HACKmit!
Medien und Kunst zum Leben (Media and Art to Live)

HACKmit! Medien und Kunst zum Leben (Media and Art to Live)
From 1st May till 26th August 2007
Opening: 1st May 2007, 11am, MACHmit! Museum fuer Kinder (Children Museum). Salutation from Andreas Broeckmann, artistic director of TESLA, Berlin's laboratory for Media Art.
Address: Senefelderstr. 5, 10437 Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg
Opening hours: Tuesday till Sunday from 8.30 till 18.00
Curated by: Tatiana Bazzichelli
with: Minimal TV (Giacomo Verde, Federico Bucalossi and Vania Pucci); Gabriele Zaverio (FreakNet Medialab) and Aldo Cesar Fagà; Pigreca (Flavia Alman and Sabine Reiff); Simonetta Fadda; Sebastian Luetgert; Vittore Baroni; Bjoern Balcke; Anna Laudani and Giuliana Del Zanna.
Supported by: Hauptstadt Kulturfonds Berlin
Photos of HACKmit + Download the flyers: [Front] | [Back]


The HACK MIT! event at MACHmit! Museum fuer Kinder (www.machmitmuseum.de) is an exhibition and event about art and new media, with a particular focus on the concept of hacking.

The idea is to bring children close to the new technologies, like computers, videos, televisions, and at the same time associate those technologies to the more traditional art field, from the classical avant-gardes (such as Surrealism, Dadaism, Futurism) to the present.
Italian artists and German ones are brought together to realise a project where children can playfully learn to use media. The aim is to provide an approach of using technology in a creative way.

Central concept is the do-it-yourself creation and hacker ethic. Hackers give life to an alternative and independent way of producing information, cultural consciousness and communication. They share the good of knowledge and fight for free communication and access for all, aiming to create and spread knowledge for the public domain.

This way of thinking is very closed to the approach children have to objects and society in general: they learn playing and de-constructing the reality, applying new meanings and unpredictable results to it.
Today, many children learn very early how to use computer and technologies, but many of them have no possibility to learn how to use them in a critical and non-commercial way, and understand how media can be easily linked to art and creativity. With this exhibition, they can experience how art can be easy to do, and how technology can be consciously used.

Much research are focused on the bad effect of media in children's perception of reality and the construction of cultural and social paradigms. But if children learn how to use media self-consciously, technology can be an important tool for creating, learning and realising art. Media are considered in their creative possibilities, presented in a historical perspective and highlighted in their diversity from the past to present. Art thus becomes common experience, a field of experimentation with media, offering an opportunity of individual participation in the process of artistic creation.

The history of contemporary art has gradually destroyed the concept of art as a property. It has empowered the spectator as a no longer a passive consumer, but active participant of the artwork. The role of the artist as an all-powerful creator has also been gradually broken up as well, by artistic happenings which require the participation of the audience (from Fluxus to Mail Art) so that a process takes place which is controlled by the creative spontaneity of the people, showing that it is possible to make one's own art and create self-made media.

The idea is to illustrate how art and technology have increasingly converged and how it is possible today, through a self-governed use of media and languages, to practice a "hacking art" and work in truly collaborative fashion. Art makes sense if people can act inside, the artwork becomes a stream of collective patchwork, contaminations, copying, alteration of language codes and icons.

Several workshops will bring together the diverse Italian cultures of hacking and media art with its German counterparts. Children can view interactive models of media and art and can participate in video and computer laboratories. They can create works of art, such as dada-collages, surrealistic sculptures and be involved in mail art process. They can become artists and inventors building up their own television and constructing their own TV show, presenting their ideas in public as real TV "directors". They can do art with a vacuum cleaner and experiment the art of realising and printing stamps.

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Performance and workshops
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Performance-laboratory

The exhibition event will be open with the Minimal TV performance made by the Italian group Quinta Parete. With Minimal TV anybody, at least for one day, can have their own private network and children can create their own television-show together with the artists. Let's understand how television is running and what is the difference between reality and pure fiction!
With: Giacomo Verde, Federico Bucalossi and Vania Pucci. Italian-German translation: Clarita Zagaglia and Giuliana Del Zanna.
www.minimaltv.cjb.net

Workshops
The workshops are realized by Italian and German artists in the course of the exhibitions.

