Art’s Birthday 2020


It’s that time of year, when once again we reach into deep pre-history to celebrate Art’s Birthday. It’s been 1,000,057 years to be precise, since someone dropped a sponge into a bucket of water, and so, art was born. Buiding on Robert Filliou’s Fluxus holiday, a loose and changing cooperation of international artists join in networked exchange locally and around the world. Tune in to the hub of activities.

I’m currently in Graz, Austria, hosted by the inimitable esc medien kunst labor . Tonight we are kicking off the year of the urban cyborg with a Cyborg Radiation Day. I’ll be performing a new piece entitled Changes of State, using field recordings from the Atacama desert, together with protest sounds shared by my collaborator Rodrigo Ríos Zunino from the recent popular uprisings in Chile in response to aggravated social and economic inequality.

While the Chilean uprising was sparked by a hike in public transportation prices, the real issue lies in a massive inequity between social welfare and corporate welfare, where Chile’s extraction economy serves the very wealthy while pillaging the environment and forcing more and more people to fall into poverty. International companies and consortia are deeply implicated in this mess, with Canadian mining companies and investors at the helm. Our ongoing project on mining and its associated infrastructure in the high altitude deserts of Chile is the focus of my time here in Graz, both for Art’s Birthday and with the multi-screen and multi-channel sound installation Salar: Evaporation which will open next week on January 24, 2020 at esc.

Tune in via Radio Helsinki , the free radio here in Graz, and here’s the full line up for tonight from esc!

18.00 Uhr:URBAN CYBORGS, Opening and greeting words by Reni Hofmüller and Ilse Weber, presentation of the project URBAN CYBORGS and start of radio transmission including Radio Cyborg Transmitter RCT

18.30 Uhr: Presents to art, Onlinearchive Ö1 Kunstradio, Moderation: Reni Hofmüller

20.00 Uhr:Solar Radio, Absolute Value of Noise, live from Vancouver, Canada

19.00 Uhr: Salar: Evaporation, Lecture by Anna Friz

20.30 Uhr: Spark Gap, Raviv Ganchrow, Preproduction Deutschlandfunk

21.15 Uhr:The sound of artspace, Seppo Gründler live in Graz, then: Presents to art, Onlinearchive Ö1 Kunstradio, Moderation: Reni Hofmüller

21.40 Uhr:Changes of State, Anna Friz, Radioperformance, live from Graz

22.00 Uhr:Die Loslösung des Plans, Lale Rodgarkia-Dara, live from Graz

22.30 Uhr:Embodied Radio Device, Absolute Value of Noise and Anna Friz

22.50 Uhr: 30 Minutes of SDR, Enrique Tomas, live from Linz, in collaboration with Dorf TV Linz

23.20 Uhr: denn jede Variable stellt eine konstante Form dar, Adina Camhy, Bettina Landl & Peter Venus; Presents to art, Onlinearchive RADIA, Moderation: Reni Hofmüller