Shelter, Visibility, Love
April 10, 2008 - April 17, 2008
The ACAF (Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum) in Alexandria/ Iskandariya, Egypt hosted a 4-day workshop conducted by Ashok and Shaina. Participants in "Shelter, Visibility, Love" produced a variety of material that was placed in two temporary exhibitions.
Shelter, Visibility, Love.
(on the creation of insulations and openings)
In the context of the festival "Cleotronica"
The promise of the "electronic space of flows" is of cutting across the enclosures of the physical world.
It carries the dreams and anxieties of new community formations, undiscovered and "partial" forms of intimacy, and new forms of social encounter.
At the same time, and increasingly, we find these technologies enveloped in existing relations, customs, habits, boundaries of ownership, morality or law. It is also clear that acts of "communication" alone may not be enough to dissolve deeper boundaries. And then, which boundaries are worth dissolving?
Much of our ongoing work enters into this conceptual
space.
A primary project of contemporary design is to keep things and people at a certain precise distance, so that the relationship may sit within a safe, acceptable range on the slider between the "personal" and the "public".
In this way the role of contemporary materials, interfaces and design strategies could be seen primarily as insulation, sheltering us from the effects of unwanted attentions.
In many cases this shelter is necessary, since utter exposure, total publication, can be brutal. But what other ways can we imagine, to traverse these terms?
The workshop is about building upon such ideas in terms of the practices of the artists and designers involved. How do they think about the question of how to keep the room cool(or warm), while keeping the doors and windows open, to encounters with the outside.
