images Festival. She lives in Berlin and curates projects that bridge European and Asian art. For META, she interviewed Chen Wei in Archeology of the Future.
Doy Gen
GEN DOY is Lecturer at De Montfort University. She is the author of Picturing The Self, Drapery and Black Visual Culture. For META, Doy discusses the sensual politics of photography in the works of Claude Cahun.
Ferrante Denise Palma
DENISE PALMA FERRANTE (1975) is a multi-disciplined artist living and working in Berlin. She is also a self-declared anti-religionist. See Timkat 2009.
Foxwell Adam
ADAM FOXWELL is an American audio engineer who has worked internationally, consulting on acoustical room design, sound isolation and mechanical noise control. For META, he presents a study on noise exposure in On the Hunt for Silence in Dubai.
Fresco Jacque
JACQUE FRESCO (1916) is an industrial designer and social engineer, author, lecturer, inventor and Futurist. Based in Venus, Florida, he is developing the practice of Socio-Cyber-Neering. Read the META interview Back to the Future—The Venus Project.
Gavron Assaf
ASSAF GAVRON (1968) is an Israeli writer, translator and musician. His novel CrocAttack is available in Hebrew, English, German, Italian and Dutch. Find out more on his website and see The Outpost.
Glaser Bruno
Dr. BRUNO GLASER is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Soil Science and Soil Geography at the University of Bayreuth. For over several years he has been conducting Amazonian dark earth research from a soil science perspective including soil fertility, sustainability, and archaeology aspects. See Terra Preta .
Goldwyn Mara
MARA GOLDWYN (1976) calls herself an artist but does not show anywhere and would never actually introduce herself as such. She has an existential allergy to genres, categories and identity constructs. See Showing the Opposite Side of the Death Machine.
Guo-Qiang Cai
Artist CAI GUO-QIANG (1957) was born in China’s Fujian Province. While living in Japan between 1986 and 1995 he began to experiment with gunpowder as a medium, gaining international attention. He has gone on to exhibit world wide and to produce large scale pyrotechnic art works. See On Explosions.
Hill Patrick
Sculptor PATRICK HILL (1972) has exhibited widely in the US and internationally as an important representative of the contemporary Los Angeles art scene. David Kordansky Gallery provided META with images of Hill’s work for Patrick Hill—Sculpture, Associated.
Horvitz David
ASDF Makes founder DAVID HORVITZ (1983) is a man of many ideas. One could say this American artist’s medium is the Internet, though it may be more accurate to say that he works in interactive projects. See ASDF—Read On.
Hugo Pieter
Artist PIETER HUGO (1976) has spent his whole life in Cape Town, South Africa, though travelled extensively pursuing his characteristic brand of documentary photography. A 2002-3 residency at the Beneton Group Communication Research Center, Fabrica, also led to work with Colors magazine. In 2006 he was awarded first prize in the World Press Photo competition’s Portraits section. Welcome to Nollywood explores a recent project carried out with the Nigerian film industry.
Idnert B. Zlatan
ZLATAN B. IDNERT is an audio engineer who has worked in the fields of modelling for outdoor noise propagation, building acoustics and ground borne vibrations. He has widely consulted on acoustical engineering projects. See On the Hunt for Silence in Dubai.
Kempenaers Jan
JAN KEMPENAERS (1968) is an artist and documentary photographer based in Antwerp. He creates mute images of semi urban-places. Regardless of geographical context, his photographs speak powerfully to the post industrial condition and of the technologized human subject. See Spomenik, the Monuments of Former Yugoslavia.
Lin Tao
TAO LIN (1983) is an American poet, novelist and short story writer. He is the author of Shoplifting from American Apparel, Eeeee Eee Eeee, and Bed, as well as two poetry collections, you are a little bit happier than I am, and cognitive-behavioral therapy. Lin’s second novel, Richard Yates, was published in September 2010.
See Tao Lin’s Crossword Puzzle.
Maisel David
DAVID MAISEL’s (1961) photographs chronicle the complex relationships between natural systems and human intervention. His work is included in many permanent collections, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Maisel lives and works in the area of San Francisco. See Blooming Souls.
