Graz Contributors

Azra Aksamija - Pro-vocation
Azra Akšamija is an artist and architect based in Cambridge, USA. Since fall 2004 she has been affiliated with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a Ph.D. candidate in the Department for History Theory and Criticism of Art and Architecture / Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture. She is currently researching her dissertation on contemporary Islamic architecture in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina and the place of Islam in Western Europe.

Franco Berardi - Sensibilità
Franco Berardi is a writer, mediatheorist and media-activist. Founder of the magazine A/traverso (1975-1981), he took part in the staff of Radio Alice, the first free radio station in Italy (1976/1978). He was involved in the political movement of autonomia in Italy during the '70's, then flied to Paris where he worked with Felix Guattari, in the field of schizoanalisis. During the '80's he contributed to the magazine Semiotexte (New York), Chimerees (Paris), Metropoli (Rome) and Musica 80 (Milano). In the '90 he published Mutazione e ciberpunk, (Genova, 1993), Cibernauti (roma, 1994), Felix (2001). He is currently working in the Italian network Telestreet, and is engaged in the movement against the media-dictatorship which is oppressing his country. Co-founder of the rekombinant.org e-zine.

Raqs Media Collective - Ashwatthama
Raqs is a word in Persian, Arabic and Urdu and means the state that “whirling dervishes” enter into when they whirl. It is also a word used for dance. At the same time, Raqs could be an acronym, standing for ‘rarely asked questions’...! Raqs is a collective of media practitioners that works in new media & digital art practice, documentary filmmaking, photography, media theory & research, writing, criticism and curation. Raqs Media Collective is the co-initiator of Sarai: The New Media Initiative, (www.sarai.net) a programme of interdisciplinary research and practice on media, city space and urban culture at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. Members of the collective are resident at the Sarai Media Lab, Delhi, where they work on projects interpreting the city and urban experience; make cross-media works; collaborate on the development of software; design and conduct workshops; administer discussion lists; edit publications; write, research and co-ordinate several research projects and public activities of Sarai. They are co-editors of the Sarai Reader series.

Jordan Crandall - Tracking
Jordan Crandall is a media artist and theorist. He is Associate Professor of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego. His ongoing art and research project UNDER FIRE, concerning the organization and representation of political violence, will open this October 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, Rotterdam. Crandall is currently completing a new 3-channel video installation entitled HOMEFRONT, which explores the effects of the new security culture on subjectivity and identity.

Diedrich Diederichsen - Aufräumen
Diedrich Diederichsen is an author and curator. His work has been widely published in art and culture publications. He is a regular contributor to and editor of the magazines Sounds and Spex, and he frequently writes for Texte zur Kunst, Art Forum, Tagesspiegel, Tageszeitung, Theater heute, and other publications. He is currently a professor at Merz Akademie and co-leader of the Department of Theory.

Thomas Draschan - Heroes
Thomas Draschan verlässt nach der Matura seine Heimatstadt Linz, um Theaterwissenschaft und Publizistik an der Universität in Wien zu studieren. 1992 übersiedelt er nach Frankfurt am Main und studiert Film bei Peter Kubelka und Ken Jacobs an der Städelschule und in New York an der Cooper Union bei Robert Breer. Draschan arbeitet bevorzugt mit „found footage“ (gefundenes Filmmaterial). Seine letzten Filme Metropolen des Leichtsinns, Yes? Oui? Ja? und To The Happy Few zählen zu den international erfolgreichsten Experimentalfilmen aus Österreich und sind schon seit Jahren bei den wichtigsten Festivals in New York, London und Rotterdam vertreten. Insbesondere der 12-minütige Experimentalfilm Metropolen des Leichtsinns kann mittlerweile als Klassiker des Found-Footage-Films gelten. Auch Musikvideos (z.B. für New Order) und Dokumentarfilme finden sich in seinem Werk.

The Errorists - Conditional Surrender to the City of Gardens
The Errorists is Andreas Köhler and Hilary Koob-Sassen. Hilary Koob-Sassen is an artist living in London. He performs with his experimental band THE ERRORISTS. His audio-visual pop- songs and public syntax experiments work towards a methodology for post- modern political proposal. He shows his sculpture, film, and performance internationally. Andreas Köhler studied Cello at the Musikhochschule Karlsruhe and Basel. He has performed numerous concerts nationally and internationally, for example with the SWR-Sinfonieorchester. Apart from classical music, his interest was always focused on electronic music of any kind. Since 15 years he runs a Production Studio and released his music inter alia on Harthouse (Metamorphosis), F-Communications (soundofk), Glasgow Underground (Charles Silence Trio). He established and heads the MusikComputerWorkshops at the Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie (ZKM) in Karlsruhe. Since 2001 he is engaged musical collaborations with the artist Hilary Koob-Sassen on soundtracks for video works “12 German Pop Songs” and “Paraculture/Future Garden Structure”.

