face to face – portraiture in a digital age – a touring exhibition

How have new media and digital technologies changed the way we think about portraiture, identity and faces? What new forms of audience engagement and interaction are made possible by these new technologies?

Face to Face explores new forms of portraiture that incorporate a variety of different technologies from digital prints to single channel digital video and interactive installations.

Artists: Michele Barker & Anna Munster, Denis Beaubois, Daniel Crooks, Anna Davis & Jason Gee, Emil Goh, Angelica Mesiti, Adam Nash & Mami Yamanaka, David Rosetzky, Rachel Scott, Stelarc, John Tonkin

Opens Friday 27 March at Hazelhurst Gallery
Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre
Street: 782 Kingsway
City/Town: Gymea, Australia 
 
Email: kathy.cleland@usyd.edu.au
http://www.dlux.org.au/face2face

Earth Hour 2009 – Australia

Earth Hour is about more than just saving energy one night a year. It is a way to send a message to all, around the globe that people are serious about energy efficiency and are ready and willing to take action to prevent global warming.

No matter where you are in the world, you can take part! More than likely, there will be an event in your home town and country.

Remember, 8.30pm on the 28th of March, no matter where you are!

Don’t forget to invite your friends and help spread the word!

The Pleasures & Sorrows of Work – Alain de Botton

Sydney Opera House presents Alain de Botton, renowned philosopher, best selling author and TV presenter for an exclusive engagement, Sunday 19 April, 2009. His soon to be published book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work will be the subject of his first talk in Australia since 2006.

Writing it saw him travel across the world for two years with a photographer in tow, looking at people in their workplaces and reflecting on the great themes of work: why do we do it? How can it be more bearable? What is a meaningful life?

With a philosophical eye and his characteristic combination of wit and wisdom, Alain leads us on a journey around a deliberately eclectic range of occupations, from rocket science to biscuit manufacture, accountancy to art – in search of what make jobs either fulfilling or soul-destroying. Here is the perfect guide to the vicious anxieties and enticing hopes thrown up by our journey through the working world.

According to Alain, his talk will “amount to a celebration and investigation of an activity as central to a good life as love – but which we often find remarkably hard to reflect on properly. Most of us are still working at jobs chosen for us by our sixteen-year-old selves.”

Exploring such diverse subjects as travel, habitat, philosophy, status anxiety in an accessible and stimulating manner De Botton, has, through his books and TV shows, become internationally famous for popularising a new approach to a ‘philosophy of everyday life’.

Tickets: $39/$29 + booking fees
Bookings: http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/whatson/alaindebotton.aspx

Jackie Loeb – Soapy Women

The Call of the Mild – Jarred Keane – MICF

The Call of the Mild is about the comedy triumphing over all. The beauty, the passion, and the love of it, just on simple terms. Ultimately however, it is a real, complete struggle to get to that triumph; the will to do this to myself. My whole life is stand up, and for what? It’s a battle between vanity, therapy and compulsion. Looking at the lines that separate the audience from the performer. I’ve sacrificed years of my life, years in menial useless jobs just looking to the next comedy night, my social skills have deteriorated, my contentment with the mundane has depleted and my psychology has changed, but ultimately, I can’t live outside of the regular world. I’m an outsider forced inside, but dammit, I bloody love it all; that’s just what Comedy means to me.

The show illustrates not just my wry, sardonic and playfully dirty humour, but rather that this is simply my way of making a point. The things I discuss are emotionally tied to how I live, and I weave dramatic themes such as racism, violence, and death into an overarching comedic story with respect and conviction.It’s not about getting laughs; it’s about making the laughs matter.

But what about Jarred Keane?…
He was born on the road, a wandering spirit with a robustly peculiar approach to his own life, compartmentalizing himself constantly; he belongs to no one and to nowhere. As a teenager he tramped his way across Ireland with nothing but his thumb and some pocket cash. Working for a cousin’s circus and small jobs, pitching tents in places as odd as a generous old man’s vineyard, his love for the solitary pleasures blossomed. Engaging music, poetry, hiking and photography were what made him come of age, but the complete unity of Stand-Up comedy gave birth to it all, and in the hectic lead-up to the MICF he took leave to the wild once again to question whether he wanted to come back at all… I guess for him, they coexist after all.

