Migrating is reality. Reality is migrating.

The "Migrating Reality Project" organized between 04-05 April 2008 at
GdK, Galerie der Künste in Berlin is a live platform to discuss the mixing
and remixing of art forms and digital data flows within the context of the
current worldwide reality of migration.

From 01 March in cooperation with the online zine balsas.cc for media and
technology (http://www.balsas.cc) we are
initiating a focused look at the
migration between reality, media, technologies, art, spaces, disciplines,
politics, and networks. Migration interests us in cultural and technological
aspects as well as in aspects of the movement of different objects and
subjects. Balsas.cc has been publishing online in Lithuanian and English
from Vilnius, Lithuania since 2005. Every fourth month it announces a new
topic and as of now "Migrating Reality" is open for your interpretation.

We invite the submission of texts, sounds, and visuals (photo, video, etc)
which will help us to delve deeper into the subject during the Berlin
project. Balsas.cc is stimulating interest in the generation and publishing
of ideas online -- the most interesting of which will be published in the
printed catalog at the end of 2008. We are interested in not only pure texts
but also in migrating formats, interdisciplinary discussions, interviews,
and the meetings of artists and theoreticians. Please submit texts in
English, German, and (or??) Lithuanian to balsas@vilma.cc. The rolling
submission and publication period is from 01 March to 01 June.

Editorial Board: Vytautas Michelkevicius, Mindaugas Gapsevicius, Zilvinas
Lilas and John Hopkins

Migrating Reality, http://www.migrating-reality.com
info@migrating-reality.com

Migrating Reality. GdK Berlin, 04th & 05th April 2008

The conference and exhibition "Migrating Reality" is organised by top -
Verein zur Förderung kultureller Praxis e.V. in Berlin and KHM -
Kunsthochschule für Medien in Cologne. It is also generously supported by
the Embassy of Lithuania in Germany within the framework of the
German-Baltic Year 2008.

The event focuses on the Baltic nation of Lithuania. In the last fifteen
years, more than ten percent of Lithuania's population has emigrated, among
them numerous individuals engaged in the cultural sector. Others, while
still living in Lithuania, are deeply engaged with the subject of migration.
Selected individuals from both these groups will present their work at the
conference and exhibition.

Migrating Reality deals specifically with the realities of migration and
migrating realities that are independent of global structural changes and
economic or cultural processes and are opening unique opportunities for
creative exchange.

Electronic and digital cultures generate completely new forms of migration.
In the creative arts, new phenomena related to migration and the
synergies of disparate systems are emerging. Artistic products evolve from
traditional forms to hybrid digital forms. Analogue products are
being digitized; data spaces are trans-located from one data storage system
to another; existing sounds, images, and texts are re-mixed and
fused into new datasets.

The emergent processes of migration generate temporary autonomous zones
where socio-political actions occur without the interference of formal
control mechanisms. These zones and enclaves appear in physical space as
well as in virtual space. By integrating these into available
structures and temporarily interconnecting them, new trajectories and ideas
are created.

Migration is reality and reality is migrating. This dialectic, appearing as
a banal topic in everyday politico-economic debate, includes
unarticulated issues which, by their fragmented nature have to be dealt with
through creative multidisciplinary means. Only occasionally do
components of the migrating global situation surface in the mass media,
within individual mediums of expression, or in exhibitions as
documentation and artwork. This is likely because dealing with the realities
of migration in an explicitly European context means accepting the
potential for conflict.

This trans-cultural German-Lithuanian event will take on the risk in
highlighting certain fragments of the discourse. Participants will be
invited to piece together aspects of this inexorable global mobility on the
one hand and of retrograde power relations on the other.

Programme

Friday 04 April 2008

12:00 - 15:00 Conference

Moderation: Zilvinas Lilas, Wolfgang Knapp

Introduction to Wind Orchestra. Julijonas Urbonas, PhD student at Design
Interactions, RCA, London, Great Britain.
Don´t Put Too Much Trust in Experts. Peter Friedrich Stephan, Professor
for Cognitive Design, Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany.
Humans Thinking Like Machines. Kristoffer Gansing, PhD candidate in Media-
and Communication Science, University of Malmo, School of Arts and
Communication, Malmo, Sweeden
3D - Impossibility of Nothing. Zilvinas Lilas, Professor Media Design,
Academy of Media Arts, Cologne, Germany

16:00 - 19:00 Conference

Moderation: Hubertus von Amelunxen, Zilvinas Lilas, Wolfgang Knapp

Theses. Gintautas Mazeikis, Professor and Head of Department of Philosophy
at the Siauliu University, Siauliai, Lithuania
Window Weather: A Nomadic Look at Reality. John Hopkins, USA/Europe
Becoming Minor: Art and the Political. Audrone Zukauskaite, Philosophy and
Art Lithuanian Institute of Culture, Vilnius, Lithuania.
Trans-psychological Migration: A Pataphysical Zombie Approach. Brian
Reffin Smith, Professor Ecole Nationale Superieure d´Art, Regent of the
College of Pataphysics, Paris, France.

19:00 Exhibition Opening

Welcome by Mindaugas Gapsevicius, project coordinator
Evaldas Igantavicius, Lithuanian Ambassador to Germany
* Zilvinas Lilas, conference coordinator

20:00 - Open End - Evening Programme

Udo Waxas. Matas Petrikas, Producer electronic music and Freelance
Frontend Developer, Berlin, Germany
Transmediation. Valdemaras Manomaitis / Skrandis, Eimantas Pivoriunas,
Andrius Seliuta, Vaclovas Nevcesauskas, sound and video artists,
Vilnius, Lithuania
* An Ambient Sonic Performance. John Hopkins, tech-no-mad, USA/Europe

Saturday 05 April 2008

12:00 - 15:00 Project presentations

Moderation: Hubertus von Amelunxen, Zilvinas Lilas

Migrating Birds. Rasa Alksnyte, choreographer, Brussels, Belgium
Vision Mahler. Johannes Deutsch, Vienna, Austria
Hybrid Space. Frans Vogelaar, Professor Media Design, Academy of Media
Arts Cologne, Hybrid Space Lab Amsterdam, Netherlands and Berlin, Germany
Prototype [432] Project. Bernardas Bagdanavicius, architect, London,
United Kingdom
Sliders. Frederic Curien, Jean-Marie Dallet, Thierry Guibert, Christian
Laroche, EESI, Angouleme and Poitiers, France
Pixel Memories. Daniel Barthelemy, Gilles Bollaert, EESI, Angouleme and
Poitiers, France

16:00 - 19:00 Migrating Art Academies project meeting

* Hubertus von Amelunxen, Mindaugas Gapsevicius, Zilvinas Lilas, Alvydas
Lukys

20:00 Reception at the Akademie der Kunste, Pariser Platz 4

Migrating is reality. Reality is migrating.

GdK - Galerie der Kunste
Potsdamer Strasse 98 (backyard)
Berlin-Tiergarten
http://www.gdk-berlin.de
Transport: U2 Potsdamer Platz, U1 Kurfurstenstrasse, Bus M48