Borderlines: Immigrant’s Environments in Social and Technological Art Context.

1. Working Title
Borderlines: Immigrant’s Environments in Social and Technological Art Context.


2. Keywords:
New media, immigrants, representation, video installation, contemporary art, collaborative artwork


3. Aims:
The project aims’ to research artwork that utilises’ digital technology for social and collaborative productions.
In the project I will discuss; how does our new media environment help to develop the production of social art?
I intend to work with a group of five immigrants who live in London. And through audiovisual experiments I want to document their own perspective of the city, their “borderline environment”.
I want to create an art piece that uses this social network as part of its’ process. I aim to discuss and find relevant arguments to act as a catalyst for the formulation of new perspectives. How can we produce art using the knowledge of our new media environment to raise awareness of political and social issues?
The project will investigate the concept of ‘borderlines’ in our global society, looking the result in a contemporary art context.
The work will be made with a social group, and I aim to produce a video installation, website, catalogue and an exhibition, all materials based upon this process.
I will research the social groups’ relationship between their identity and language, and how this is affected by a global city. I aim to contextualise my research with contemporary artists’ and theorists’.
I will use digital technology to document the interactions’ between the group. I intend to combine video, natural sound and photography to create a final piece that is a documentation of these interactions.


4. Objectives:
• Create an art piece that uses’ digital technology and translates’ the research results’ of the social aspects collected through the project process (by interviews, pictures, videos sound etc.)
• Document and research how a certain group of immigrants live in London? And how their lives change this global society?
• Research artworks that use new medias technology for the creation of discussion between the contemporary society and political issues.
• Build a website to publish the documentation of the project.
• Create a catalogue, which will be published for the exhibition opening, with images of the project process and critical texts about the project concepts.

5. Rationale
In the project “Borderlines: Immigrant’s Environments in Social and Technological Art Context” I will research and investigate different concepts with an intention to analyze the relationship between the new media art context and social environments.
I will investigate how the concept of “borderlines” and “environments” connect to our contemporary society, from a social and political perspective using the experience of five immigrants who live in London, and translate this into art using new technology in the context their own “borderline’s environments”.
To start, we have to interpret how this concept relates’ to their representation. Some questions about how to translate this idea: What is Representation? What will be presentable in this context? And how would this be represented?
“Today, thanks in part to the heterogeneous forms and materials of so much twentieth century art, the term representation can be used to refer to a number of different types of signifying relation. ‘Representation’ can consist of a mimetic connection between a visual likeness produced in a non-linguistic medium – for example, a realist painting or sculpture – and the real world object that this copy signifies.”(BIRO, Mathew. 2003. P139) 1
We can find different ways to answer these questions. Parallel and opposites will show us the distinct social and political aspects of the “borderlines” issue in relation to the life and individual experiences of each immigrant. I will collect for the final piece interviews and reports documenting their relationship with the “borderline environment”.
But, at the same time, the representation of these borderlines is a heterogeneous aspect and a single point of view about the big space that the project intends to represent.
Charles S. Peirce called this iconic relation, emphasizing that the signifying makes no assertion to what really represents:
“The icon has no dynamical connection with the object it represents; it simply happens that its qualities resemble those of the object, and excite analogous sensations in the mind for which it is likeness” (PEIRCE, Charles S. 1955. P114) 2
The potential of representing this issues in our contemporary society is automatically related to: what does the new art and technological environment think about representation? And which interfaces and tools do we have to portray our social and political representation in a contemporary art aspect?
Lev Manovich, in his book “The language of New Media” defined a different concept of “representation”: ‘the “Representation-simulation”, “Representation-control”, “Representation-action”, “Representation-communication”, “Visual illusionism-simulation” and the “Representation-information”. But here, I am interested in using the concept of “Visual illusionism – simulation” to translate the borderline issues.
“Visual illusionism – simulation. Illusionism here refers both to representation and simulation. (...) Thus illusionism combines traditional techniques and technologies that aim to create a visual resemblance of reality – perspectival painting, cinema, panorama, etc. Simulation refers to various computer methods for modelling other aspects of reality beyond visual appearance – movement of physical objects, shape changes occurring over time in natural phenomena, motivations, behaviour, speech and language comprehension in human beings” MANOVICH, Lev. 2000. P17. 3


6. Outcomes
In the end of the project process I intend to show the documentation about it, throw the interviews, photography, installations, etc, all based in the material collected during the project production.
For the exhibition, I am looking to create a parallel exhibition in the MADA final show. Using the material produced by the five invited immigrants I will select and edit what will be showed in the ‘parallel exhibition’ using different platforms for translate the project aspect.


