Deep Europe. A V2_East/Syndicate workshop in Kassel, Mon, 28.7. - Wed, 6.8.97 @ Hybrid WorkSpace @ documenta X

Take the title 'Deep Europe' with a pinch of salt. The V2_East/Syndicate is a network of people and institutions who are involved in media culture and media art in Europe and who want to create contacts and an infrastructure for projects and cooperations. The network started out as an 'East-West initiative' almost two years ago, but has since reached a stage where those symbolically laden terms mean less and less. With its mailing list, website <http://www.v2.nl/east> and regular meetings, the Syndicate is becoming an important tool for fostering ties within the media art community and a platform for discussing the changing role of media culture in the 'new Europe'.

Kassel is both a former outpost of the pseudo-Western world and a hallmark of a post-war modernism. Even eight years after the fall of the Berlin wall, the cultural maps of Europe are shifting heavily. There are still many things to see, learn and do, and conversations to be had, before we will be able to make sense of the new distances between Berlin and Warsaw, Paris and Moscow, Vienna and Belgrade, Kassel and Eisenach.

The new lines that run through Europe are historical, political, cultural, artistic, technological, military. The role of the EU and its institutions, the notion of Mitteleuropa, old and new ideo-logies, messianic NGOs and late-capitalist profiteers contribute to a cultural environment in which we have to define new strategies and new tools, whether as artists, activists, writers or organisers.

'Deep Europe' will offer an opportunity to further develop ideas which have emerged around the V2_East/Syndicate initiative over the last 18 months, to discuss them among the Syndical-ists and with the dX public. There will be ample opportunity to represent in video, slide and WWW presentations what we have in mind when we say 'European media art and culture', and to concentrate on some of these issues in texts and audio-visual productions.

Some keywords: building networks, forgetting pseudo-East/West, questioning ideologies, shif-ting borders, critique of the 'Western gaze', culture in a 'New Europe', the disappearance of Europe in the new global economic context, and in light of the local federalist/isolationnist efforts, culture-and-money, culture-and-power, the analog networks as a new form of "cult" activism, NGOs and PGOs, catching up (with technology, ideology, economy etc) versus keeping one's own identity

Among the participants will be:

- Inke Arns, media art curator, author, Berlin/D
- Tom Bass, author, Budapest/Hu
- Kit Blake, web designer, Rotterdam/Nl
- Luchezar Boyadjiev, media artist, Sofia/Bg
- Andreas Broeckmann, project manager V2_East, Rotterdam/Berlin/Nl/D
- Nina Czegledy, video artist and curator, Toronto/Budapest
- Calin Dan, media artist, Bucharest/Amsterdam/Ro/Nl
- Aleksandar Davic, video artist and curator, cyberNS, Novi Sad/Yu
- Branka Davic Milicic (+Nikola), media art curator, cyberNS, Novi Sad/Yu
- Marta & Michiel van der Hagen Dubrzynska , computer artists and webmasters, Warsaw/Pl
- Lisa Haskel, media art curator, London/UK
- Marjan Kokot, sociologist, author, editor, Ljubljana/Si
- Eduard Muka, artist, curator, teacher, Art Academy, Tirana/Al
- Iliyana Nedkova, media art curator, Sofia/Bg
- Dima Pilikin, artist and curator, St. Petersburg/Ru
- Rasa Smite, net and radio artist, E-Lab, Riga/Lv
- Raitis Smits, net and radio artist, E-Lab, Riga/Lv
- Valeri Savchuk, art theoretician, St. Petersburg/Ru

Other Syndicalists are certain, and very welcome, to join the team. If you are interested in getting on-board, please, contact <abroeck@v2.nl>.