A selection of visual documentation taken of the installation Make the Living Look Dead as part of the touring exhibition Again, A Time Machine at Spike Island, Bristol.

Includes my works Letters 2004-2006 and All the people who have ever lived, and will ever live

Broken Dimanche Press are delighted to announce that Büro BDP will be inaugurated with Martin John Callanan and the MINI Museum of XXI Century Arts.

Since 2007, Callanan has linked his status updates across social networking sites to display messages in unison. The updates always read “Martin John Callanan is okay“, with corresponding dates to show when they were published.

For the first exhibition at Büro BDP, Callanan has printed all the status updates on a single table sized sheet of roll paper. Using the obsolete technology of a pen plotter, which marks the text onto the paper with a standard writing pen, the text characters have been reproduced with machine precision. After the opening night, the table will gradually revert to it’s everyday use as an office desk.

The 209 updates are displayed sequentially in reserve chronological order on the MINI Museum of XXI Century Art which occupies the window on Emserstraße.

Vernissage & BBQ: Thursday 21 April 2011, 7-11pm.
Show: 22 April – 5 May 2011

Büro BDP
Emserstraße 43 / 12051-Berlin

Catalogue of the group exhibition on digital art curated by Pau Waelder. The exhibition proposes the spectator reflect on the new parameters introduced into the concepts of subject, body and interpersonal relations as a result of the development of new technologies, and how intimacy thus turns into extimacy, to use the term created by Jacques Lacan to define existence. The selection of works, interactive installations that involve the spectator through active participation, brings together renowned international artists: Gazira Babeli, Clara Boj and Diego Díaz, Martin John Callanan, Grégory Chatonsky, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Paul Sermon, Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, and Carlo Zanni.

The catalogue has been published with a heat-sensitive cover. Includes colour reproductions of the works displayed and critical texts by Pau Waelder, Pau Alsina and Francesc Núñez. 2011, ISBN 978-84-938055-4-8, 184 pages, 23x17cm, Catalan, Spanish, English and German.

The International Directory of Fictitious Telephone Numbers. That’s a title that brings about an instant vortex of images I can’t quite see – their speed and variety and the worlds they cause to collide are more numerous than I can count….(read more)

GAZIRA BABELI, CLARA BOJ, MARTIN JOHN CALLANAN, GRÉGORY CHATONSKY, DIEGO DÍAZ, RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER, LAURENT MIGNONNEAU, PAUL SERMON, CHRISTA SOMMERER, CARLO ZANNI.

Inside the immense flow of data exchange, the new technologies have facilitated an interdependency between the spheres of what is private and what is public, between interior and exterior, leading us to reveal, in an increasingly natural manner, our experiences, thoughts and feelings, enlarging the circle of intimacy to the point of sharing our inner life with the invisible, abstract audience of Internet users. Things personal become collective, things belonging to others become our own and intimacy is no longer something that is preserved and kept in our innermost circles, but something that is projected in all directions in an eccentric movement. Thus intimacy turns into extimacy, to use the term created by Jacques Lacan to define the existence, within the most intimate sphere of the I, of a “foreign body”, that which is external to the individual and with which one identifies.

We need to share our intimacy because what we are is defined both by our subjectivity and by what surrounds us. In the realm of digital art, several artists have worked with the new parameters of subject, body, interpersonal relationship and intimacy introduced by the new technologies. Their works enable us to initiate a reflection on the ways in which the mobile phone, e-mails, chats, social networks and instant messaging systems modify, increase or condition our communication with others. They also allow us to consider where the boundaries of our personal space lie, where our “I” ends and that of others begins.

“Extimacy. Art, intimacy and technology” is a group digital art exhibition which puts forward a proposal that spectators reflect on these concepts through the presentation of works by recognised artists from the international scene. Interactive installations, mainly, that involve spectators in what is active participation with the work, which never ceases to be a piece with its own identity, the fruit of the firm artistic background of creators who combine art and technology in their work. In an era in which the user adopts an active role in the diffusion and manipulation of information on the global network (known as web 2.0), in art, too, a change in roles between spectator and work is taking place, with interactive art as the best expression of this new paradigm. The works of some great names from this sphere, such as Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer or Paul Sermon, for instance, are combined with the creations of promising artists like Gazira Babeli, Clara Boj and Diego Díaz, Gregory Chatonsky, Carlo Zanni or Martin John Callanan. All of them exhibit the multiple facets a concept as complex and at the same time as simple as extimacy can present, from different angles and with diverse intentions.

To celebrate 15 years of ground breaking research in electronic media, the Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art (SCEMFA) will hold a 14 week exhibition, showing new works from eight internationally acclaimed artists: who use emerging practices to explore electronic and digital media, as both a source and material.