Call of the Mild
3-5 Hosier Lane Melbourne, April 2nd – 26th (no Mondays or Wednesdays) 10pm

www.comedyfestival.com.au/season/2009/show/the-call-of-the-mild

Call for submissions – Virtual Residency Project 2.0

Location One presents its second Virtual Residency Project in the form of a call to artists and other creative individuals with the purpose of fostering collaboration and creativity across geographical expanses and areas of expertise. The goal of this residency is to find 2 participants who are not physically proximate but who are willing to work with someone they’ve most likely never met before using some form of non-F2F (face to face) interface such as webcams, email, chat, video, blogs, telerobotic prostheses, Second Life, MIDI, skype, social networks, walkie-talkie, snail mail, mental telepathy, radio, networked video gaming, POTS (plain old telephone service), tin cans on string, or any other means of collaboration to develop a project that will be presented at Location One in the Fall of 2009, either on our web space or in our exhibition space. The theme of this project is Levels of Undo.
 
Please send your URL or submit electronic materials to
virtualresidency@location1.org
Application Deadline: midnight, April 15, 2009
 
For more information check out:
www.location1.org/virtual-residency-project

Collars at CCAS – Canberra

Alexandra Gillespie in collaboration with Somaya Langley. At the centre of Collars, is the symbolic significance of the collar in its role as an indicator of power, control and social stratification. In collaboration Alexandra Gillespie and Somaya Langley have collected stories from significant others including friends, family and other artists. These stories are implanted in the collars, as it were; computer programmed electroluminescent lamps that project texts through the fabric. Through this multi-layered interconnected display of the technologies of spoken word, written word and symbolism, Gillespie and Langley literally shed light on complex personal narratives through the use of a deceptively simple, yet, loaded object, the collar.

Programming and Electronics by Ben Lippmeier.
Opening Friday 27 MARCH

For more information see:
http://www.ccas.com.au/PAGES/GORMAN%20HOUSE/gormanhouse_upcoming.htm

Women’s Autumn Dancing Retreat – Melbourne

Welcome to Dancing Isis Dance! the Home of Embodied Bellydance, Dance Journeys for the Awakening Heart, Club Al Sharqi, Women’s Urban Retreat and Dance Movement Therapy. Dancing Isis Dance – Embodied Bellydance is situated in Ivanhoe, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Women’s Autumn Dancing Retreat Two days of enriching, expressive dance session Fri 24 – Sun 26 April, 2009.  http://www.dancingisis.com

NICA presents at First Sight – Melbourne

At First Sight is NICA’s ensemble performance by 3rd year students, directed by Gavin Robins.Star-crossed lovers hover above us. Cupid clowns weave their magic. At First Sight is a daring spectacle that plays with our archetypal ideals of love, hope, trust and betrayal. A 1960s-inspired apartment provides the backdrop for a story about love at first sight in the tradition of Romeo and Juliet, a story that weaves finely tuned circus skills into a dramatic and emotional landscape.
 
Defying gravity, the dynamic cast interact with a projected filmic back drop in a scintillating combination of contemporary circus, theatre, evocative Latin inspired music and the blend of moving image and sound art.
 
March 30 – April 8, 2009
NICA National Circus Centre
Green Street, Prahran
 
Visit http://www.nica.com.au/shows for show times and ticket prices
Or call enquiries at NICA (03) 9214 6975

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1. Coordinating Editor: This role will focus on managing content on the http://www.EngageMedia.org website, increasing the effectiveness of the site as a tool to affect social and environmental change and increasing the usefulness of the site to its users by communicating their needs to the technical team.

2. Indonesian Training and Projects Coordinator: This role will focus on coordinating training and other project requirements for the organisation and helping to develop and maintain working relationships with relevant video and campaigning organisations in the region.

EngageMedia is a video sharing, free software and skills building initiative focussed on social justice and environmental issues within the Asia-Pacific region. Both positions offer a rewarding and flexible working environment and the opportunity to contribute to our overall organisational aims.

Visit http://www.engagemedia.org/jobs for further information.