For the exhibition How Latitudes Become Forms, a unique new media/visual arts collaboration between the New Delhi-based Raqs Media Collective and Atelier Bow-Wow, a Tokyo-based architectural practice, blends an ancient form of cultural interchange, contemporary urban architecture, and the very latest technology. Inspired by the concept of the caravansarai, spontaneous communities of travelers and traders of Mughal, India, the team created Temporary Autonomous Sarai, a meeting space that provides opportunities for physical and virtual dialogue across cultures and geographic borders. Borrowing from Hakim Bey's notion of a "temporary Autonomous zone," the project combines Raqs' conception of a digital sarai with Atelier Bow-Wow's notion of da-me or "no-good architecture"--multiuse structures (an underpass that doubles as a cinema or barbershop, for example) that epitomize the creative, adaptive aesthetic of Tokyo.



For this lecture, members of Raqs Media Collective and Atelier Bow-Wow discuss public spaces in hybrid urban and cyber environments, including their collaborative project Temporary Autonomous Sarai, commissioned by the Walker Art Center for the exhibition How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age.



Related links:
http://www.sarai.net

launch webcast of February 6, 2003, panel discussion

Join prominent artists and curators who are creating their work in South Africa or who actively work with African artists. As they explore their perspectives on the contemporary aesthetics in performing arts and performance art, they discuss how their practice has been influenced by their experience in Africa. Participants include Baraka Sele, Director, New Jersey Performing Arts Center World Festival; Walker Chakela, Director, Windybrow Theater, Johannesburg, South Africa; and Walker artists-in-residence Robin Rhode, South African visual artist, and Ralph Lemon, American choreographer. Moderated by Philip Bither, Walker Performing Arts Curator. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition How Latitudes Become Forms.



Related links:
http://www.bam.org/tree/

launch webcast of February 9, 2003, panel discussion

Five visual arts curators discuss art in a global context. Participants are: Kathy Halbreich, Director, Walker Art Center; Vishakha Desai, Senior Vice President/Director, Galleries and Cultural Programs, The Asia Society; Hou Hanru, Paris-based, independent curator-critic; Paulo Herkenhoff, independent curator and critic (Sao Paulo); and Latitudes exhibition curator Philippe Vergne.

launch webcast of February 25, 2003, Tariq Ali talk

What differs between old and new empires? Why has war been such a regular feature of human history? Tariq Ali addresses these questions and ponders the effects of current military technology on the physical world as well as changing attitudes toward global politics. Ali is the longstanding editor of the New Left Review, the author of more than a dozen books on history and politics, a novelist, and a playwright. Copresented by the Walker, the University of Minnesota Humanities Institute, the Institute for Global Studies, and the European Studies Consortium.



Part of the lecture series New Ideas on Globalization. Copresented by the Walker Art Center, the University of Minnesota Humanities Institute, the Institute for Global Studies, and the European Studies Consortium.

From photographed street performance to temporary water paintings, performative elements are used by many artists in How Latitudes Become Forms to create works of visual art. Explore these practices on a tour of the exhibition with Walker Associate Curator Douglas Fogle. Meet in the lobby.

launch webcast of March 13, 2003, Andreja Kuluncic talk

Croatian artist Andreja Kuluncic presents Distributive Justice, a multidisciplinary online work (http://www.distributive-justice.com) involving artists, writers, and philosophers, most recently exhibited at Documenta XI (2002), and discusses her new project Distributive Justice: America.



As contemporary theories suggest, there are two sorts of influences that determine the distribution of traits in a society: genetic and cultural. An earlier project, Closed Reality - Embryo (1999-2000; http://embryo.inet.hr), was designed to simulate the genetic aspect of creation and to provoke critical reflection on its possibilities and consequences. By creating virtual embryos visitors have (unintentionally) influenced the distribution of "traits" in a "society" and, consequently, the profile of a future society. However, the character of a society does not depend only on genetic determinants. Since other factors also influence the allocation of social goods among the individuals, another project, Distributive Justice (2001-2003; http://www.distributive-justice.com), was launched in order to elucidate these other factors from the standpoint of ethical concept of justice. To be sure, it was an anonymous society both projects were dealing with--a society that was perhaps not unlike some society we know, or even live in, but still a society with no time-space identity. Hence--a new, third project focused on a factual society--on a society that would nevertheless be paradigmatic in a sense related to a broadly construed concept of distribution on a global level.



America is a world superpower. This does not apply only to politics or economy. Its influence is so profound and many-sided that it is hard to find a sphere of life, or a part of the world, where the "American Effect" is not palpable. Playing such a role America has become an archetypal notion both in the eyes of Americans and non-Americans, representing both a positive and a negative ideal, both in its cognitive as well as its emotional aspects. Needless to say, it is impossible to capture all this richness in a framework of a single project.



