Mentoring #BeyondDigital

August 23 - November 2021

While digitization in the performing arts has exploded in the last year, many media artists* have long used digital space as a stage and material for their art. Since the emergence of the Internet, aesthetics have evolved, social spaces and arrangements have been interrogated and subverted, and questions of liveness and the role of the audience or user* have been considered.

The mentoring #BeyondDigital connects Hamburg (emerging) artists with international media artists. In this first prototype of the mentoring program, four tandems work together to exchange ideas on poetics and discourses of net performance art. The mentoring begins with a practical workshop in August 2021. Afterwards, the participants are invited to develop a net-artistic sketch or prototype in the company of a mentor, which can be presented in the context of Hauptsache Frei 2022.

Thus, instead of reinventing media art and unilaterally searching for translation possibilities from the stage to the screen, the mentees will get to know existing media artistic discourses and aesthetics in order to research interfaces and productive differences of theater and media art. The #BeyondDigital Mentoring sees itself as a networking tool and catalyst for interdisciplinary artistic research and the creation of new complicities between net art and theater creators.

What you can take away and what we offer you:

• Networking with internationally renowned media artists* and the net and media art scene.
• Networking with the Hamburg scene
• Presentation opportunities in the context of Hauptsache Frei #7 and in the context of another event.
• An honorarium or production budget in the amount of € 2,000 per person.

Mentoring will primarily take place remotely and online. However, the four-day introductory workshop will take place IRL, on-site at the Lichthof Theater, not online. 

What you should bring to participate in mentoring:

You can apply as an artist* with a work focus in Hamburg. You should also:

• Have time from August 23-26, 2021 to participate in the workshop as well as for individual and group talks in the period September - November 2021. We will coordinate dates together
• English language skills for discussions in the group and with the mentors
• Openness to new questions, artistic perspectives & methods
• Interest in practical work with technology
• Willingness to work in a team and share knowledge
• Have access to a laptop that you can use to implement video teleconferences and participate in the hands-on workshop. If you need assistance or do not have your own computer, this should not preclude you from participating. Please contact us!
• Bring questions, artistic ideas and methods that you would like to try out or discuss
• Unfortunately, the offer cannot be offered completely barrier-free (especially language barriers)

Participation will mainly take place via video conferencing and working on your own computer. We are happy to accommodate your technical requirements, please contact us actively! For an upcoming edition we are looking for ways to reduce the program in its barriers.

Application:

We are looking for four participants or mentees. The application form can be found here! The deadline for applications is August 10, 2021 and the selection of participants will be made by the mentors in consultation with the curator Jeanne Charlotte Vogt until August 15. For questions, email us at jeanne.charlotte.vogt@hauptsachefrei.de

Your mentors and workshop leaders:

A feminist media artist, Angela Washko (she/her) tells complex and unconventional stories about the media we consume from unusual perspectives. She is the founder of the Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft, a long-term intervention within the popular online video game. She was recently awarded the Creative Capital Award, Indiecade's Impact Award, and the Franklin Furnace Performance Fund. Washko's work has been published in The New Yorker, Frieze Magazine, Time Magazine, The Guardian, ArtForum, The Los Angeles Times, Art in America, The New York Times, Rhizome, and many other journals. Her projects have been presented internationally at the Museum of the Moving Image (New York), the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Milan Design Triennale, the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art (Helsinki), the Hamburg PLAY Festival, and the Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennale, among others. Angela Washko is an associate professor of art at Carnegie Mellon University.

Jeremy Bailey (he/his) is a self-described "Famous New Media Artist," podcaster, venture socialist, and Head of Experience at FreshBooks. Bailey believes that creatively abused technology empowers us all to become famous. As a media artist, Bailey has performed all over the world and exhibited almost everywhere from bathrooms in Buffalo to museums in Moscow. At FreshBooks, a software company, he leads experience design teams that help freelancers succeed. Goodpoint, his imperfect podcast collaboration with net artist Rafael Rozendaal, has helped thousands of creative listeners be true to themselves, and Lean Artist, an "artist accelerator" founded in 2016, helps artists* invent and launch startups that challenge social conventions to actually make the world a better place.