7. Media
In the project production I intend to use this technologies:
• Digital Video Camera
• Digital Photography camera
• Digital Sound recorder
• Computer for video edition (using Final Cut Pro Software)
For the exhibition I intend to use this technologies:
• Video projector
• Computer with internet connection
• 3 LCD TV
• 3 DVD player
• Sound system

8. Methodologies

Based in the Joseph Beuys concept “social sculpture” the project will document my encounters with a group of five immigrants to produce artwork that relates to their own experiences as immigrants in a foreign country, using the concept of ‘borderlines’ to emphasise this.
“(...) Is the numerous discussion about new tendency, looking for an extend definition of art and science. The Social Sculpture Theory became to the concepts of the artwork as a process, mutation, and evolution. The way that we mould and sculpt the world and the social environment.” (BEUYS, Joseph. In: STACHELHAUS, Heiner, 1990) 4
The project process will develop the methodologies. My encounters with this social group coupled with research generated by the project will shape the methods and techniques that I will apply to document this proposal.
Working with these five immigrants and conducting interviews to discover and investigate their own personalities and relationships with the global world is what I intend the final piece to represent.
This process of creating that Beuys defined as ‘The Social Sculpture Theory’ interests me. I want to use digital technology to realise this process in a practical and contemporary context.
The artist becomes a mediator articulating and creating actions for artistic discussion. Actually, to define Beuys works is quite difficult in our contemporary society, that’s why the project is using Beuys concepts as a reference point and a challenge.
The project documentation is the masterpiece. Using different aspects and interfaces to translate this process is what the project aims to achieve.
The art of acting with social groups is, most of the time, a methodical research process that aims to investigate the conceptual and aesthetical aspects related to these social networks. I want to produce a collaborative piece that is a reflection of how this group perceive their current environment.


9. Risk assessment
One of the most risk problem that could happen in the project process is one of the immigrants invited didn’t collaborate correctly, but, in case of this situation I will try to define his/her characteristic in the final piece.

Technological risks:
- Bad energy power connection.
- Bad equipments’ functionality.
- Bad distribution of the works in the gallery space.



10. Timetable

10.1 November
Research the project concept.
Start the PGPD paper.
Define Group of 5 immigrants
Start build website.

10.2 December
Finish the PGPD paper
Continuous Research the project concept.
Develop the methodology to work with social group.
Start the interviews with the 5 immigrants and sites researches.

10.3 January
10.3.1 First week
Work with the first immigrant
10.3.2 Second week
Work with the second immigrant
10.3.3 Third week
Work with the third immigrant
10.3.4 Forth week
Work with the forth immigrant

10.4 February
10.4.1 First week
Work with the fifth immigrant
10.4.2 Second week
Analyze and conceptualize the material collated with the five immigrants
10.4.3 Third week
Group meeting with the five immigrants
10.4.4 Forth week
Finish the installation idea with the five immigrants

10.5 March
Start the installation production
Edition and finished the conceptual material



10.6 April
Edition of the multimedia material
Installation production

10.7 May
Finished the multimedia material edition
Finished the Installation production
Development the Visual Identity of the project
Construct the graphic design of the catalogue

10.8 June
Print the Catalogue
Publish the website
Print the exhibition materials
Write the project Press Release
Send the Press Release to different magazines, websites, newspapers, etc.

10.9 July
Build the installation at the exhibition.
Final Show.



11. Bibliography

1. BIRO, Matthew. “Representation and Event: Anselm Kiefer, Joseph Beuys, and the Memory of Holocaust” The Yale journal of Criticism, volume 16. Number 1 (2003) 113-146. By Yale University and The Johns Hopkins University Press.

2. PIERCE, Charles S. “Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs”, in Justus Buchler ed. Philosophical Writings of Peirce. New York., 1955, p114.

3. MANOVICH, Lev. “The Language of New Media”. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000, 354.

4. STACHELHAUS, Heiner. “Joseph Beuys”. Barcelona: Ed. Parsifal, 1990.

5. ANDERSON, Fred. “Art and National Identity”. Paper for the conference "Mutations" at the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, Kaunas, Lithuania, 16-18:th of November 2001.

6. DAWSON, Andrew and RAPPORT, Nigel. “Migrants of Identity.” Oxford International Publishers Ltd. 1998.

11.1 Complementary bibliography:

1. SCHATA, Peter. “Social Sculpture Colloquium”. c/o Shelley Sacks. The school of Art, Publishing and Music, Oxford Brookes University. Goethe Institut Glasgow 1995. 116p

2. BEUYS, Joseph. Edited by COOKE, Lynne and KELLY, Karen “Joseph Beuys Arena – where would I have got if I had been intelligent!” Dia Center of Arts, New York. 1994. 294p.

3. DURINI, Lucrezia De Domizio. “The Felt Hat Joseph Beuys A Life Told” Edizioni Carte Segrete, Rome, 1991. 230p.

4. DURINI, Lucrezia De Domizio. “Joseph Beuys Difesa Della Natura: The Living Sculpture”. Silvana Editoriale Spa Cinisello Balsamo, Milano, 2007. 287p.

5. DOVEY, Jon. “Fractal Dreams: New Media in Social Context”. Lawrence & Wishart Limited, London, 1996. 218p.

6. WITKIN, Robert W. “Art and Social Structure”. Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 1995. 222p.

7. ROBINS, Kevin and MORLEY, David. “Spaces of Identity: global media, electronic landscapes and cultural boundaries”. Routledge, London, UK, 1995. 257p.

8. SHAPIRO, David. “Social Realism: Art as a Weapon” Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., New York, 1973. 340p