January 2009 YASMIN Discussion: Drifting Islands

Drifting Islands is a joint discussion, scheduled to take place January 2--25, 2009 on the YASMIN Discussion list. It is organized by Transmediale 2009 "Deep North"; Letterkenny Cultural Center and Leonardo/Olats for the "Lovely Weather" project.

Topic Overview

Islands are very specific territories, surrounded by water. Their ecology belongs both to terrestrial and maritime issues. Islands are also the territories of specific imaginary.

Today's climate change, global warming and the melting of the ice caps are affecting islands in two opposite directions: on the one hand some of them are threatened by disparition under rising levels of water; on the other hand, new islands are appearing, or new maritime routes are opening, such as the North-West passage.

Among the issues that we would like to address in the Drifting Islands discussion include (but not limited to):

- What are the artworks that are addressing these issues, and how?

- How do people, from different geographic zones, but living on islands relate to these trends? Is it different in Iceland, in Mediterraean islands, in Pacific Islands?

- What does a possible reconfiguration of the geography (with the apparition/disparition of territories) mean for the inhabitants of Earth and how can the new term of "climate refugee" analyzed?

- Is there a new imaginary emerging?

Moderator and Discussants

Annick Bureaud, moderator

Director of Leonardo/Olats (http://www.olats.org), independent new media art critic (for the French contemporary art magazine art press), theoretician and curator. She is co-curating the 2009 @rt Outsiders Festival in Paris on "Inhabitable – Uninhabitable. Art of extreme environments".

John Cunningham, respondent for Letterkenny Cultural Center, Ireland

Artistic director of the Letterkenny Cultural Center (http://www.donegalculture.com/)

Bronac Ferran, respondent for Transmediale

Bronac Ferran is a writer, researcher and conceptual architect. She runs boundaryobject.org, an independent agency which works between the arts and other disciplines, including ecology, science, law and technology. She also runs theidealaboratory at Imperial College in London as part of her part-time role as Senior Tutor for the Innovation Design Engineering Department at the RCA in London. Recent projects include a cultural mapping report on digital culture in Brazil for the Dutch Ministry of Culture (with Felipe Fonseca) and curation/organisation of Paralelo workshop in Sao Paulo in March 2009 about media arts, design and the envjronment for the British Council. She was a foundING member of the worldwide bricolabs network and former Director of Interdisciplinary Arts at Arts Council England.

A synthesis of this discussion will be given at a panel during Transmediale 2009 in Berlin.

To take part in the online discussion, please subscribe to the Yasmin list at: http://www.media.uoa.gr/yasmin/