Projects and Events
Place In Place Of: Alexandria/ JANUARY /
Cleotronica 08 Project # 1
Place In Place Of: Alexandria, and related workshop/lecture program
Jeremy Beaudry (USA) and Alexandria based art/architecture students
'Place In Place Of: Alexandria' is a work in progress by Jeremy Beaudry, that manifests itself as a set of site-specific interventions, performances, and documents based in Alexandria, Egypt. Equally, important and essential, this project is co-created as collaboration with local art and architecture university students and, recent graduates Mohamed Nabil, Mohamed Mansour, Aya Tarek, Omar Mustafa, Abdalla Safwat, Moushira Elamrawy, and Lamia Moghzy. The research and documentation is collected, reconstituted, and recontextualized on the Web at www.alexandria.placeinplaceof.net
Beaudry's lecture program consisted of 3 lectures, 'Artist-Run Culture and Initiatives in North-East USA & Chicago", an Artist Talk about his practice and tactics and finally a final project presentation about the Place In Place Of: Alexandria project.
Bio
Jeremy Beaudry is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, educator and activist from Philadelphia, USA. With a background in both art and architectural practice, Beaudry works across these disciplines to understand and engage the role of personal and collective memory in shaping our experience of physical and virtual spaces. Through online projects, site-based curatorial and creative work, and activism around issues of land use and urban development, he engages a variety, of audiences from diverse fields in and out of the academy. He is currently the Director of the Department for the Investigation of Meaning in the Think Tank that has yet to be named, an artists group that initiates site-specific conversations, performative actions, and educational projects to interrogate contemporary urban issues. Beaudry is also an Assistant Professor in Multimedia at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. More about the artist on http://meaning.boxwith.com/
/ FEBRUARY /
Cleotronica 08 Project # 2
Rich User Experience
14-28 February 2008, Opening 14 February
An Exhibition of Projects by Olia Lialina (RU) + Dragan Espenschied (DE)
Location: the Goethe Institute, 10 El-Batalsa Street, Azarita, Alexandria.
Lecture by Olia Lialina: 13 February, at Alexandria Contemporary Arts Form (ACAF)
Lecture by Dragan Espenschied: 15 February, at Alexandria Contemporary Arts Form (ACAF)
In their first exhibition in the Middle-East, Stuttgart based pioneer net artist Olia Lialina (RU) and artist/musician/programmer Dragan Espenschied (DE) present an exhibition of 6 net-based projects that reflect their research on a wide array of net culture related issues from 'interactivity' to 'digital folklore', and from the 'vernacular web' to 'web 2.0'. The project will also feature two lectures/artist talks which will take place at Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF) on 13 February for Olia Lialina and 15 February for Dragan Espenschied.
Bios
Olia Lialina (Born 1971 in Moscow)
Lialina finished Moscow State University in 1993 as a journalist and film critic. In the mid 90s she was one of the organizers of Moscow experimental film club CINE FANTOM. Lialina is considered one of the net.art pioneers. She writes on New Media, Digital Folklore and Vernacular Web. She has been Professor at Merz Akademie (New Media Pathway), Stuttgart since 1999. Animated Gif Model. Wife of Rockstar. Junior blogger.
Dragan Espenschied (Born 1975 in Munich)
Espenschied is an Artist, Designer, Programmer, Musician, and Lecturer nowadays living in Stuttgart. In 1995 he co-founded the internationally active home computer band Bodenstang 2000 with Bernhard Kirsch. Since winter semester 2000: teacher at Merz Akademie in the New Media Pathway, teaches about art and design online, digital culture and folklore, programming. He earned an International Media Art Award in 2001 from ZKM Karlsruhe.
Cleotronica 08 Project # 3
'We Are the Poster Machine'
An Intensive Poster Design Workshop with Jonathan Puckey, 24-27 February (NL/UK)
Lecture/Artist Talk: 29 February.
Location: Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), 10 Hussein Hassab Street, Azarita, Alexandria.
Amsterdam based designer and artist Jonathan Puckey set up an intensive 4 day workshop at ACAF focusing specifically on poster design that goes beyond advertising and enters the realm of visual and conceptual communicative experimentation.
Bio
Jonathan Puckey (1981) - http://www.jonathanpuckey.com
I remember a lecture by dutch designer Karel Martens. He was talking about how much his work is based on the limitations of printing techniques such as letterpress and litho. I felt very jealous, because my computer doesn't have any limits. Being able to produce anything feels like a heavy weight on my shoulders. Every single decision becomes so full of meaning; I could have done it in thousands of other ways. Tools are able create a little world of logic that break up all these little decisions into larger pieces. You've already solved a number of problems by creating the tool and now you're left to spend more attention on performing the design. This performance aspect frees me from looking for that perfect image. It's only a result from me and my tools; it doesn't have to be THE result because it's not only about the result. I want the viewer to recognize the process, understand the problem and become aware that a human being was involved in making the product. I am not my machine; maybe my machine can become me.
