SPAM New Media Festival

What does it cost to think together? Listening, explaining, and trusting take as long as they ever did, but the rest of the world is not waiting. This workshop explores ideas seen through the lens of time scarcity where collaboration becomes privilege. By unpacking the notion of the hurried handoffs via dimensions of labor and time inequalities (who gets to finish a thought? who can afford to be reasonable?), we progressively revive interrupted ideas, in the hopes of understanding whether the most vivid glimmer of a concept can survive an imposed context shift. Can we interrupt interruption itself? We will practice idea reconstitution inspired by arcane memory methods through provocations and group work.

Join us for a series of daytime talks with SPAM artists Rohan Chander and Ava Koohbor.

What is the difference between using the arts in organizing and political art? This workshop muses on dilemmas of working with exploited, politically activated communities in crisis. How do we take the act of filmmaking collaboratively seriously if participants are genuinely so in crisis, their time and labor is at a breaking point—they can’t afford to spend the time to truly co-author a film? What does filmmaking really entail and how do we break it into its fundamental pieces, to make it as agile, scrappy, negotiable and modular, without resorting to “stunt” co-credits or misrepresenting labor and power relations in filmmaking and organizing. By borrowing from a recent project with erotic laborers, massage workers and migrant workers in active organizing and resistance, artist and scholar Diana Mulan Zhu will draw on dialectical behavioral therapy, software engineering, fluxus, and crip practices to guide a workshop on making films on smartphones in her “docufiction” approach, covering costume, set design, cinematography, lighting, editing, performance, graphics and sound.

This event is standing-room only. A handful of stool seating will be available on a first come first served basis.

**Warning: This event contains flashing lights.**

SPAM New Media Festival continues with performances by electronic percussionist Sunken Cages, collaborative duo Rohan Chander & Scott Li, and artist / instrument builder Ava Koohbor.

Join us for a series of daytime talks with SPAM artists Jean Carla Rodea, Dorothy R. Santos, Abram Stern, and Nathan Corder.

Participate in an all-levels collective improvisation workshop, where we will dissect the role that improvised music can play in our current socioeconomic reality and implement this perspective through creative practice. The workshop will consist of short readings, group discussion, facilitated improv exercises, and whole group free improvisation. No experience with improvisation necessary, all that’s required is an open mind and a respectful attitude. Please be prepared to share about yourself and your perspectives during group discussion.

This workshop invites participants to spend some offline time reflecting on labor in the AI era by drawing and producing a postcard as a piece of asynchronous physical media. Participants will draw a phone, laptop, device, or screenshot that is significant to their work as an artist, technologist, writer, or digital laborer. Drawing serves as a meditation: what labor is contained in our devices? What memories do our digital devices hold? How can we visually represent our labor and memories in our rendering of the device?

SPAM New Media Festival launches its California edition of its annual festival with performances by interdisciplinary artist Jean Carla Rodea, collaborative duo Abram Stern & Dorothy R. Santos, and new Santa Cruz-based project EPOCH.

Jean Carla Rodea