Maximishin Sergey
SERGEY MAXIMISHIN (1964) photographed for the Soviet Military Force Group on Cuba from 1985 to 1987. A learned physicist, he worked in the scientific and technical expertise laboratory in the Hermitage Museum and has gone on to become an award winning press photographer.
See The Dostoevsky of Photography.
Mendoza Connie
CONNIE MENDOZA (1971) is a media artist, working between Berlin and Barcelona. Fata Morgana and Other Optical Phenomena discusses her film, in which Mendoza travels back to her birthplace to trace the complex relationships of her childhood to Chilean history and space travel, thereby producing images that mediate the perception of time as a highly subjective matter.
Minx Rua
RUA MINX is Donna Huanca (1980), an artist who deals with clothing as shelter, transportable homes for nomads and cultural and genetic traces. Her various projects have received a range of support, from the Dallas Museum of Art to Städelschule, Frankfurt; from the Incehon Women’s Biennale Korea to British Vogue. She launched META’s downloadable artist piece series with Mask Maker.
Morrison Rachael
RACHAEL MORRISON (1981) is an artist, curator, and a librarian at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She is the creator of an art work and a documentary film about the blind telephone hacker Joybubbles, as she describes in 718-362-9578.
Neutelings Jan
Architect WILLEM JAN NEUTELINGS (1959) has taught at the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam and Harvard University. His firm, Neutelings Riedijk Architects, is located in Rotterdam. He wrote Spomenik, the Monuments of Former Yugoslavia on Jan Kempenaer’s photo-documentation.
Nielsen Nikolaj
Nikolaj Nielsen is a Brussels-based journalist. For META, Nielsen considers the provocative film "Enjoy Poverty Please" by Dutch artist Renzo Martens in regards to the <The Lucrative Business of Chaos and Aid. For more of Nielsen's writing, visit his website.
Okón Yoshua
Yoshua Okón was born in Mexico City in 1970 where he currently lives. In his often absurd and provocative art, Okón stages partially scripted scenes using non-actors whose own identities and histories make up the true, underlying story. See Octopus. Okón founded the artist-run space La Panadería in 1994 and the artist-run space and school SOMA in 2009, both in Mexico City.
Patt Lise
LISE PATT is the founder of the Institute of Cultural Inquiry, a peripatetic visual think tank currently headquartered in Los Angeles, CA. Over the years she has treated ‘collaboration’ as an artist medium, in the development of a non-profit organization that embraces ‘collective camouflage’ in their ongoing projects. See Inquiry into the Institute of Cultural Inquiry.
Petrovszky Konrad
KONRAD PETROVSZKY (1977) is a historian specializing in the intellectual history of Southeastern Europe. He wrote a PhD thesis on early modern historiography in Ottoman Europe at the Free University, Berlin. He talks Romania and reenactment in The Body of the Event.
Rameau Max
Haitian-born, DC-raised MAX RAMEAU is a pan-African theorist, organizer and founder of the group, Take Back the Land. He has worked on issues ranging from economic development to ex-felons. He discusses the US housing crisis in Desperate Times, Desperate Measures.
Rau Milo
MILO RAU (1977) is a journalist, essayist, historian, playwright, translator, teacher, film-maker, blogger, reenactor and director of IIPM (International Institute of Political Murder, or Institute for Theoretic and Artistic Reenactments). See The Body of the Event.
Roc Ailen
AILEN ROC studied various esoteric fields such as ceremonial Magick, Sexual Magick, Tantra, Astrology, Tarot, the Quaballah and different astral-levels along with Psychology. She is currently working on her own tarot deck and a book combining certain occult fields with elements of psychology. See XI. ARS DE REX—Sexual Magic, the Art of the King.
Shapiro Alan
ALAN SHAPIRO (1956) is a key contributor to the fields of idea philosophy, software engineering and social choreography. At 15, he began studying at MIT and has more recently published a book on Star Trek and given talks at the Transmediale and Ars Electronica festivals. In an interview with META, he explains why “Being against work as it is constituted today is fundamental.” See A New Computer Science is Underway.
