Under Surveillance: Transparency, Visibility, war and fame
By Marie Sester
Location: EDA, Broad Art Center, room 1250
Marie Sester is a media artist currently based in Los Angeles. Born in France, she began her career as an architect. Her interest, however, shifted from how to build structures to how place, cultural values, and political ideas are intertwined and affect our understanding of the world. Her work particularly questions the societal perspective of the West.
In her work she intends to reveal the ambiguity of the cultural representation dedicated to the new technologies/entertainment/information/consumables/politics, and the values and cultural codes that underlie them.
The work is concerned with issues of surveillance and subjection, but it's not making a statement about surveillance and subjection or manipulation, it intentionally stays on the edges between playful and scary to reveal the underlying perversion.
Her installation work has exhibited internationally. She had recently residencies at the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS), Japan; Eyebeam, New York, and the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and has received grants including from the Creative Capital Foundation, New York); New York State Council for the Arts (NYSCA), LEF Foundation), and Franklin Furnace Fund. Her work is mentioned in several academic books and more to come in 2008.
*All lectures are free and take place in the EDA, room 1250 Broad Art Center.
Light refreshments will be provided.
If you cannot join us in person, connect via live video streaming at http://eda.ucla.edu/
Parking is $8 all day, and is available in structure 3, adjacent to the building. Enter the campus at Hilgard Avenue and Wyton Drive and drive north on Charles E. Young drive to enter the parking structure. For more information, call 310.825.9007.
Winter Art + Activism Lecture series begins with Adam Zaretsky who will lead a biotech workshop
Lecture "On Mutaphobia" by Adam Zaretsky
4:00pm EDA(Eli Broad Arts center)
6:00pm, BioArt workshop, CNSI Pico Lab.
Adam Zaretsky is a Vivoartist working in Biology and Art Wet Lab Practice. This involves biological lab immersion as a process towards inspired artistic projects. His personal research interests revolve around life, living systems, exploration into the mysteries of life and interrogating varied cultural definitions that stratify life's popular categorizations. He also focuses on legal, ethical and social implications of some of the newer biotechnological materials and methods: Molecular Biology, ART [Assisted Reproductive Technology] and Transgenic Protocols. Zaretsky also teaches Vivoarts: Ecology, Biotechnology, Non-human Relations, Live Art and Gastronomy. A major focus is on artistic uses and the social implications of molecular biology, tissue culture, genomics and developmental biology. Adam Zaretsky has been published in Nature Magazine, Red Herring, Leonardo, The Washington Post and Johnny's Unstoppable Bathroom Reader. He has spoken at Harvard, NYU, CAA and SCIARC.
-- While working in an MIT lab, Adam Zaretsky once spent two days playing a recording of the hits of singer Engelbert Humperdinck to a petri dish full of E. coli bacteria. The organisms’ antibiotic production increased, and he concluded that humans aren’t the only clusters of cells agitated by the continual “loud, awful lounge music.” He dubbed it “the Humperdinck effect.”
REBECA MENDEZ + ADAM EEUWENS: "Design as a Social Force" Lecture
19 APRIL 2007
EDA, UCLA ART|SCI CENTER
Rebeca Méndez is both a designer and a fine artist. Her work in both arenas has been praised and admired for the past two decades, particularly for its visceral, challenging, and sensual appeal.
Méndez designs primarily for non-profit organizations or cultural institutions. As an artist, she crosses all boundaries, traveling to extreme places such as Iceland, Patagonia, Svalbard, and the Sahara, where she is awakened to a heightened level of perception. She considers the journey as a medium in itself, and “migration” as an essential part of her work.
The profound social ignorance in this country on the topics of immigration, magnified by irresponsible and special interest media platforms that are dominating the conversation, have made her feel unwelcome and thus have heightened the sense of activism in her work and lectures.
STEVE KURTZ: "Art and Discipline" Lecture
05 APRIL 2007
EDA, UCLA BROAD ART CENTER
This lecture was built upon the following premises: first, any action within the cultural landscape performed from a minoritarian position will be perceived by authority as contestational act; and second, once challenged any or all of a variety of disciplinary agents will be sent to restabilize the discourses of the status quo through the managing or silencing of resistant cultural production.
Steve Kurtz is a founding member of Critical Art Ensemble (CAE). CAE is a collective of tactical media practitioners of various specializations, including computer graphics and web design, wetware, film/video, photography, text art, book art, and performance. Formed in 1987, CAE’s focus has been on the exploration of the intersections between art, critical theory, technology, and political activism. The collective has performed and produced a wide variety of projects for an international audience at diverse venues ranging from the street, to the museum, to the Internet. Critical Art Ensemble has also written five books, and has just released its sixth work Marching Plague: Germ Warfare and Global Public Health. Kurtz is an Associate Professor of Art at SUNY, Buffalo.
RICARDO DOMINGUEZ: "Border Disturbance Art" Lecture
07 MARCH 2007
EDA, UCLA BROAD ART CENTER
Ricardo Dominguez is co-founder of Electronic Disturbance Theater, a group that developed virtual sit-in technologies in 1998 in solidarity with the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico. From 2000 to 2004, he was co-director of “The Thing,” an Internet service provider for artists and activists, and is currently a former member of the Critical Art Ensemble. He is an assistant professor in the visual arts department at the University of California, San Diego, and is a principal investigator at the new-edge technology institute Calit2, where he will be researching and developing a performance project on nanotechnology entitled *b.a.n.g lab*.
This lecture was co-presented with the UCLA Center for Performance Studies.
GUERRILLA GIRLS: ART + ACTIVISM > "Why the World Must Change" Performance Lecture
02 March 2007
EDA, UCLA BROAD ART CENTER
The Guerrilla Girls are a band of anonymous females who take the names of dead women artists as pseudonyms and appear in public wearing gorilla masks. They have produced posters, stickers, books, printed projects, and actions that expose sexism and racism in politics, the art world, film, and the culture at large. They use humor to convey information, provoke discussion, and show that feminists can be funny.
They wear gorilla masks to focus on the issues rather than our personalities. Dubbing themselves the conscience of culture, they declare themselves feminist counterparts to the mostly male tradition of anonymous do-gooders like Robin Hood, Batman, and the Lone Ranger. Their work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Bitch and Bust; on TV and radio, including NPR, the BBC, and CBC; and in countless art and feminist texts. The mystery surrounding their identities has attracted attention. They could be anyone; they are everywhere.
ANURUPA ROY: "Activist Puppetry" Lecture
30 JANUARY 2007
GLORYA KAUFMAN HALL
Anurupa Roy, based in New Delhi, India, believes that puppetry is one of the most powerful tools available for initiating social change. She holds diplomas in puppet theater from the department of puppetry at the Dramatiska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and from the Scuola Della Guaratelle in Naples, Italy. In Delhi, she runs Kat-Katha, a puppet troupe that addresses issues such as gender, conflict resolution and AIDS awareness. Her lecture will feature a performance by members of her” Activist Puppetry Against AIDS” World Arts and Cultures course module.
Related project/installation by Marie Sester: 
