TERRITORIFIC! is a 3-night workshop for practicing artists and art students to explore the themes of territory and territoriality through accomplishing a series of collaborative works in the fields of new media, performance, and sound art. We are now inviting interested artists and art students based in Hong Kong to join our visiting artists from Denmark and India for a territorific artistic exploration!

Through exploration of the characteristics and ideas of territory, the artists raise questions like what the materiality of the territory is, how borders are marked and how virtual and physical spaces are crossed and mixed. The primary goal of the workshop is to create a fruitful collaborative platform for artistic investigation.

During the 3 nights of the workshop, activities for provoking thought and sharing of ideas will be carried out. The ultimate task of the camp is to produce and perform interventions in public space. The three facilitators will provide input in the form of thematic talks where different aspects of the theme listed below are introduced. These will become the background for dialogue and collaboration among participants.

The three key components of the workshop are free improvisation, social media and public space. Possible working direction is outlined below. While these components will be at the core of the discussions, participants are encouraged to build up associations of ideas freely.

Free Improvisation
Participants could work towards a joint collaboration based on ideas adopted from free improvisation and performance, creating social interaction in a closed environment. Group discussions led by the artists will explore the theme ‘Territory and Territoriality’ in a conceptual approach.

Social Media
Participants could create interventions on web 2.0 platforms, with an investigation into how the realm of social media has changed our notion about public and private space. Are we able to define and re-define territories online? What could be the strategies to overlap online and offline territories and create artistic interventions in the public spaces of Hong Kong and the world of web 2.0?

Public Space
Participants could work with performative, sonic and visual interfaces in the public realm. The territorific space in the physical and virtual domain will be the platform for either small intimate personal actions or an elaborate dispersed set of connected actions, all as a result of a collaborative and a personal reflection.

The effort in Territorific! is to gather a seemingly diverse set of art practitioners in an impulsive yet concerted set of activities. Participants will explore the terrain building up in the discussion through hands-on artistic activity. In this conceptually-driven workshop, participants will be immersed in an intensive collaboration and the efforts will be documented throughout the way. Participants should agree with being included in audio visual documentation of the workshop. The compiled documentation will be distributed to the participants.

FACILITATORS
The workshop will be facilitated by three artists: Annette Finnsdottir, Rune Søchting and Zeenath Hasan. Annette, Rune and Zeenath are media practitioners and their works are concerned with space making, virtual imaging, making media with people. While they work with various formats including installation, net video, intervention, performance, they will share their ways of working with workshop participants and generate activities that enable hands-on research into the realization of new media approaches. Since collaboration is an emphasis in the workshop, participants are expected to be involved in developing the workshop format through the 3 vinights and bring their individual experiences and knowledge to the gathering.

Annette Finnsdottir (IS/DK)
video-artist, director of Netfilmmakers (www.netfilmmakers.dk)
Annette is a lecturer in New Media design, curator and videoartist. In her work and network she explores interactive and performative interventions within and across virtual and physical spaces. She has developed video and performance work based on eventscores and worked with memory and traces within the virtual world Second Life. She is the inititator and creative director of Netfilmmakers (www.netfilmmakers.dk) a non-commercial online gallery for netvideo and netart. Annette Finnsdottir holds a MA in Visual Culture with BA in Film- and Media Science and is furthermore educated as a screenwriter from The National Danish Filmschool.

Rune Søchting (DK)
artist, composer, coordinator for the Nordic Sound Program (www.vaesen.dk)
Rune works in the intersection between music composition, performance and installations with a main focus on sound. In his work he incorporates a number of different techniques as well as technologies. He has made numerous installations, field recording projects as well as composed music for videos and live music for performances and dance-performances that have been shown around Europe. Rune has a BA in Literature and an MA in Modern Cultural studies with a Master’s thesis on the philosophy of sound from Copenhagen University. Alongside his artistic practice he teaches the theory and history of experimenting with sound in numerous workshops and as courses at Art Academies and universities. Since 2007 he is the coordinator for Nordic Sound Art Joint Study programme, a pan-Nordic Master’s level program dedicated to sound-based art within the visual arts.

Zeenath Hasan (IN/SE)
media-artist, ph.d. researcher in new media (www.zeeniac.net)
Zeenath involves herself in the people centered practice of exercising the potential of media technologies for socially appropriate intervention. The studio from where she conducts her doctoral research on the role of media in a democracy is located in the School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University. She was born in Kolkata and currently resides in Malmö. She has trained in the MS Communications programme at Manipal, Karnataka and in the MA New Media Studies programme at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. She has worn the labels of Information Architect, Interface Designer, Design Researcher, Cultural Producer, and Media Artist and Researcher. She also runs a 1-person design research firm.

Date: March 3-5 (Wed, Thu, Fri), 2010
Time: 1800-2300 on all nights (with light dinner provided)
Venue: Videotage
Address: Unit 13, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, To Kwa Wan, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Workshop Leaders: Annette Finnsdottir(IS/DK), Rune Søchting(DK), Zeenath Hasan(IN / SE)

SCHEDULE

Night 1
Meet At CROSS practices
Introduction / Presentations by facilitators / Workshop plan / Presentations of individual practice by participants
venue: videotage
Night 2
Drawing borders with sounds
Lectures + Research activity: How can borders be drawn with sounds?
venue: start at videotage, then proceed to places where people listen
Night 3
When the physical and the virtual meet in public space…
Lectures + research activity: Mapping social media spaces in the city
venue: start at videotage, then proceed to a locus of transitions