Martin John Callanan, 24 – 30 January
Thomson & Craighead, 2 – 13 February
Tim Head, 15 – 20 February
Simon Faithfull, 22 February – 6 March
Brighid Lowe, 8 – 13 March
Melanie Jackson, 15 – 20 March
Susan Collins, 23 March – 17 April

An exhibition that revolves every fortnight between each artist, acting as a showcase for the best of contemporary art in the UK, and highlighting the Slade’s pivotal role in the history, development and current research in the many varied forms of electronic media.

SCEMFA is a research group at the Slade School of Fine Art. SCEMFA opened in 1995 and for the past 15 years has provided the opportunity for leading artists to focus on research into Electronic Media and Fine Art, contributing to debate on a national and international level for events, exhibitions, broadcasts, collaborations and online.

Tuesday – Friday: 10 am – 5pm, Saturday & Sunday: noon – 5pm
North Lodge, University College London, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT

Internet has contributed to the transformation and spreading of new forms of art, provided boundless creating, exhibiting and consuming opportunities. Regeneration.011, in this context, is presenting works that deal with freedom of speech and anti-war activism as well as revealing the political and poetical aspects of contemporary net art. Plato Art Space, by this project, aims to draw attention to net art which gained considerable importance in the recent years as an alternative space for contemporary art.

Artists: Magda Bielesz, Alan Bigelow, Immo Blaese, Andrew Chee, Martin John Callanan, Andy Deck, Dimitrios Fotiou, Matthias Fritsch, Genco Gulan, Elli Harrison, Sachiko Hayashi, Anni Holm, Aoghus Kneeshaw, Cardarelli Luigia, Marcello Mercado, Alexander Mouton, Christian Rupp, Evelyn Stermitz, Jurgen Trautwein, Merve Unsal, Nanette Wylde, Jody Zellen, Ricardo Miranda Zuniga.
Curator: Marcus Graf

The exhibition is supported by Plato College of Higher Education

PLATO ART SPACE, Ayvansaray Caddesi, No: 33, Balat 34087 Istanbul-Turkiye

Pin board project
space is everywhere

The Pin board project is organized by Angus Braithwaite, Benedict Drew, Rudolf Reiber and Julia Tcharfas who are reasonably modish and quite friendly group of artists. The project is currently situated in studio 5 at the Slade School of Fine Art, which is located on Gower Street in London. The Pin board constructed by Angus (and fucking beautifully I might add), was assembled from Benedict and Julia’s recycled art works and can quite seamlessly fit into any institution or space and can appear in almost any locations in the future. The exhibitions will alternate biweekly starting on Thursday, November 20. 2010, each show chosen by the artists that preceded it. Thus the project will curate itself really. and maybe have something new to offer each time, and maybe something interesting even.

Finally an art space that is like a momentary revelation one has passing something unexpected on the sidewalk. or a quick glance of the eye of a nice stranger. or a pleasant high. It is like everything radical that’s happened in New York in the 70′s and in other symbolic places. An encounter that you are not sure whether it is or isn’t a work of art and you want to steal it. and you can. because they are just ideas. And it doesn’t matter what you decide to do with your ideas. which you can just think about. or use. or throw away. And everything is always a reproduction including this text: which is like the one I read in an art magazine by Gregory Battcock. But I shouldn’t talk about that because I should focus on the art. and it’s okay in this case because it’s good art.

And another thing about this project is that perhaps it isn’t an art space but a space for ideas that are not intended to be any more than ideas. As such they are pretty much invisible. which in itself is a good idea. We’ve suspected. for some time now. that art perhaps can be integrated in our daily lives and now it is. Therefore there’s nothing that can be damaged and we don’t have to worry about lighting and hole filler.

Martin John Callanan is okay
Wednesday 24th November 2010 – Tuesday December 7th
Studio 5, Slade School of Fine Art, Gower St. London

The Live 2011 Grand Prix jury has also decided to distinguish several works. Honorary mentions include: I Wanted to See All of The News from Today by Martin John Callanan, as best online project.

Harald Welzer on WDR Fernsehen talking about ISEA and my work A Planetary Order (2 mins in)

Elektronische Visionen in Dortmund broadcast on
Dienstag, 31. August 2010, 22.30 – 23.10 Uhr
Montag, 06. September 2010, 10.50 – 11.30 Uhr (Wdh.)

A quick translation of Harald Welzer talking about A Planetary Order:

I find this piece of work very fine actually because it represents very simply, that is to say in the classical shape of the globe, what is in reality an unbelievably complex process. Normally of course one sees only the sky and the prevailing weather conditions over the place where one is at that time. That this is a complete and forever changing global system is quite wonderfully depicted with this very simple and, in my opinion, beautiful artwork. The worldwide interconnecting system, which Callanan has recorded in miniature, is subdivided in Marko Peljhan’s “Arctic Perspectives” into umpteen individual projects…