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JORDAN CRANDALL ; Crandall lectures widely on technology, representation, and culture. He has lectured at such institutions as Columbia University in New York; Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Vienna; the Washington Project for the Arts/Corcoran Museum in Washington DC; the University of Sao Paulo and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sao Paulo; the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris and the Université Paris 8; the University of Southern California and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. He has participated in many international conferences including “Visual Arts in a State of Emergency” at Cornell University; AIM III in Los Angeles; “Instituting Data” in Plymouth, UK; “Global Intersections” in New York; ARCO in Madrid; “Artifices4” in Saint-Denis; “Object vs. Pixels” in Amsterdam; the film+arc Biennial in Graz; the Festival of Computer Arts in Maribor; the Conference on Internet and Society at Harvard University; “Media Arts in Transition” at the Walker Art Center, “Global Circuits” at the Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA), London; and the Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium at UC Berkeley. He has organized many online conferences including “Networks and Markets,” in conjunction with the Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA) in London, and “Artistic Practice in the Network,” in collaboration with Eyebeam Atelier in New York.
Crandall’s videos have been presented at many international film and media festivals including the World Wide Video Festival in Amsterdam; the Transmediale International Media Art Festival Berlin; the Montreal International Festival of New Cinema and New Media; the Video Archeology Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria; the MIX Festival in New York City; the Berlin Biennial; the European Media Art Festival in Osnabruck, Germany; “Cine y Casi Cine” at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid; the Kasseler Dokumentarfilm und Videofest; and the Rotterdam International Film Festival.
Crandall works in film, video, and new technologies that are particular to military and surveillance culture. His earlier works include the site-specific video installation Suspension (1997) commissioned by Documenta X in Kassel; a seven-part video installation entitled Drive (1998-99), commissioned by the Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum and the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlshrue; a six-part video installation entitled Heatseeking (2000), commissioned by inSITE in San Diego and Tijuana; and Trigger (2002), a two-channel video installation which debuted in October 2002 at Henry Urbach Architecture, New York, supported bJordan Crandall (http://jordancrandall.com) is a media artist and theorist. He is Associate Professor in the Visual Arts Department at University of California, San Diego. His ongoing art and research project Under Fire, concerning the organization and representation of political violence, opened in October 2006 at the International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville. To date, two catalogues of Under Fire have been produced, in 2004 and 2005, published by the Witte de With center for contemporary art, y the New York State Department of Cultural Affairs and ARTSPACE, San Francisco and New York.
MARTIN SASTRE : Born in l976 in Montevideo, the Uruguayan video artist Sastre now lives and works in Madrid. After receiving a degree in Architecture at the University of Montevideo in l996, Sastre has become part of an emerging group of young nomadic artists moving comfortably between various centers of artistic activity. In the last two years, he’s been in the Sao Paulo, Havanna, and Prague Biennales, at Art Basel Miami, at the exhibition "You think I’m Superficial," at the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, at the "Playlist" exhibition at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, at the Site Gallery in Sheffield, and Momenta and the "Terrorism" exhibition at Exit Art in New York. He is quite the international art star, a playful role that isn’t the side-effect of his work but in fact forms its core.
Still, Sastre’s native background consistently informs his art. With a population of fewer than three and half million, Uruguay is one of the smallest countries in South America. Its current economic recession might explain why cable TV has only been recently introduced to the country. As Uruguay is flooded with images produced outside of its own cultural traditions, young artists such as Julia Castagno, Paula Delgado, Daniel Umpierrez, and Sastre himself have produced works that reconfigure this excess of visual information. Using humor and visceral imagery, the characters they create exist somewhere between the alienated viewer and the adoring fan, the popular culture icon, and the all-too-human celebrity. Typical of this approach is Sastre’s The E! True Hollywood Story, which tells the tale of scandal and decadence in a tabloid —TV style. Sastre plays himself as a celebrity artist profiled on E! Entertainment. Layering together footage from E! and photographs from his family album, Sastre creates a familiar rise and fall tale. This intentionally naïve pseudo-documentary includes advertisements and previews of upcoming shows. It opens with the sobbing super-poor artist unable to comprehend why he is unable to make a pop video as good as Britney Spears or Kylie. Confessing to a mythical goddess, Sastre gets some advice: "Honey, the power of pop is with you, no super budget can defeat you, ever, just make a wish and it will come true." With the help of Hello Kitty and several lookalike pop stars, Sastre completes his pop video in true John Travolta/Michael Jackson style. "You are the power, enjoy it," the final frame concludes.
XAVIER CHARLES : The work of clarinetist Xavier Charles ranges from noise to electro-acoustic via sound poetry. He has played in numerous new music fesivals in France and abroad. Charles collaborates with both Jacques Di Donato and Frederic Le Junter.
In his work with groups and collectives, he has also collaborated with Martin Tetrault, The Ex, Peirre Berthet, Etage 34, Axel Dörner, Jérôme Jeanmart, John Butcher, Jean Pallandre, Marc Pichelin, otomo Yoshihide, Tim Hodgkinson, Camel Zékri, Emmanuelle Pellegrini, Michel Donéda and Frédéric Blondy. Different collectifs (Kristoff K.roll, No Spaguettitti Edition, chris burn ensemble).
Currently his musical research ranges from performance on the clarinet to the installation of vibrating speakers, at the edge of improvised music, noisy rock and electro-acoustic sound. He's deeply involved in the music world as an organizer of the fesival "Densités