thoughtsandtalks

Mal au Pixel festival is looking at connecting technology, urban electronics and social transformation issues, and to investigate our contemporary beliefs. The festival brings together young digital artists and unconventionnal electronics: unexpected technologies, prototypes and open ended events.
For its fifth edition, Mal au Pixel further explores environmental issues and looks at the signals coming from the South, through initiatives from the worldwide DIY community.
ALTLABS MEETING au 104 • June 27 • 14h-19h
104 rue d’Aubervilliers - 5 rue Curial, Paris 19
with : Okno | Trias Culture | Ker Thiossane | TMPLab | HONF | CRAS | APO33 | Refarm the City | DakarLug | …
http://www.le104.fr

http://www.happynewfestival.be/Klinkende_Stad.html

MAHILA is a multi media project that engages with women empowerment in small communities, here especially focused on Indian countrywomen affected by climate change. The project is presented in a twofold installation. One room unveils a multiple speaker ante-chamber that guides to the second room where a film is shown. The first room gives a taste of the material and atmosphere that the artists captured during their research in India. By the use of polyphonic principles and theatrical setups Billy Bultheel creates a simple yet elegant sound installation approaching the contemplative Indian landscape.
The second room shows a film made by Annemie Maes, which is a reflective documentary on women empowerment, going from west to east and vice versa.
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Summary of an interview I conducted with Vandana Shiva during the workshop and seminar ‘The Future of Food’ on the Navdanya-farm in Dehradun, India - early october 2008.

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You can view this info also on PADMA (public access digital media archive).
click here for the excerpt :Vandana Shiva on Diverse Women for Diversity
Press ‘P’ to start the video excerpt.
click here for the transcript of this section.

Beekeeping goes back throughout history and was an art that was closely related to goddess worship in the ancient world. Bees are a matriarchal society, closely related to the feminine.

MELISSA - “bee” was the title given to Aphrodite’s high priestess at the honeycomb-shrine of Mount Eryx, where the Goddess’s fetish was a golden honeycomb. Pythagoreans perceived the hexagon as an expression of the spirit of Aphrodite whose sacred number was six. She worshipped bees as her sacred creatures because they understood how to create perfect hexagons in their honeycomb. In Her temple at Eryx, the priestesses were melissae, “bees” and the Goddess herself was entitled Melissa, the Queen Bee.
Seeking to understand nature’s secrets through geometry, the Pythagoreans meditated on the endless triangular lattice, all sixty-degree angles, that results from extending the sides of all hexagons in the honey comb diagram until their lines meet in the centers of adjacent hexagons. It seemed to them a revelation of the underlying symmetry of the cosmos.

The bee was usually looked upon as a symbol of the feminine potency of nature, because while creating a magical elixir, known for its preservation properties, they were also pollinating flowers, increasing plant fertility, and abundance.

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In MAHILA (women), the filmmaker steps between different worlds, going from West to East, from urban to rural surroundings. Her encounters with the experiences and observations of rural Rajasthani women provoke reflection on the process of empowerment. In an artistic ethnography we see and hear how they are using education, technology and politics to redefine their destinies. As we trace the film-maker’s memories we are taken into questions about story-telling. How are the women fighting to get their stories heard? Can the filmmaker tell other women’s stories?

screenings:
Brigittines Brussels, 5 december 19u
Lazareti Dubrovnik (croatia), 10 december 19u
Netwerk Aalst, 17 december 19u

Annemie Maes is invited by Ana Valdés (Maraya.org) to present the Politics of Change project in Damascus, Syria. Presentations (lectures and screenings) are scheduled at the Finnish Cultural Institute in Damascus.
The Finnish Institute in Damascus, maintained by the Foundation of the Finnish Institute in the Middle East, is an academic institute, which promotes, in particular, the research and teaching of the languages, cultures and religions of the Middle East. The institute focuses its operation on the Arab world and its fringe areas with high cultural and historical significance. It has permanent representatives in Syria and Egypt.

The institute’s main function is to organise academic courses, lectures and seminars for undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as researchers. The aim is to promote widespread cooperation in the fields of education and research, and to improve intercultural dialogue.
The headquarters of the institute are located in a building in the Old Town of Damascus, a Unesco World Heritage site. The building has a seminar room, an exhibition hall, a reference library, and lodging facilities for visiting researchers and students.