Situ Studio
SITU STUDIO was founded in 2005 while its partners were studying architecture at The Cooper Union. Operating at the intersection of architecture and a variety of other disciplines, Situ Studio’s work has been enriched by close collaborations with geologists, writers, engineers, biologists, activists and artists. See Out of Control.
Small Gary
GARY SMALL, M.D., is the Director of the UCLA Memory and Aging Research Center at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. He is the author of iBrain Surviving the Technological Alteration of the Modern Mind. See This is Your Brain on Technology.
Thompson Cosette
COSETTE THOMPSON is a French-American human rights consultant and freelance writer based in Arizona, USA, where she directed Amnesty International for many years. Her current interests focus on the contribution of artistic expression to the field of human rights and on the protection of threatened languages. See Sentenced to Read.
van Haarlem Dr. Michiel P.
DR. MICHIEL VAN HAARLEM (1964) is the Managing Director of the LOFAR Foundation in the Netherlands, a part of the ASTRON Institute. The astronomer discusses the next generation of telescope in META’s Harmony of the Spheres.
Vanden Eynde Maarten
Belgian-born MAARTEN VANDEN EYNDE (1977) lives and works between Rotterdam, Brussels and Saint Mihiel. His projects span all art media, focussing on topics of ecology, archeology, biology and zoology. In 2006 he founded Enough Room for Space for “the creation of physical, virtual and mental space for cultural initiatives by initiating and coordinating events and residence/research projects worldwide.” He enlightens META on plastic in Plastic Reef.
Wei Chen
Artist CHEN WEI (1980) works in Beijing and Hangzhou, incorporating influential objects and happenings from his past into the realities of modern China. He is represented by the Platform China Contemporary Art Institute in Beijing. See Archeology of the Future.
EDITORIAL
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Emilie Florenkowsky
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DESIGN
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CODING
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| Plastic Reef |
| Octopus |
| 718-362-9578 |
| Inquiry into the Institute of Cultural Inquiry |
| The Lucrative Business of Chaos and Aid |
| The Outpost |
| Driving I-5 |
| The Clothing of Nature |
| Back to the Future—The Venus Project |
| Welcome to Nollywood |
| Mask Maker |
| Blooming Souls |
| Patrick Hill—Sculpture, Associated |
| Tao Lin’s Crossword Puzzle |
| Chronicle of Deaths Foretold |
| Claude Cahun—A Sensual Politics of Photography |
| Sentenced to Read |
| The Harmony of the Spheres |
| Out of Control: Experiments in Participation |
| XI. ARS DE REX—Sexual Magic, the Art of the King |
| The Nine Lives of Kaufhaus Jonass |
| Showing the Opposite Side of the Death Machine |
| A New Computer Science is Underway |
| Spomenik, the Monuments of Former Yugoslavia |
| The Poetry of Document |
| ASDF—Read On |
| The Body of the Event |
| This is Your Brain on Technology |
| Timkat 2009 |
| No Irony؟ |
| Desperate Times, Desperate Measures |
| On Explosions |
| Stories of Life and Love in Today’s Actual Arctic |
| Photography and the Invisible |
| Fata Morgana and Other Optical Phenomena |
| On the Hunt for Silence in Dubai |
| The Dostoevsky of Photography |
| Archeology of the Future |
| Far Beyond Stalactites and Stalagmites |
| Mini Breuning |
| Terra Preta—Amazonian Earth |
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Chronicle of Deaths Foretold By Michele Dantini, translated from Italian by Michela Filippini
By Michele Dantini, translated from Italian by Michela Filippini
In Washington in 2001, the World Bank, Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco and Petronas of Malaysia signed an agreement for the largest and most invasive infrastructural intervention ever in equatorial Africa. The World Bank agreed to finance construction of a pipeline crossing Chad and Cameroon to bring crude oil from the Doba Basin oil fields in Chad to offshore storage and loading platforms in Cameroon. The project’s conditions obligated the governments of Chad and Cameroon to sign a strict guarantee protocol: earnings from petroleum will have to go to finance schools, health and agriculture.