Peter Fend - Territory
Peter Fend grew up deep inside the "military-industrial complex" in the Cold War 1950s. His father was a research physicist. One colleague won a Nobel Prize. Another, his first girlfriend's father, became head of MIT. But Peter was more interested in architecture. Now, he tries converting the ground-breaking art of the past century, like Conceptual, Constructivist, Video and Systems Art, into a practice that meets all four requirements listed by Alberti: assuring for an inhabited area: clean air, life-rich waters, circulatory space and defense. For the last, Fend joined a half-dozen other US artist-citizens in 1979-80 to exercise the 2nd Amendment, giving citizens, in free association, the right to bear arms. By arms, for us artists, was meant civilian-grade observation- satellite data. We formed the first Space Force. Operating through a corporate vehicle, named Ocean Earth Construction and Development Corporation, we produced the first TV broadcasts with satellite-based site analyses, in 1982. Immediately we ran into trouble, from our own government, and then from nearly every government of any country in which we pressed on. The future of civilian-access to military capability for knowing is grim now: Google Earth is no answer. Fend is now in search of countries where his architecture, including this practice of defense, can thrive. As for the U.S., it needs a toral remake, even to just regain its Constitution.

Christine Frisinghelli - Déracinement
Christine Frisinghelli war von 1996 bis 1999 Intendantin des Steirischen Herbst. Sie ist Ausstellungskuratorin, Lehrbeauftragte in Wien, Zürich und Graz, Mitbegründerin und Leiterin des Magazins und der Galerie Camera Austria.

DeeDee Halleck - Power Points
DeeDee Halleck is a media activist and co-founder of Paper Tiger Television and the Deep Dish Satellite Network, the first grass roots community television network. She is Professor Emerita in the Department of Communication at the University of California at San Diego. As President of the Association of Independent Video and Film Makers (AIVF) in the seventies, she led a media reform campaign in Washington, testifying twice before the House Sub-Committee on Telecommunication. She has served as a trustee of the American Film Institute, Women Make Movies and the Instructional Telecommunications Foundation. She has authored numerous articles in Film Library Quarterly, Film Culture, High Performance, The Independent, Leonardo, Afterimage and other media journals.

Andreas Hiepko - Kriegsgefangenenlager
Andreas Hiepko was born 1963 in West Berlin. He works as philologist and translator, based in Berlin.

Michael Hirsch - Ausnahme
Geboren 1966. Philosoph und Politikwissenschaftler. Lebt als freier Autor und Dozent in München. Lehrbeauftragter für Politische Theorie an der Universität Frankfurt am Main, Gastdozent für Ästhetik an der Merz-Akademie in Stuttgart Lehrbeauftragter für Philosophie an der Akademie der Bildenden Künste in München Studium der Philosophie, Politikwisenschaft und Geschichte in Freiburg und Paris (bei Alain Badiou and Jacques Derrida).

Sergej Goran Pristaš & Ivana Ivkovic - Negotiation
Goran Sergej Pristaš (1967) is a dramaturge and director working within the performance group BADco. Since 1995 program co-ordinator in Centre for Drama Art Zagreb. 1995 founder and editor-in-chief of the Performing arts magazine Frakcija which is one of the most respective European performing arts magazines. Author of several screenplays for short films; worked as a dramaturgist for many dance and theatre performances. Ivana Ivkovic (1975) studies at the Department of Dramaturgy at the Academy of Drama Arts in Zagreb. She is a member of the editorial board of Frakcija Magazine for Performing Arts and also collaborates with the 3rd Program of Croatian Radio, several publications, the Center for Drama Art and works as the general coordinator of Zagreb - Cultural Kapital of Europe 3000, a project jointly organized by Zagreb's eight independent cultural organizations from the fields of performing arts, new media, visual arts, architecture and theory.

