Gizmogs

The year draws to an end and so is rhizome's fund raising campaign. I guess most of you know the fantastic work they are doing every single day to promote and support technology-based art. Culture tends to suffer more than many other fields in tougher times (but please feel free to disagree and prove me wrong), so please consider donating $25 or more. They will undoubtedly give it back to you in many forms.

Ergin Çavusoglu, Fog Walking, 2007

Mudamis Luxembourg's very own and very classy museum of modern and contemporary art. I've been following their always exciting and bold programme for a couple of years and was very eager to see it but then you need a rock solid motive to spend a day in Luxembourg. The other day i woke up and decided that Mudam would be mine.

Shoot An Iraqi, Art, Life and Resistance Under the Gun, by Wafaa Bilal, an Iraqi American artist currently an assistant professor at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York Universit and author and journalist Kari Lydersen (Amazon UK and

Paulistas much chagrined by the pauperism of this year's São Paulo Biennial pointed me to its Off version, the Paralela '08. They made sure to add "You know this isn't a huge event either but there are a few interesting pieces over there!"

The Mata gallery. Photo: Bruno Magalhães.

Sorry for the long silence, this visit to Brazil is far more absorbing than i expected. On Sunday, the organizers of arte.mov (the festival for mobile media art) took us for a school trip to the Instituto Cultural Inhotim. An hour drive away from Belo Horizonte, Inhotim is a contemporary art museum, made of pavilions and installations spread over a lush botanical garden.

As i mentioned a couple of days ago, the Heartland exhibition on view until January 25 at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (NL) is one of the best shows i've visited this year.

The videos of Artur Żmijewski are screened in almost all the major collective exhibitions and biennales these days. I caught a glimpse of his video in one such events and thought 'looks interesting' but i passed my way. In front of art cornucopia, video is always the last on my list and it gets my attention only if there's a seat available for me to have nap in the dark.

But on Thursday i took the train to Utrecht to see the solo exhibition of the Polish artist at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst.

A couple days ago, Eyebeam in New York City opened what by some has been called their best show so far. It is titled Untethered, and was curated by visiting fellow Sarah Cook to be "a sculpture garden of everyday objects deprogrammed of their original function, embedded with new intelligence and transformed into surrealist and surprising readymades". Many pieces are from Eyebeam's fellows, residents or affiliated artists while a few external people were invited to participate as well.

Dead Star

Long overdue.... A follow-up on media_city Seoul, a media art biennale hosted until November 5, 2008 at the Seoul Museum of Art.

A Matrioska suffering from acute radiation sickness.

Jaime Pitarch. Chernobyl (2007). Lime tree wood, aniline, oil, varnish

A work by Jaime Pitarch for The Rest of Now, an exhibition which runs until November 2 in an ex-aluminium factory in Bolzano, Italy, as part of the Manifesta Biennale.

Back in June, LABoral Art and Industrial Creation Centre in Gijón was opening Banquete_nodos y redes, Interactions Between Art, Science, Technology and Society in Spain's Digital Culture. The exhibition presents more than 30 digital and interactive works that critically and creatively explore the notion of Network as a shared matrix, not just from a technological perspective but also from a socio-cultural perspective.

Ant Farm - Living Archive 7, by Felicity Scott, an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Columbia University and a founding editor of the Grey Room quarterly (amazon USA and

Just spent 3 days in Rome to check out FotoGrafia, the 7th edition of international festival of photography which runs until May 25th in several venues throughout the city.

In a time when most photo festivals focus on urbanity, chaos or sustainability, the theme chosen by FotoGrafia this year is very brave: "Seeing normality. Photography portrays daily life".

Take two persons whose work in the media art field i've been admiring for years. Have their minds communicate for more than a couple of minutes. What is going to happen?

UBERMORGEN.COM (Lizvlx/Hans Bernhard), Psych|OS - Hans 2, 2004. Lambda print on aluminium. 100 x 150 cm. Edition of 5. Private Collection, Brussels / Fabio Paris Art Gallery, Brescia