Revenues were to pass through a single account deposited at Citibank of London, and assiduous controls will thwart episodes of corruption and undue appropriation of resources. The loan is huge: 4.2 million dollars. Its construction, begun notwithstanding objections and resistance on the part of international NGO’s and local communities, has an enormous ecological impact: more than 1000 km of southeastern Cameroon’s primordial forest was cut down, forcing entire communities to move and abruptly alter their uses and customs.
The quiet little dirt road leading from Kribi to Bipindi and Lolodorf (the name of the village still conserves the memory of its German origins) is transformed into a deadly truck route, daily traversed by hundreds of heavy vehicles, causing damage to houses, fields, and the health of villagers, especially children, submerged in dust.
The situation encourages poachers, who admit to selling bush meat to the thousands of seasonal workers employed by contractors, and who easily penetrate the forest thanks to various construction site access roads, laid to facilitate the pipeline work.
Poachers and lumber company workers are not the only ones to pour into the area attracted by new opportunities to earn money: a small army of prostitutes move along with the advancing construction work, invading villages and encamping near workers’ dormitories. Profound social, economic, demographic and environmental changes beset an area that had previously been an impenetrable forest inhabited only by small groups of hunter-gatherers.
The pipeline began functioning in 2003, when the first oil tanker loaded with crude left the platform off the Atlantic coast of Kribi. Esso Exploration and Production Chad’s home page triumphantly proclaims, “the first semester 2008 extractive average was 131,000 barrels of crude per day.”
However, less than five years after the opening of the pipeline—and following great presuppositions about the outcome of these direct economic processes set in motion ex imperio, in vulnerable contexts and with unreliable partners—on September 9th 2008, a terse press release from the World Bank communicated that the institution had just ceased supporting the project and interrupted its contribution.
The government of Chad, led by controversial president Idriss Déby and involved for years in a protected and bloody civil war, had repeatedly and increasingly violated its obligations to the World Bank agreement. From the start, oil profits had been diverted from public works and used to acquire weapons and engage French troops.
According to the affirmations of the Reuters press agency, a high functionary of Chad’s government responded to the World Bank’s decision by revealing that the cessation of financing would not have the slightest impact on the national budget, greatly expanded in recent years thanks to the extraction and sale of petroleum. (m.d.)
The World Bank was shown at the exhibition Green Platform—Art, Ecology, Sustainability at the Strozzina center in Florence in 2009.
Valentina Gensini: How did this project materialize and what did you go through while working on it?
Michele Dantini: The paradigmatic importance of this project drove me to visit Cameroon many times, and to cover the thousand kilometer path on the southwest border with Equatorial Guinea that skirts the construction site. I wanted to travel without any preconception, converse with the locals and learn about out their expectations. With this project, I wish to raise some questions, for example, what conclusion shall we draw concerning the responsibility of global financial managers in light of failed control mechanisms?
Valentina Gensini: The World Bank is a project marked by a double approach: a neo-conceptual approach in its fieldwork, and an enquiry in favor of the environment. It deals with international politics, neo-colonialism, governance sustainability and sustainable models for development. How do these topics find a connection in your work?
Michele Dantini: Ambitious projects might totally change a region’s economical and social structure. The allotment of wealth changes the balance between available territory and patterns of human settlement and diffusion, as well as the characteristics of farming. The population in Cameroon was waiting to join the consumerist system and a global citizenship defined by the money economy: this is a justifiable expectation, though one that is rarely met by a substantial flow of money. Right now I’m working on a project about Zmeyinyi, a bare and desolated island in the middle of the Black Sea. I pay close attention to the development of relationships between the western petrol companies—in this specific case between Italy’s Eni and Russia’s Gazprom. They are concerned with the construction of an oil-pipeline around the Ukraine that will provide Europe with gas. It’s impressive to see how fast the verified availability of fossil energy and its demand give a dramatic geo-political, economic and military importance to rural areas, never before interested in undergoing industrial changes. I am interested in what’s happening right now in places that “no one cares about,” the grey spots of global information?
