Research groups:
Becoming Animal
Becoming Bitch
Becoming Former West
Becoming Minor
Becoming Nation
Becoming Native
Black Power
Cross Identifying
Minor Words
Niet Normaal
Theme by nostrich.
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(BE)COMING (SOON) MINORITY
CONFERENCE MARCH 8 till 12 From 10 am till 10 pm
THEORY FOR ALL or THE RIETVELD AS A SCHOOL OF THOUGHT with FIVE ENERGETIC DAYS of LECTURES, PERFORMANCES, SCREENINGS, DISCUSSIONS, RADIO & WORKSHOPS,
Plus the in house production of a DAILY CONFERENCE PAPER
( candidate writers, cartoonists, photographers & editors please contact sara.martin.studium@gmail.com ) Students only!!!
Get a foretaste on February 17 when the program will be launched in the basement of the Rietveld at 16.30 pm during a round table discussion with the makers of some famous subcultural zines and glossy’s
SEE YOU THERE,
THE STUDIUM GENERALE ‘S BECOMING MINORITY TEAM:
Aaf, Agata, Bert, Cosmin, Gabriëlle, Ilse, Ine, Jeffrey, Jeroen, Laura, Maria, Marika, Martin, Nancy, Nat, Sands, Sara, Simon, Ulrike, Willem
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In this lecture, Terre Thaemlitz presents the world premiere of a new audo/video work, “Rosary Novena for Gender Transitioning” from the forthcoming album Soulnessless (release date undetermined). In an era which insists upon judging audio in relation to “authenticity” and “soul,” Soulnessless critically dissects intersections of gender, spirituality, and commercial audio production. Within this theme, “Rosary” questions the fusion of ideology and industry behind sexual reassignment surgery (SRS).
Recalling experiences leading to her own anti-spiritualism and non-essentialist transgenderism, Thaemlitz draws parallels between spiritual deprogramming and gender deprogramming, only to have the essentialisms underlying SRS result in a new cult of gender identity. In what ways can SRS, as a radical rejection of gender that ironically results in a “pathologically-religious” reconciliation with dominant gender models (via mandatory diagnoses of Gender Identity Disorder, etc.), elucidate the gap between what Deleuze and Guattari referred to as “becoming-minor” and the identitarian concept of “becoming-minority?”
By looking at SRS, Thaemlitz rejects both of these terms, arguing that any “becoming-” is inseparable from processes of homogenization, and therefore inextricably linked to “becoming-fascist.”
Uninterested in the dichotomy of “relative deterritorialization and reterritorialization,” which always bears the undercurrents of a positivist alliance with power (real or desired), as well as the all-encompassing overtures of “absolute deterritorialization,” Thaemlitz discusses her own attempts at “overterritorialization” through confusing, hypocritical, and contradictory social identities and non-cooperative alliances. The object of overterritorialization is not a realignment of power, but a more immediate (and occasionally destructive) process of causing power dysfunctions in one’s own life and the lives of others, sporadically complicating power relations to a point of self-canceling impotence. Hope, as the manifestation of a desire for power, is irrelevant.
Terre Thaemlitz (Japan) is an award winning multi-media producer, writer, public speaker, educator, audio remixer, DJ and owner of the Comatonse Recordings record label. Her work combines a critical look at identity politics - including gender, sexuality, class, linguistics, ethnicity and race - with an ongoing analysis of the socio-economics of commercial media production. He has released over 15 solo albums, as well as numerous 12-inch singles and video works. Her writings on music and culture have been published internationally in a number of books, academic journals and magazines. As a speaker and educator on issues of non-essentialist Transgenderism and Queerness, Thaemlitz has participated in panel discussions throughout Europe and Japan. He currently resides in Kawasaki, Japan.
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In this discussion Martin Lucas will look at some recent art projects by artists and non-artists in light of the reformulation of the security state since the World Trade Center attacks and the language that has accompanied it, suggesting that there are recent changes in the tenor of ‘what can be said.’ What are the possibilities for creating space for resistance to those forces of ‘normalization’? What is the role of new communications platforms in this area? Can one be a ‘bug’ in the code? What new routes to meaning can artists and media activists imagine at a time when war is predicated as endless and when economic crisis has shown people, if for only a moment, the grim chasms under the smooth surface of reality?
Martin Lucas is an artist and media activist. His work explores the links of the technological with the language of control and forms of resistance both in relation to the machinery of industrial war and in the technology of communications.
As a member of Paper Tiger Television Collective, Martin was one of the producers of the Gulf Crisis Television Project in 1991. Other works that look at the advent of modern war include Cold War in 24 Frames (Durable Reinforcement Art , Utrecht, 2001) and In Flanders Field (State of Mind, Rotterdam, 1996) and Unnecessary Suffering (Ik & de Andere, Amsterdam, 1997.)
Most recently he has been a participant in the Continental Drift series of seminars on geopolitics and poetics with the 16 Beaver Group. Work in that context includes www.wecanrun.org, a mini-marathon for the global economy (WHW, Zagreb, 2008)
Recent articles include “Resistance and Public Art: Cultural Action in a Globalized Terrain” (Afterimage) and “One Laptop per Child - Malawi Style” (Incommunicado).
From 2005 through 2007, Martin was a fellow at the Center for Social Media at American University. www.centerforsocialmedia.org.
In 2008 Martin worked with Story Workshop, a media NGO in Malawi, Southern Africa. He has organized two unconferences on mobile and locative media, mobilizednyc (2007) and Mobile Tech 4 Social Change (2009)
Martin teaches documentary and new media production in the Film and Media Studies Department at Hunter College, City University of New York, where he is the director of the Integrated Media Arts MFA Program.
For more information: www.martinlucas.net
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Studium Generale – Becoming Minority presents – On unbecoming and becoming possessed – a lecture by Adrian Rifkin on november 18th 2009.
Short on the lecture
“If I unbecome avant-garde – for a teacher of my generation it was the only salvation from conservative idiocy to become avant garde – will I be better? Or will I just be frustrated in my desire to be unbecoming, unfitting and inappropriate – which was the great exciting myth of being-gay, and then being-queer or even being-abject that have been some of the avant-garde’s natural successors? In the end I will become whatever enables me to stir up the distribution of the visible…”
Learn more about Adrian Rifkin on his website.
Video
Paris is burning, a great documentary about transexuals and transvestites in 1980’s New York.
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