Graham Harwood: The networked image

Graham Harwood, will be guest of "Intervention #4" on June 3rd, 2009. Harwood is known for both his individual work Aluminium (Manifesta07 2008), Rehearsal-of-Memory (Pompidou Centre Paris 1996 - collection), Lungs (Centre for Media Arts in Karlsruhe – collection) and his collaborative work with Mongrel (1996-2007) a celebrated artists group specialising in digital media and his directorship of Mediashed a free-media lab in Southend-on-sea(2005). He helped both groups build an international reputation for their pioneering arts projects, which usually combined working with marginalised peoples who are on low incomes, the socially excluded and cultural minorities with media art.

In 2008 Harwood has joined long time collaborators Matsuko Yokokoji (Mongrel/Mediashed), Richard Wright (Mongrel/Mediashed) to produce Tantalum Memorial winning the Transmediale first prize for 2009. Tantalum Memorial also featured at (ZeroOne Biennial San Jose - USA, Manifesta07 Bolzano, Italy, Science Museum London)

‘Tantalum Memorial - Residue’ is a telephony based memorial to the people who have died as a result of the ‘coltan wars’ in the Congo. Coltan ore is mined for the metal tantalum - an essential component of mobile phones that is now more valuable than gold. The work is constructed out of an electromechanical Strowger telephone exchange from the 1960s which was discovered amongst the remains of the Alumix factory. The switches are reanimated by tracking the phone calls from ‘Telephone Trottoire’ - a social telephony network designed by the artists for the Congolese radio programme 'Nostalgie Ya Mboka' in London. Their precisely poised movements and sounds create a concrete presence for this otherwise intangible network of circulating conversations, weaving together the ambiguities of globalization, transnational migration and the impact of our addiction to constant communication.

Harwood is a member of Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College where he manges the practical component on the MA in Interactive Media – Critical theory and Practise.

http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/cultural-studies/
http://www.mongrel.org.uk
http://www.mediashed.org.uk

Imaginary property
INTERVENTION #4
http://imaginaryproperty.com/intervention4

Wednesday 3 June 2009
14:00 - 19:00
Jan van Eyck Academie Maastricht

Guest: Graham Harwood