Valentina Gensini: The laconic press release concerning the World Bank’s withdrawal from the project lacked an analysis of the mistakes or any feedback that could actually promote debate on finding alternative solutions. What kind of support can art give to this purpose?
Michele Dantini: Until recently, the local community had limited (if any) negotiation ability: they had neither economic resources, nor political or legal competence nor access to the media. This condition is changing, and that’s positive! I see a difference between art and activism. Yet, art can contribute a more critical and well-constructed idea about the meaning of “central” versus “rural”. That’s an important contribution. The concepts of “small” and ‘marginal’ become flexible and reversible, and they gradually cease to make any sense in a global critical perspective.
Valentina Gensini: As part of The World Bank, you release a magazine called MM, an annual publication about political and environmental subjects. I’d like you to tell us more about your interest in non-fiction writing and reportage.
Michele Dantini: During the late 60s, early 70s, many artists choose newspapers and magazines as an experimental exhibition space, an alternative to galleries or museums. It was an exciting experience. I believe that mainstream global media is not interested in funding any research in this field. But budget is just one aspect of the problem. The metropolitan attitude in the media is characterized by arrogance and censorship. On the other hand, new fields are becoming available to art. There is a growing understanding that art attempts to give a voice to voiceless worlds, it manages to go beyond the pre-established agendas of the imperialist reporter, and it establishes a critical distance to the so-called First World media. Today, quite a few artists are thinking about narrative strategies and how to turn them into an exhibition experience: script, reportage, poetic text. At the same time there’s a strong interest in the deconstruction of the media’s rhetoric, memory’s politics, research in archives and issues motivated by global relevance. Wondering how art can “explain cultures” and contribute to creating opinions is part of the general discussion of art and the public sphere; I would define it as a kind of “social sculpture.”
Valentina Gensini: Your work presents a critical debate on the connections within the historical, economic, social and ecological fields. Can you expound on this?
Michele Dantini: In 2003 I did some projects in Saõ Tomé and Principe islands, in the Gulf of Guinea: I was fascinated by the complexity of their story and the vagueness of the cultural placing. The two islands geographically belong to Africa, but historically they are the colonial bridgehead of the slave driving and plantation economy that the Portuguese tested here in the early sixteenth century by importing black slaves from the Congo and Benin kingdoms before moving on towards South America. Recent discoveries brought to light important oil deposits off the coast of Saõ Tomé, and a joint venture has been created between the Saõ Tomé government and the Nigerian petrol companies. Many people are afraid that the painful and subordinate story about the ex-Portuguese island might be swept away by social cohesion, increasing corruption and new inequality that will arrive with the petrol industry. Furthermore, there is fear that the petrol profits will increase the Nigerian oligarch and western corporations’ wealth instead of being divided among the population. My projects are aimed at the turning points of awareness and at the possibility of cultural cancellation. Some years ago, the interest in a tiny republic in Guinea’s gulf, just recently enfranchised from colonization, must have been marginal. It seems today that Saõ Tomé and Principe have become allegoric places, examples of the globalization process’ destructiveness.
Valentina Gensini: It seems to me that your interest in eco-politics and cultural anthropology is comparable with artists such as Jeremy Deller , Renée Green, Ibon Aranberri and David Hullfish Bailey in terms of a skepticism for the conventional public relations that these issues receive.
Michele Dantini: There are artistic views defined by a distrust of machines and artistic production which employs complex, expensive methods, but which still explores the deep relationship between man and nature. What kind of nature stories do we “construct” and how? What kind of experiences and devices do we use to “collect” places, landscapes, geographies in changing areas and why we do that? These are the questions that I find exciting. The efforts the industrialized world is making to ensure a vital connection with the natural world seem to correspond to a deep need illustrated by the “biofilia” described by socio-biologist and ecologist Edward O. Wilson in 1984: the evolutionary co-dependence of human beings and nature.
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