CARGO

This blog is put on hold. It will be reactivated from the moment WARUM 2.0 will be restaged, very possibly by V2 during the next Rotterdam Film Festival in 2009.

Beside views and interview fragments with Paul Virilio and cameraman Daniel Demoustier, it contains the announcement text of ‘impactology’, comments and critical questions, posted between January 14th 2008, the day of the start of the final setup of the installation arena in Stuk Leuven, and the date its closure.

Now, a new blog is in the make, in preparation for an essay for the Brighton Photo Biennal, together with Geert Lovink. The url of the new blog will be announced here soon.

For more info, please do not hesitate to send a mail to cargoweb@pandora.be

WARUM 2.0 in 4 dvd’s with interviews with Paul Virilio and cameraman Daniel Demoustier; a visual and sound tour through the installation arena & ‘the unbearable lightness of doom’ sequence as bonus. Preview

The dvd package is for sale (50 euro plus shipment costs).

Contact cargoweb@pandora.be

Beside being an installation arena, experienced and approved by the first visiting public during the Artefact Festival in Stuk/Leuven/Belgium, WARUM 2.0 is also a metaphor and a concrete realized example of the kind of platform we all need for being actively involved in media today. The physical part of Warum 2.0 is nothing less than the Media Studio that Cargo, the initiator organization, built last year (now in containers, on the move, in search for its next possible destination), in its attempt to offer and construct the media tools necessary today for artists and makers and critics interested to engage with work processes in and directed towards the media.

A pen, candle and paper are not sufficient any longer. We need to enlarge and equip our working table. Neither an internet connection nor some hard & software are sufficient any longer. We need more of this, as well as a solid network of kindred spirits deeply involved, technically that is, and in content (critically I mean), and engaged somehow, actively that is  local, and thinking broad.

Are you one of them/us? Do you have suggestions? Please do post here, then.

Installation arena WARUM 2.0 by Stefaan Decostere,
with Paul Virilio.

Images : Daniel Demoustier
Sound : Edwin Uytenbroek
360° panorama programming & visitor detection : Christian Decker
Robot & hand teleport into Second Life : Jonas Hielscher
Human Tetris construction : Rene Kroondijk, Aydin Koyuk, Ayhan Aygun, Rik de Ruiter; with interactive animation programmming by Chris Devriese
Online upload module : Sander Korebrits.

Produced by CARGO and presented at the 2008 Artefact Festival Stuk / Belgium.

Support : Ministerie van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap, Artefact Festival, Stuk, Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds, TU Delft/Bouwkunde

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The WARUM 2.0 arena closed down, before yesterday night, in Artefact Festival/Stuk/Leuven/Belgium. The installation hardware (lots of it, mostly wires & connections that is) is packed. Cargo is now just cargo. Heavy. Slowly on the move, in search for a new destination.. No more tickering data however; no more neuronal activity in the machines, in the human bodies nor in-between. Of course we tried hard to put this event on tape, and we will edit it. & soon, new little films will be posted on this blog.

Why is no crime. Come and see again this blog, from time to time. Cargo is a cargo lost, ah indeed, but not so the people it carries (makers and co-travellers alike), as they don’t stop engaging and questioning.

DEDICATION

Johan Blaeke was the person, of whom I wished he was my father. Together we started to develop Warum 2.0 last August, the physical part of it that is, the materials that would catch the images in the space of the installation arena. Johan died unexpectedly, soon after this week of very intense discussion, joy and testing. I never succeeded in replacing him with somebody else. I miss him. And I miss him so much. Out of the open space of his absence, an energy started to grow, that became the case of Warum 2.0.

It was my son Oszkár who showed me the way to connect to the visitors in Warum 2.0.. He, a very special boy of 10, and my great love, caring that is, being his father, was the reference, all the time. The openness of Oszkár, being a new fresh individual human to the world, as it is given, was conditional, yes, but without warning of accident, of hurt feelings, of possible and to be anticipated wrongdoing by others of any kind. Why, for Oszkár, has never been the question.

IN OUR HAND

The intermedia space of Warum 2.0 may be understood as an arena of struggle, far from impact. As long as we question the logic of war (the war of media and technology) we succeed in keepng that certain critical distance. Impact then, as an issue of prime interest in how war, men and technology are interrelated.

Opening sequence of Warum Wir Männer die Technik so Lieben (1985), the original of WARUM 2.0. For more info please go to ’pages’ the original tape.