RUUUUUMBLE: Futurism Printing Workshop (by Gabriele Zaverio www.freaknet.org, Aldo Cesar Faga' www.nuncnet.org)

The interview Video Workshop (by Simonetta Fadda)

Linux Digital Fotos and Graphic Works with Free Software (by Bjoern Balcke www.photoperiodism.de) - Creative Writing (by Sebastian Luetgert http://www.textz.com).

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Stages and Working Stations
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Stages/Stations
Children interact directly with projects in the field of art and technology. There are 7 different stages/stations:

1. Dadaism
"Dada Sprechen" (Speaking Dada)
Dada Project by Giuliana Del Zanna and Anna Laudani.

2. Surrealism
"Ich und mein Traum" (Me and my Dream)
A Surrealistic project by Giuliana Del Zanna and Anna Laudani.

3. POSTmit!
"Ein 5-jaehriges Kind kann dies tun!" (A five-years-old child can do it!)
A mail art network project coordinated by Vittore Baroni
in networking with: Martha Aitchison (UK), buZ blurr (USA), Gregory T. Byrd (USA), Bruno Capatti (IT), David Dellafiora (Australia), Mike Dickau (USA), Jas W Felter (Canada), John Held Jr. (USA), Jo.Anne Hill (UK), Susanna Lakner (D), Michael Leigh (UK), Graciela Gutièrrez Marx (Argentina), Emilio Morandi (IT), Angela and Peter Netmail (D), Clemente Padin (Uruguay), Franco Piri Focardi (IT), Claudio Romeo (IT), Karla Sachse (D), Gianni Simone (Japan), The Sticker Dude (USA), Giovanni and Renata Strada (IT), Lucien Suel (France), Rod Summers / VEC (The Netherlands), Annina Van Sebroeck and Luc Fierens (Belgium), Reid Wood (USA), Special Guest: Anna Banana.

The process of the "Eternal Network" of Mail Art is reproduced by activating a direct postal exchange between the children and a sample of the Mail Art population (30 mail artists from all over the world).

4. "Empty World" - VACUUM Work Station
Project by Aldo Cesar Faga'.
Realizing artworks with a Vacuum Cleaner and a machine constructed with assembled technologies.

5. Radio Scanner - Discovering Radio Waves
A Radio project by Gabriele Zaverio.
Millions of weird and strange radio stations all around the world, spreading codes, data, informations, incredible transmissions can be hearded and decoded.

6. Museum Visit: A PHOTO-STORYBOARD Workshop and Project
by Simonetta Fadda.
How to realise a film script and draw a short storyboard of the MACHmit museum visit.

7. Cinema. The Lumiere Brothers' First Films Experience
Screening of the film: "L'Arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat" (1895)
curated by Simonetta Fadda.

Installations

1. Ambient/Sphere Installation
by Aldo Cesar Faga'.
Immersive 360° installation with a synchro-optical sphere.

2. The Mirror-game (Spiegel-Spiel) by Simonetta Fadda.
with: "Videogame" and "I is another" Installations.
Video is a "fake mirror": let's play together with our mirror and tv images and discover their differences.

3. Klang-chromatische Energien
Interactive Installation by Flavia Alman and Sabine Reiff (Pigreca www.pigreca.com)
By moving and interacting in front of the computer screen, children produce colors and sounds.

4. DADA Theater
Experience the Tristan Tzara Theatre (A Dada-Soirée in Paris, 1923).
An interactive installation by Anna Laudani and Giuliana Del Zanna.

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A project curated by Tatiana Bazzichelli
at MACHmit! Museum fuer Kinder
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MACHmit! Museum fuer Kinder gGmbH
Senefelderstr. 5, 10437 Berlin
Tel: +49-30-7477 82 00
Fax: +49-30-7477 82 05
info@machmitmuseum.de
http://www.machmitmuseum.de
Director: Marie Lorbeer
Press: Katrin Fandrich and Edgar Steiger (Assistent)
Tel: +49-30-7477 8202
E-Mail presse@machmitmuseum.de

The HACKmit Exhibition is supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds Berlin.

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