Mirko Tobias Schäfer / Assistant Professor
University of Utrecht Department for Media and Culture Studies
Mirko Tobias Schäfer / Assistant Professor
University of Utrecht Department for Media and Culture Studies
Date April 2008 / Category News
The Viennese Wohnzimmerkonzert featured an evening with MuQua artist in residence Nancy Mauro-Flude, aka Sister0, and London based "pirate, post-postmodernist, rebel and rock star" performer Jesse Darlin'. The concerts literally take place in Costa Caspary's small living room, and as a good host he even provides a buffet and cold beers in his kitchen. The two artists rocked the LabFactory the previous night with Sister0's performance, "My First Burial", and Jesse Darlin''s "I Was A Teenage Porn Star". Tonight was on the whole a fast, fragile and funny performance of songs, poems and some in-between chit-chat; stand-up rock stars forced to low volume. Performing a cappella without microphones, spiced with iconoclastic humour and never taking themselves too seriously, their appearance was an unplugged post-punk version of chamber music for the jilted generation coming of age. Jesse Darlin', subtle and clownish while performing her song "When The Machines Went To Sleep" is evocative of Blade Runner-like replicants. The congenial duo complements one another, as the punk-vaudeville act of Jesse Darlin' provides a constant commentary to Sister0. They draw from a cornucopia of intertextual references to create an indisputable post-ironic winking collage of punk-rock gone coffee party. Subverting any intellectual interpretation the duo manages to literally perform their own commentary and discourse simultaneously in their show.
Beyond Vienna's posh culture venues, limited to an oddly small living room and stripped of sound equipment, Jesse Darlin' and Sister0 remain unquestionably passionate and sovereign artists, convincingly performing straight from the cerebral cortex.
Tags Review
Date April 2008 / Category News
The Dutch television program Tegenlicht (Backlight) at VPRO featured a documentary on Wikipedia. Questioning the construction of knowledge as either expert generated in Encyclopaedia Britannica or collaboratively created in Wikipedia the documentary follows the various perspectives. Interviews with enthusiastic promoters of new technologies contrast with the culture pessimist view represented by self acclaimed "Anti Christ of Silicon Valley" Andrew Keen. However the documentary does not point out that neither Keen nor the techno-enthusiasts are part of the analysis of this question of knowledge in the digital age but one of its symptoms. Reducing cultural production dichotomously to mediocre amateur creations or to a revolution of professional amateurs is rather short sighted.
The documentary's website provides extra information and valuable links to a more comprehensible understanding of the debate and its participants. It also features my comments on Wikipedia.
Tegenlicht/Backlight: Wiki's Waarheid, website at VPRO
The Truth According To Wikipedia, at YouTube