Lauren Lee McCarthy (she/they) is an artist who explores social relationships amidst surveillance, automation, and algorithmic life. In 2020, she was a Fellow of the Sundance New Frontier Story Lab , of Eyebeam Rapid Response, and in 2019, a Grantee of Creative Capital. She has been a resident artist at Eyebeam, ZERO1, CMU STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Autodesk, NYU ITP, and Ars Electronica. She has been awarded grants from the Knight Foundation, Online News Association, Mozilla Foundation, Google AMI, Sundance Institute New Frontiers Labs, Turner Broadcasting, and Rhizome. Her work SOMEONE was awarded the Ars Electronica Golden Nica and the Japan Media Arts Social Impact Award, and her work LAUREN received the IDFA DocLab Award for Immersive Non-Fiction. Lauren's work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Barbican Centre, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Haus der elektronischen Künste, SIGGRAPH, Onassis Cultural Center, IDFA DocLab, Science Gallery Dublin, Seoul Museum of Art, and the Japan Media Arts Festival. She holds an MFA from UCLA and BS Computer Science and BS Art and Design from MIT. She is the co-creator of p5.js, an open-source programming language for learning creative expression through online code. She is co-director of the Processing Foundation, a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote software literacy in the visual arts and visual literacy in technology-related fields, and to make these fields accessible to diverse communities. Lauren is an associate professor at UCLA Design Media Arts.

Alla Popp (no pronoun) is a digital media and performance artist from Kazan, Russia with a Diploma in State Administration and a Master in Transition Studies at JLU Giessen. Afterwards, Alla studied digital media and performance at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach, Tongji University and Athens School of Fine Arts. For Alla's academic and artistic work, Alla won various grants including Frankfurter Künstlerhilfe, Mosbach Stiftung, DAAD and STIBET, residencies in China, Greece, Japan and Rwanda. In 2015, together with Alexander Traka, they founded the technologically advanced, interdisciplinary music and performance project BBB_.
Alla's feminist gaze focuses on our shared visions of the future, the emancipatory potentials of digital technology, and narratives for the future of humanity. Alla formally works at the intersection of digital technology, performance and music, developing interactive digital formats and live experiences in VR, AR, XR and web.

Gloria Schulz (she/her) is a digital artist from Hamburg, Germany. She is a founding member of the collective "Blutende Freischwimmer*innen", feels most comfortable in gray windows and explores immersive illusion spaces as a visual hacker.
Her work as a creative coder and performer is presented nationwide. She interweaves motion capture technologies and photogrammetry algorithms with performative elements in the transgenerational workshops at the Theatre of Research FUNDUS THEATER in Hamburg, realized with "Raum im Kopf" a VR production in the context of the Bürger*innenbühnen project "Stadttheater" of the LICHTHOF Theater in Hamburg and created with her collective and young hackers an AI that has learned what happiness is and now shares it with its visitors. As a fellow at the Academy for Theater and Digitality in Dortmund, she overcame and expanded the singular experience in virtual worlds, both technically and narratively. Together with the "NODE Forum for Digital Arts" and the "studioNaxos" she conceived the collective virtual space "GreenHouse NAXOS", which serves as a digital exhibition space and metaverse for the SECOND NATURE LAB, among others

Funders & Partners:

The #BeyondDigital Mentoring is part of the DOCK Hamburg project in cooperation with WE PRESENT, #lichthof_lab / LICHTHOF Theater, the focus on Art with Digital Media / Prof. Aram Bartholl at HAW Hamburg, Prof. Christoph Knoth (Digital Graphics class, HFBK Hamburg), the Multimedia Composition department / Prof. Alexander Schubert at HfMT and the NODE Forum for Digital Arts.

DOCK Hamburg is a co-production of "Hauptsache Frei - Festival der Darstellenden Künste Hamburgs" and the "Dachverband freie darstellende Künste Hamburg e.V." and is supported by the Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, the Rudolf Augstein Foundation and the Claussen-Simon Foundation.

Responsible:

Concept #BeyondDigital Mentoring: Jeanne Charlotte Vogt (Festival der Darstellenden Künste Hamburgs, NODE Forum for Digital Arts, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm) in collaboration with: Anja Kerschkewicz (Festival der Darstellenden Künste Hamburgs, Frauen und Fiktion).