|
Pixel Plunder©
Harwood
- "Uncomfortable Proximity"
Click here
to launch the site in a new window.
Statement:
The Tate's scrapbook of British
pictorial history has many missing pages, either torn out through
revision or self-censored before the first sketch. Those that did
make it created the cultural cosmetics of peoples profiting from
slavery, migrant labour, colonisation and transportation. Clearly
the images in the historic collection and the image of the Tate
itself are pregnant with the past's cosmetic cultural surgery made
ready for the shoppinglists of the future. The skin of these
paintings was stretched over a psychological frame, a shield against
which were thrown the filthy, diseased, rotting corpses of daily
life, profit and excess. The scrapbook's scalpelled pages will never
be found but they articulate in their absence the political and
economic relations of that society and of ours. While Tate can never
be fully inclusive of peoples' histories that may have run counter
to its own, it can at least be a site of critical participation in
the present history of cultural cosmetics of these islands.
Bio:
Harwood 24/10/60 Born in Brighton, England
Harwood started out as an artist during the 1980s. He was involved
with publishing initiatives such as the Working Press, (books by and
about working class culture); Underground newspaper, (a London-based
free newspaper aimed at promoting and exploiting the uses of new
media in culture and society); and books such as Unnatural - techno
theory for a contaminated culture (theoretical positionings on new
media). During this time, he produced the first computer-generated
graphic novel If Comics Mental and was widely published in graphic
journals in the USA, Canada, Italy and France. After Harwood trained
in new media and learned programming at the end of the 1980s, he was
invited to make a piece of work for Video Positive '95
(international video art festival in Liverpool). He worked at
Ashworth maximum security hospital in Liverpool where he produced
Rehearsal of Memory the installation. As an educationalist he worked
on various new media courses at Guildhall University, and advised on
numerous other academic new media initiatives. Disappointed with the
state of academic education, Harwood was invited to work at Artec
(London Arts Technology Centre) where he provided innovative
training for the long-term unemployed. It was here that he received
his Arts Council funding to develop Rehearsal of Memory with Artec
and ex-trainees to produce, re-author and publish the CD-ROM version
of the installation. Since, Harwood has exhibited and spoken at
numerous events, nationally and internationally, in England, France,
Austria, Australia, Germany, Canada, Portugal, Finland, Holland and
Norway. In 1997 Harwood left Artec to Form Mongrel, with Matsuko
Yokokoji and Richard Pierre-Davis. Mongrel has created
collaborative, socially engaged cultural products including National
Heritage and the Natural Selection search engine to international
acclaim. In 1999 Harwood/Mongrel received two national awards, The
Clarks Digital Bursary and the Imaginaria Award from which emerged
the software Linker - exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Art
and Watershed Bristol. Since taking a back seat in Mongrel, Harwood
has been able to concentrate on research in two key areas, software
as culture and the history of medicine.
> >
LAUNCH EVENT - 9.21.01 featuring: JOHN OSWALD (PLUNDERPHONICS)
hosted by INSTANT COFFEE
> > ESSAY- Commonality, pixel
property, seduction: As If by MATTHEW
FULLER
Pixel Plunder© is co-presented by
InterAccess
Electronic Media Art Centre Contact the curators: Michael Alstad and Michelle
Kasprzak
|