Generosity

We used the opportunity offered by Protections to develop a project which explores the theme of public generosity. Generosity is the root of culture and yet in an age characterized by relentless self-interest and privatization, why would you give to strangers?

Generosity can be, but is not necessarily, kind. That generosity can obligate its recipients -through debts that can never be cancelled- is well known; like charity. And yet altruism can coexist in the very same gesture. People can give endlessly, and generously, without any interest in an interested return. Generosity is a powerful act of love, accompanied by a dark and threatening shadow.

The Generosity Broadcasting House intends to engage art, and cultural production in general with the politics of generosity.

Offered a typical prefabricated house as our exhibition space within the Kunsthaus (the house is the work of two other invited artists Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset) We in turn invited the local free radio station - a radio station driven by generosity-Radio Helsinki to use the house/musem. Radio Helsinki will move their entire studio into the show-house and broadcast live 24/7 to other homes in Steiermark for the duration of the exhibition.

Also, in close collaboration with Radio Helsinki we have developed a series of radio interviews - with philosophers, collectors, philanthropists, nurses, blood donors and others- which will explore both the deep philosophical background, and current personal instances of public generosity. The interviews will be interspersed within the regular radio programming

While researching for the project in the Image and Sound Archive of the Museum Joanneum, Graz, we came across a recording of Susan Sontag, one of Americas most influential intellectuals reading two of her own stories at the Steirischer Herbst, Literatursymposium in Graz on the 11th November 1982.

We negotiated to release the recording from the archive. Remastered by Radio Helsinki, designed by Grzegorz Laszuk, Gratis is a beautiful CD that will be available for free during the exhibition.

At a very late stage, and when faced with public generosity, lawyers acting on behalf of the estate of Susan Sontag refused us permission to produce the CD. Regretfully, we have had to return her voice to the silence of the archive.

During the exhibition, we have organised a series of workshops

Generosity Broadcasting House: Workshops

Inspired by Free Software development, software that challenges conventional practices of authorship, ownership and distribution, the Generosity Broadcasting House: Workshops explore the implications of those developments for art, visual culture and cultural production in general.

There is an astonishing growth in museums, and in archives and data-banks of objects, images, sounds and information. These new, emergent forms of archival capital have an increasingly powerful grip upon culture and its reproduction. And yet there is a conflict blossoming at the heart of culture, a conflict convened around the property rights that subsist in stored materials. The Generosity Broadcasting House: Workshops explores these conflicts, while enriching rather than depleting the public domain.

Contemporary creative practices have the potential to reconfigure the relationship between artist and audience, to replace exchanges facilitated by frustration and restriction with those of collaboration and generosity. Generosity Broadcasting House: Workshops will attempt to re-animate the public function of generosity in an age characterized by relentless privatization.

The Generosity Broadcasting House created for Protections will host a series of events including Open Content Film Culture , an Open Music Archive evening, and a Skills Sharing Workshop .

30th September 2006

Open Content Film Culture
An afternoon of discussion, screenings, ripping, copying and burning

Artists Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska will explore some of the implications for creative practice, moving image creation and distribution, introduced by Free and Open Source models of cultural production. Using their critical archive of amateur film Enthusiasts:archive as an example, and resources from archive.org artists and others will be able to watch, screen, download, use and re-use the material for future creative exchange, enriching rather than depleting the public domain.

The event will be in English, check the Kunsthaus programme.

7th October

Open Music Archive 5 - 7 pm burn session: 9pm live performance
an evening of free music

Open Music Archive hosts an afternoon of free music in the living room of the Broadcasting House. Browse. Listen, select and tag music from the archive and burn your own selection to take away. During the afternoon Eileen Simpson & Ben White will play a selection of blues, jazz, folk, and new electronic remixes from the archive and in the evening they will perform a live electronic remix of early jazz recordings.

Eileen Simpson & Ben White are London based artists who often collaborate together. In 2005 at Open Congress at Tate Britain, London they launched the Open Music Archive. Since then they have worked on a number of projects animating out-of-copyright material from the archive: including Night Fever at Beaconsfield Biennial of Moving Images Geneva, Circa 1972 Media and Architecture Biennial Graz, and Leverage at Futuresonic Manchester.

For more information visit Open Music Archive, or see the Kunsthaus programme.

14th October

Skill Sharing
Share the generosity of hacker culture

Skill Sharing is an informal hacker and g33k [geek] community, they meet - on Saturdays - in a net.culture club MaMa in Zagreb. As part of the Generosity Broadcasting House project they will exchange skills with you for one day only.

Skill Sharing found its inspiration in the free software movement and is focused on the exploration and generosity of hacker/g33k culture. Skill Sharing does not necessarily imply the sharing of computer related skills, although in two years of its existence Skill Sharing has gathered some of the best hackers in Croatia.

Join us for a day of sharing skills, knowledge, tricks and happy hacking!Check the Kunsthaus programme.

Skill Sharing will be lead by its initiator Nenad Romi [aka Marcell Mars] free software advocate, cultural explorer and social instigator. Nenad is one of the founders of Multimedia Institute - mi2 and net.culture club MaMa in Zagreb. He initiated GNU GPL publishing label EGOBOO.bits, the TamTam platform for on-line collaboration, and NGOdENgode software for NGOs financial management.

For more information visit razmjena vjestina

visit the Kunsthaus Graz