“Cyber Attractions of WagonNet: Modes of Activist Engagement for Reclaiming the Public Space” presented by Santos and Frota

Symposium:

• ISEA2018: 24th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Emancipation and Pain (Long Papers)

• Cyber Attractions of WagonNet: Modes of Activist Engagement for Reclaiming the Public Space

• Vanessa Sonia Santos
• Gastão Frota

Venue(s):

• DUT City Campus, Durban, South Africa

• This paper investigates modes of activist engagement on a performance in public space. The discussion anchors on the case study analysis of the project WagonNet (Brazil, 2011-2014). The artistic practice combines a procedural and relational aesthetic to presuppose the other in the city context. It imbricates human and non-human agents in a wagon converted into a “cyber machine”, which works as a mobile digital station connecting the material and the virtual world and audiences. The performance evidences some dialogic aspects of culture, such as the relations between local and global, archaic and modern, backwardness and progress. The authors focus on this artistic experience to discuss two main topics: how to potentialize the urban environment as a place of encounters, and how the exploration of the city suburbs
  can be turned into an activist act.

• [View Full Paper/Presentation]

Category:

• Paper