Mansur Jacoubi - Relatively calm again


Stefan Kaufmann - Electronic Soldier
1984-1990 Studium Neuere und Neueste Geschichte, Soziologie und Romanistik in Freiburg und an der FU Berlin 1995 Promotion in Soziologie mit einer Arbeit zu Kommunikationstechniken und Kriegführung 1815-1945 seit 1995 Lehraufträge an den Soziologischen Instituten der Universitäten Freiburg und Basel sowie am Institut für Mensch Gesellschaft Umwelt der Universität Basel 1997-2002 Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter im Sonderforschungsbereich "Identitäten und Alteritäten" der Universität Freiburg 2002/2003 Fellow an der Professur für Technikgeschichte an der ETH Zürich 2004 Habilitation mit einer Arbeit zu "Soziologie der Landschaft" seit 2004 Privatdozent am Soziologischen Institut der Universität Freiburg 2004/2005 DFG-Stipendiat an der Professur für Technikgeschichte der ETH Zürich

Oleg Kireev - Staged Revolution
Oleg Kireev (born 1975) is an art- and media-critic, editor, curator and activist. He has participated in a number of media-political campaigns ("Against all parties", 1999) and actions ("Barricade at Bolshaya Nikitskaya", May 1998). He is the founder of the Ghetto collective in Moscow, which is dedicated to cultural and political analyses. He is the author of articles on art and politics that have appeared in the Russian and international press ("Novaya gazeta", "Nezavasimaya gazeta", "Flash art", "Siksi", "Mute" and of two books, "Against all P's" (M., ghetto, 2001) and "Lifestyle" (M., ghetto, in print). Lives in Moscow.

Tina Leisch - PartisanInnen (Kärntner)
Tina Leisch (geboren in München) ist »Film-, Text-und Theaterarbeiterin«. Schreibt für Augustin, Volksstimme, Kulturrisse, jungle-world, Malmoe, u.v.a.. Organisiert Filmreihen und Widerstandsspektakel (Kulturkarawane gegen rechts), Polittheater (diverse Produktionen des Volxtheaters Favoriten) und internationale Solidarität (Schwerpunkt Lateinamerika). Arbeitet mit in der österreichischen Lagergemeinschaft Ravensbrück und in der austria filmmakers cooperative. War Kustodin am Persmanhof, in Eisenkappel/Zelezna Kapla, einem Museum des antifaschistischen PartisanInnenkampfes in Kärnten/Koroska.

Lawrence Liang - Hostis Humani Generis
Lawrence Liang is a researcher with the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore. His key areas of interest are law, technology and culture, the politics of copyright and he has been working closely with Sarai, New Delhi on a joint research project Intellectual Property and the Knowledge/Culture Commons.

Warren Neidich - Revenge
Warren Neidich is currently visiting artist and research fellow at the Center for Cognition, Computation and Culture at Goldsmiths College, London, 2006-2008. His art work has been exhibited internationally in such institutions as the Whitney Museum of Art, New York City, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Ludwig Museum, Koln, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles and the Walker Art Museum, Minneapolis, Minnesota, P.S. 1 Center for Contemporary Art, Long Island City just to name a few. Selected upcoming exhibitions in 2006 and 2007 include Protections, Kunsthaus Graz, Masquarade, Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angeles, The Expanded Eye, Kunsthaus, Zurich, Sweet Dreams, Contemporary Art and Complicity, Bayle Art Museum, University of Virginia, Multitasking, NGBK, Berlin and My Vision, Zephyr Space, Mannheim, Germany. Earthling, an artists book consisting of photographs and installations, with an interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist and an essay by Barry Schwabsky was published in 2005 by Pointed Leaf Press, New York City. Recent awards include, The AHRB-ACE Science and Art Award, The Arts Council of England merit award and The British Academy award. He is a finalist for the Creative Capital Award,2006

Egdar Schmitz - Attitudes
Edgar Schmitz is an artist involved in ambient attitudes and promises of fiction. He studied at Ruhr Universität Bochum, Académie des Beaux Arts, Brussels, Accademia di Brera, Milan and Goldsmiths' College, London. He lectures in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths' College, London, writes in Kunstforum International, Cologne and Texte zur Kunst, Berlin and curates for the Zamyn think tank, London. He is also co-director (with Lisa Lefeuvre) of a conversation in many parts, an international discursive platform for contemporary cultural practice and concepts. Recent exhibitions include too close is good too, Play, Berlin, London Movies, Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels and Liam Gillick: Edgar Schmitz, ICA, London. His new book Ambient Modes. Poetics and politics of dispersed engagements is forthcoming with Lukas&Sternberg, Berlin/New York. Edgar Schmitz lives and works in London.