The approach in Distributive Justice: America is to single out several diverging positions/attitudes/arguments relating to several Spheres of Distribution--several paradigmatic aspects of interest conflict in a society. The project assumes that the following "spheres," to some extent at least, depict both the most actual and the most persistent features of the American Effect upon the world:

• Distribution of Freedom: Freedom vs. Equality;
• Distribution of Material Goods: Just Inequality;
• Distribution of Technology: Import of Brain Power - Export of Technology;
• Distribution of Knowledge & Culture: Popular Culture vs. Elitism;
• Distribution of Waste: Environment in the Service of Consumption;
• Distribution of Justice: Just War vs. Unjust Peace.

launch webcast of April 1, 2003, Salah Hassan talk

Scholar-curator Salah Hassan discusses democracy, modernity, and contemporary art practices. Dr. Hassan is chair of the department of History of Art at Cornell University; editor of NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art, and consulting editor for African Arts and Atlantica.



Part of the lecture series New Ideas on Globalization. Copresented by the Walker Art Center, the University of Minnesota Humanities Institute, the Institute for Global Studies, and the European Studies Consortium.

Artists make choices about media, form, and materials as well as the placement of their works, specifying where and how they are to be shown. Join Walker Curator Philippe Vergne on an investigation of the diversity of artistic practice in How Latitudes Become Forms. Meet in the lobby.

launch webcast of April 4, 2003, Bei Dao reading

Bei Dao, the foremost of China's Misty Poets, will visit for a reading of his work on April 3 with translator-writer Eliot Weinberger. Exiled since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Bei Dao, is internationally acclaimed for poetry and fiction offering a lyricism that blends loss and hope to become a voice of conscience for the world. Weinberger, who will read Bei Dao's wrok as well as his own, is the author of Karmic Traces (2000), an acerbically witty and politically engaged volume of essays. His translation credits include Dao's work as well as The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz and Jorge Luis Borges' Selected Non-Fiction.

launch webcast of April 8, 2003, Siva Vaidhyanathan talk

Cultural historian and media scholar Siva Vaidhyanathan discusses the battle for control over information in the age of electronic communication. Vaidhyanathan is the author of The Anarchist in the Library: How Peer-to-Peer Networks are Transforming Politics, Culture and the Control of Information.



Part of the lecture series New Ideas on Globalization. Copresented by the Walker Art Center, the University of Minnesota Humanities Institute, the Institute for Global Studies, and the European Studies Consortium.

launch webcast of April 15, 2003, Carol Becker lecture

Critic and dean of Faculty at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Carol Becker critiques romantic notions of nomadism by recounting her experiences leading a group of student artists to Vietnam.



Part of the lecture series New Ideas on Globalization. Copresented by the Walker Art Center, the University of Minnesota Humanities Institute, the Institute for Global Studies, and the European Studies Consortium.

launch webcast of April 22, 2003, Neil Smith and Arthur J. Rolnick debate

Marxist geographer Neil Smith, author of Uneven Development and The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City, will debate Arthur J. Rolnick from the Federal Reserve Board on the virtues and pitfalls of globalization.



Part of the lecture series New Ideas on Globalization. Copresented by the Walker Art Center, the University of Minnesota Humanities Institute, the Institute for Global Studies, and the European Studies Consortium.

This conference explores and encourages collaboration between art, social studies, and language arts educators; teaching artists; arts administrators; and scholars. Learn the stories behind the changing demographics in Minnesota schools and explore ways the arts can lead to understanding and communication within and among global cultures. The conference includes exhibition tours, live theater and dance events, post-performance discussions, expert panels on global issues, hands-on media arts and art sessions, and more. For more information, call 612.375.7614 or e-mail susan.rotilie@walkerart.org.



Cosponsored by the Walker Art Center, the University of Minnesota's Institute for Global Studies, and the Perpich Center for Arts Education.



Connecting Stories: Globalism and Interdisciplinary Education is made possible by generous support from Target Stores. Additional support was provided by the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, the Medtronic Foundation, and the University of Minnesota.

Keith Kahn and Ali Zaidi (artistic directors of London's moti roti) and Danny Yung (artistic director of Hong Kong's Zuni Icosahedron) discuss the creation of multidisciplinary performance works and collaborations informed by a global context.

Plastic, newsprint, product packaging, and milk crates are among the many materials used in the artworks of How Latitudes Become Forms. Join Walker Curatorial Assistant Kemi Ilesanmi on a tour of the exhibition to discuss these material choices and ways they impact artistic practice. Meet in the lobby.