Architempo /~ alok b. nandi design.architempo.net

A series of works by Peter Greenaway shown at EMAF. Hope it’ll travel and be shown.

The EUROPEAN MEDIA ART FESTIVAL is proud to present one of the most distinguished and influential filmmaker, media philosopher and artist of the world: PETER GREENAWAY.

In a live talk on Saturday, April 23rd, Greenaway presents his latest multimedia mammoth project The Tulse Luper Suitcases (TLS) and explains his vision of “post-cineastic film”.

“The Tulse Luper Suitcases”, Greenaway’s latest multimedia mammoth project, is a work of encyclopaedic dimension which, spanning a period of sixty years, tells the story of uranium - no. 92 in the periodic table of the elements. It is also the story of the artist and writer Tulse Luper, whose life and times are reconstructed from the contents of 92 suitcases that turn up one after the other across the world. Greenaway recounts this life by means of books, DVDs, an internet platform, an exhibition, 16 TV films and three motion picture films. It tells the story of ficticious artist and writer Tulse Luper, who entangled in the historic events of the 20th century spends most of his life in various prisons, leaving behind an oeuvre of 92 suitcases.

Greenaway will introduce the project and present the three motion picture films that are part of The Tulse Luper Suitcases - The Moab Story (2003), From Sark to Finish (2003) and Vaux to the Sea (2004) - in person at the EMAF.

In a Live Talk he will explain his vision of post-cineastic film. At the congress of the EMAF his co-workers will describe the projected TLS-exhibition and the internet platform. In EMAF Ausstellung in the Dominikanerkirche visitors can play at three terminals of the Tulse Luper Suitcases - The Game and this re-live episodes of the title hero’s life.

It’d be good to “experience” the post-cineastic film as envisioned by Greenaway.

Great to see that this word is the anchor of a major festival in 2005. Active in cross-media and mixed-realities for a number of years, I do have affinities with this notion/concept related to “hybrid”.

Derrick de Kerckhove, a regular Doors of Perception participant, has written a piece quoted in the Ars Electronica site, the major media arts festival, for which he is also one of the curator for this 2005 edition.

The first hybrid is the human. And living in paradox. A mix of mind and matter, a translating device, a handshake from mind to matter and vice-versa, humankind is in a permanent state of hybridization, consciously and unconsciously.

Why then focus on such a pervasive condition? Because new drivers of hybridization have emerged that make the hybrid condition always more evident and more uncomfortable for some. With globalization comes implosion, all cultures and time zones piling up upon each other. When imploding, things either integrate or break. Another driver is digitization, inviting an infinity of recombinations, all hybrids, carefully cultivated with software, like flowers.

We live in paradox, in a suspension of disbelief that will last until the dust settles and the contradictions between self and other, between nationalisms and globalism, between democracy and state control are resolved. And the contradictions between the power of media and that of the state. And the contradictions between science and the economy generating hybrids for all purposes with a clear bias towards profitability over service to humanity. And the contradictions …

Art is the food of hybridity. It is translating and transporting the modes of one culture into another, lifting bits of both and mixing. Sampling is not just one of the techniques of the digital, it has become a way of life. And we have DJs of culture, albeit operating at longer-term rhythms. What can people do but sample in an environment where everything is always available?

Art is the food of hybridity ?
or
Hybridity is the food of art ?