The Recollection Project
s/n (Hassan Pitts & Jennida Chase – University of North Carolina Greensboro, US)
s/n (Hassan Pitts and Jennida Chase) create a video presentation of The Recollection Project, a multiplatform documentary project highlighting personal stories of senior African Americans from across eras of profound social change. The project blends traditional oral history techniques with 21st century technology, contextualizing location with memory to keep history alive and grounded in place—beginning in Richmond, Virginia. The project combines themes of social justice and history with formal elements of spatial/location-based exploration, with multiple entry points for interaction, that it may be consumed in a variety of ways. Components of The Recollection Project include a public facing oral history collection, an interactive map, a curriculum (shaped by the seniors who participated in the interviews), and an episodic docu-series.
In light of recent social trends, we see racial equality as an important conversation pushing to the forefront of our communities, for healing and progress. Richmond, Virginia (once the capital of the southern slave states) is seeing a new dialogue this year, and old Confederate monuments are beginning to fall (nationwide)! We believe that activating rich conversations is the precursor to positive social transformation, this is the spirit and mission of the work.
s/n is a multi-disciplinary art group, working with film/video, sound, photo, and mobile media. Members include Jennida Chase and Hassan Pitts who’ve been collaborating since 2008. Exhibitions often push both experimental and conceptual ideas around media. Their work has been exhibited and screened in over 37 countries world-wide in various festivals, exhibitions, and public venues. Currently, they both teach at the University of North Carolina Greensboro in the Department of Media Studies.
Knotting the Memory
Patricia Cadavid (Kunstuniversität Linz, AT)
The Andean Khipu is an ancient textile computer used in the ancient Inca empire for the processing and transmission of information encrypted in knots and cords of cotton and wool. This system was widely used until the Spanish colonization that prohibited and destroyed much of the existing Khipus. This presentation introduces the creative process of some Latin American artists who have transformed and incorporated this ancient device into contemporary artistic practices linked to sound, multimedia performance with new media, and sound installation. Decolonial exercises that weave narratives with the knots on these new Khipus, suggest alternative practices of live coding, computer music, and data sonification to continue in the present, the legacy of this ancestral practice.
Patricia Cadavid is an artist and researcher, born in Colombia. In her work, she looks at the relationships and effects of colonialism in new media from the migratory experience and decolonial & anticolonial thinking. She is currently working on the vindication of the memory contained in the ancestral interfaces taken away by colonization, reusing them in new artistic processes related to video, sound, and multimedia performance. Student at the Interface Culture Lab (Kunstuniversität Linz), her work has been exhibited in different festivals as Ars Electronica (Austria), ADAF (Greece), or the NIME conference as well as in spaces in Mexico, Spain, Germany, and Colombia.
VR Raves, Anonymity & Equality: Possible Outcomes of the Pandemic for the Global Rave Scene
Emre Öztürk (Istanbul Technical University, TR)
Raves have gained widespread global popularity since the late-80s. Research demonstrates that rave culture was shaped organically by diverse communities until the mid-90s, when they came under worldwide government control, thus becoming radically transformed; some research indicates that, in the past 20 years, more than 70% of the audience and performers of physical raves were heterosexual, white, male individuals. Furthermore, event ownership was passed from communities to stakeholders; signifying damage to diversity in different roles.
Today, raves are facing extreme situations due to the global pandemic. The increasing amount of virtual events has an undeniable potential to play an important role in raves’ future dynamics and culture. As a researcher involved in physical and virtual raves in Istanbul in different roles (audience, performer, and organizer), I decided to direct my interest on the VR raves during the pandemic, by tracking the effects of VR events and environments on the discrimination and diversity in raves. My experience in different virtual events led me to conduct virtual fieldwork to demonstrate how virtual dynamics might create a safe and diverse space similar to the early rave era, which may diversify the raves again in the future by potentially diminishing discrimination.
Emre Öztürk was born in İstanbul and spent his teenage years diving into mathematics and physics, ending up with an undergraduate degree in Civil Engineering from Özyeğin University. Music started as a hobby in highschool, and became a passion during his undergraduate years; he formed a band and toured around and outside of Turkey. After graduation, he started a degree in Istanbul Technical University’s M.A. Music program, where he is currently writing his thesis on discrimination in the electronic dance music scene of İstanbul.