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1999: Erasing Community: Fractured Voice and Veiled Vision About the Conference The academic community is an environment of departments and divisions which, in many respects, mirrors the social fractures in the greater community, and may assist in the propagation of fractures in society. Of great concern is how contemporary theories in the academy have been accused of fomenting divisions between political, social, cultural, ethnic, sexual, and geographic communities. Many see the academic environment as erasing community, crossing boundaries, fracturing voices, and veiling the vision necessary to receive what may be at stake in the political struggles of communities everywhere. Organizers of the 1999 Crisis Carnival hope to create a forum by which issues involving the complex nature and multiplicity of communities can be discussed and understood. We may consider how the insularity of the academic community translates to the other communities, which its members may or may not belong to or interact with. Further, we may also consider what modes of integration are possible in the academic setting. Keynote Speaker, Adriene Jenik Adriene Jenik is a media artist who has been working for over 10 years as an artist, teacher, curator, administrator, engineer and community activist. She received her B.A. in English from Douglass College, Rutgers University and her M.F.A. in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Prior to joining the UCSD Faculty, Jenik was employed as an engineer in the Blast Jr. development team for Disney Online's Daily Blast. Over the past eight years she has taught a broad range of electronic media classes at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), UC Irvine, University of Southern California (USC), and UCLA's New Media Lab. From her initial painting series through her involvement with Paper Tiger TV and Deep Dish TV (1985-1990), the band Snakes & Ladders (with Mary Feaster, Chris Stansfield, Genevieve Hayes, and Helen Granger), the 'zine collective SCREAMBOX (with Pam Greg and Bryn Austin), video productions like What's the Difference Between a Yam & a Sweet Potato? (with J. Evan Dunlap), and live satellite TV like EL NAFTAZTECA: Cyber-Aztec TV for 2000 A.D. (with Guillermo Gomez-Peña). Jenik's artistic projects exist outside the realms of the purely aesthetic or entertaining. Instead, they serve as catalysts of community, social movement and interpersonal understanding during both their creation and reception. To this end, much of Jenik's work has been collectively or collaboratively produced. Her distribution outlets have encompassed television, as well as clubs, bars and streets, in addition to screenings and events in cultural institutions. Jenik has consistently moved among and between media. This insistence on expressing herself and her ideas on many levels (musical composition, math/logic/programming, telecommunication, drawing/painting, videography) is at present finding its home in the development of computer-based interactive work. MAUVE DESERT: A CD-ROM Translation is Jenik's internationally acclaimed interactive narrative based on the novel Le Desert Mauve by French-Canadian author Nicole Brossard. Jenik wrote, directed, produced, edited, designed, programmed and published the disc. MAUVE DESERT has been screened at Festival International Nouveau Cinéma Nouveaux Médias, Virginia Film Festival, 2nd Annual Digital Storytelling Festival, Melbourne International Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, and many other venues. In many cases, it has been the first presentation of an interactive work within a film festival context. Jenik's work has been reviewed and discussed in such publications as Parachute, The Independent, Jumpcut, The Village Voice, Afterimage, Art Papers, Artlink, and Cyberstage. In addition, her creative writing and essays have been published in High Performance, Felix, The L.A. Weekly, Off Video, Heresies, and The Utne Reader. Her current projects include the online performance (with Lisa Brenneis) of waitingforgodot.com, the development of a multi-user, multi-generational online world inspired by a feminist science fiction text, and the founding of the Smokey Johnson Memorial Center for Research and Development. She is a 1997 Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in New Media. Keynote
Performer, Oliver Mayer Oliver Mayer was born in Los Angeles. He is the author of twelve plays, including Blade To The Heat, which will be made into a film by Madonna, and begins shooting this fall. The play premiered at the Public Theatre in New York City, directed by George C. Wolfe. The revised version appeared on the Mark Taper Forum mainstage directed by Ron Link. Subsequent productions have taken place in San Francisco, directed by Tony Kelly; Chicago, directed by Gary Griffin; and Mexico City, directed by Enrique Gomez Badillo. Joy Of The Desolate will receive its world premiere at the Apple Tree Theatre in Chicago for the 1999-2000 season, directed by Gary Griffin. His play Ragged Time was presented at the Royal Court Theatre, London, directed by Hettie MacDonald. The Road To Los Angeles, a play in homage to David Alfaro Siqueiros, will receive a new production by the fledgling Pathos Institute in Los Angeles in December. Previously it was presented at SPARC in Venice, California, directed by Natsuko Ohama, and then further developed at San Jose Repertory, directed by Kim Euell, as well as in several college productions. Joe Louis Blues, which premiered in Los Angeles in 1992, directed by Abdul Salaam El Razzac, will be revived in San Francisco in January, 2000, directed by Tony Kelly. His newest play, Conjunto, will be developed in cooperation with the Latino Theatre Initiative at the Mark Taper Forum. He has written for USA Cable's Sins Of The City.His screenplay credits include The Wetback Academy and Land of Dreams, co-written with Alfonso Arau, and Caliente, a movie about rock en espanol, to be directed by Arau. A graduate of Cornell, Columbia, and Oxford Universities, Mayer's literary archive can be accessed through the Stanford University Libraries. Mayer was also voted one of the "100 Coolest" people by BUZZ Magazine. Read Mayer's article "Shifting the Mirror," in PARABASI Important Dates (subject to change)
Important Events
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