Ultrared - War on the poor
Dont Rhine co-founded the Los Angeles-based sound art organization Ultra-red in 1994. For ten years Ultra-red has nurtured relationships with social movements based on the direct political experiences of the group’s members. As an activist, Rhine has worked with a variety of social movements including ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), Clean Needles Now (needle exchange), and Pride at Work / AFL-CIO (queer labor). Rhine’s work as an artist and teacher seeks to develop a sound-art theory and practice informed by conceptual art and his experiences as a political organizer. As Information Secretary for the Ultra-red organization, Rhine has participated most recently in the group's HIV/AIDS performances SILENT|LISTEN and the migrant investigation project BLOK70.

Tris Vonna-Michell - Surface
Artist from GB, based in Frankfurt.

Peter Weibel - Verfassungskriege
Geboren 1944 in Odessa, lebt in Karlsruhe und Wien. Studien der Literatur, Medizin, Logik, Philosophie und des Films in Paris und Wien. Dissertation über mathematische Logik (Modallogik). Seit Januar 1999 Vorstand des ZKM|Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe

Raul Zelik - Asymmetric Warfare
Raul Zelik, geb. 1968 in München. Lebt nach mehreren Lateinamerika-Aufenthalten seit 1989 als freier Autor in Berlin. 1998 Walter-Serner-Preis für die Kurzgeschichte Iserlohn Beats.

Gesa Ziemer - Komplizenschaft
Gesa Ziemer, 1968, Studium Philosophie, Neue Geschichte, Ethnologie in Zürich und Hamburg. Stv. Leiterin Institut für Theorie (ith) und Dozentin für Ästhetik und Kulturtheorie an der Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich. Promotion in Philosophie zum Thema 'praktische Ästhetik' an der Universität Potsdam. Theoriekuratorin und -beraterin Steirischer Herbst Graz. Kollektive Theorie-Autorenschaften in diversen Medien: Spielfeldforschungen (mit Florian Malzacher) zu den Themen 'Zuschauen' (Theaterformen Braunschweig/Hannover, 2004) und 'Kontrolle' (Graz, 2006), Augen blickeN (Film mit Gitta Gsell) 2005, Die grosse Zürcher Institutionenverschiebung: re/location, Sanatorium (mit Matthias von Hartz) Schauspielhaus Zürich 2005. Diverse wissenschaftliche und journalistische Publikationen u.a. in Theater der Zeit, Du, Herbst.Theorie zur Praxis und 31.

Program for Graz

FRIDAY, Oktober, 13

Exergue (Mansur Jacoubi)
Ashwatthama (Raqs Media Collective)
Asymmetric Warfare (Raul Zelik)
Aufräumen (Diedrich Diederichsen)
Ausnahme (Michael Hirsch)
Attitudes (Edgar Schmitz)
Conditional Surrender to the City of Gardens (The Errorists)
Déracinement (Christine Frisinghelli)
Electronic Soldier (Stefan Kaufmann)
Heroes (Thomas Draschan)

SAMSTAG, October, 14

Hostis Humani Generis (Lawrence Liang)
Komplizenschaft (Gesa Ziemer)
Kriegsgefangenenlager (Andreas Hiepko)
Negotiation (Sergej Goran Pristas & Ivana Ivkovic)
PartisanInnen, Kärntner (Tina Leisch)
Power Points (DeeDee Halleck)
Pro-vocation (Azra Aksamija)
Revenge (Warren Neidich)
Sensibilità (Franco Berardi)
Staged Revolution (Oleg Kireev)
Surface (Tris Vonna-Michell)
Territory (Peter Fend)
Tracking (Jordan Crandall)
Verfassungskriege (Peter Weibel)
War on the Poor (Ultra Red)

Images from Graz Edition

Impression from the Performance by Warren Neidich

Presentation by Christine Frisinghelli

Presentation by Christine Frisinghelli

Presentation by Stefan Kaufmann

Material from Graz Edition

Audio Jingle for the Graz edition
Video Jingle for Graz Edition (Ogg Theora)

Credits of Graz Edition

The Graz edition of the DICTIONARY OF WAR have been produced in a collaboration of "Multitude e.V." and "unfriendly takeover". It has been funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and Steirischer Herbst and produced in close collaboration with Steirischer Herbst.

Curators: Annett Busch, Sebastian Lütgert, Tom Lamberty, Florian Malzacher, Anke & Heike Schleper, Florian Schneider, Bernhard Schreiner

Organization: Franziska Frielinghaus, Elizabeth Gmeiner, Susanne Lang

Moderation: Sebastian Lütgert

Stage Building: Steirischer Herbst Technical Team

Technical Setup: Jan Gerber, Sebastian Lütgert, Florian Schneider

Video Production: Annett Busch, Jan Gerber, Florian Schneider, Manuela Zechner