Cleotronica 08 Project # 6
Tactical Media Club Alexandria
A Participatory Club for Tactical Media Moderated by Joanne Richardson (RO) and Francesca Bria (IT)
CLUB MEETINGS: 20-22 March 2008 at ACAF
Lecture1: Tactical Media: Past, Present, and Future by Joanne Richardson, Friday 21 March
Lecture 2: Social Media, Shared Culture, and the Hacker Movement in Italy by Francesca Bria, Sunday 23 March
Location: Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), 10 Hussein Hassab Street, Azarita, Alexandria
Tactical media is a concept and set of practices that emerged around the Next Five Minutes festivals in Amsterdam from 1993 to 2003. What is common to these practices is the artistic use of media technologies to subvert power. As part of the Cleotronica 2008 festival Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF) will set up a transient club for 'Tactical Media' inside its space. The club seeks to collectively explore 'Tactical Media' practices in the different contexts of Europe and Egypt, and conduct brainstorming sessions that investigate the possibility of new intersections between art, media, activism, and theory. Artists, activists, and collectives are invited to be members of the club and participate in its discussion and debate group meetings that will be moderated by Joanne Richardson (Romania) and Francesca Bria (Italy). To become a member and participate in the club's sessions please send us a brief paragraph about yourself and your interests or your collective in English or Arabic to office@acafspace.org, please include your complete contact info and write "club" in the subject box. The meetings will be carried out on the 20, 21, and 22 of March. In addition to the club meetings Joanne Richardson will be delivering a public lecture on the past, present and future of Tactical Media at ACAF on Friday 21 March, while Francesca Bria will talk about social media, shared culture and the hacker movement in Italy on Sunday 23 March.
Bios
Joanne Richardson
Born in Bucharest, grew up in New York, currently living between Cluj, Romania and Berlin. Founder of D Media (http://www.dmedia.ro) in Romania, an NGO for the production and dissemination of art and digital culture. Editor of Subsol webzine (http://subsol.c3.hu), and author of essays on social movements, postcommunism, immaterial labor, copyleft, tactical media, the history of the avant-gardes, and experimental film & video in Eastern Europe. Recent videos on nationalism, delocalization, migration, activism, precarity and borders.
Francesca Bria
Film Maker, journalist and Independent Network Activist. Born and currently living in Rome . She teaches digital media and video journalism in Rome and she is active as a free lance video journalist.She is counsultant and expert on access to knowledge policy for the Region of Lazio and the European Commission. She has been coordinating an international cooperation project between Italy and Brazil on Digital Culture and she's currently coordinating a cooperation project on free software in Venezuela. She is the author of different video documentaries and short experimental films on digital media technology, free knowledge, politics, precarity, migration and social justice. She's active in different networking and grassroot projects for the promotion of shared culture and free technology.
/ MARCH /
Cleotronica 08 Project # 4
The Silent Ornamental Revolution
A Public Art Project by Jan Robert Leegte (NL)
Location: Selected public locations all over Alexandria.
The Silent Ornamental Revolution is a public art project that uses a series of minimal posters created by Jan Robert Leegte based on his work and text developed in Vienna in 2006, it builds on the idea of the ornament as "sublime" intervention, the ornaments Leegte readapts are derived from popular computer interfaces such as the Windows operating system. The works made in 2006 were video collages simulation ideas of ornamental interventions. The project in Alexandria is a true intervention, using modular posters to build endless ornamental patterns. There will be two types of posters, one based on the artist's "selection" series, and the other going right down to his "scrollbar" series, using bevels. Basically any urban structure will be selectable, and any surface can be transformed to a minimal or hysterically ornamented facade. Art students from Alexandria will play a vital role in assisting Leegte with this series of interventions in public space. Links to the original text by Leegte can be found here: http://www.leegte.org/works/text/ornaments/index.htm
Bio
Jan Robert Leegte (1973) studied Fine Arts at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam after having studied Architecture at the University of Delft. Inspired by artists like Bruce Nauman and Fischli & Weiss, Leegte probes the surface of our surrounding world, aiming to reveal the underlying materials. Fascinated by the world behind the computer screen, he explored the sculptural possibilities of the Internet as from 1997. In 2002 he shifted back to the gallery space, taking along his newly discovered favorite materials with him. Recently Leegte is exploring more "embedded" possibilities out of the gallery space into the endlessly deep contexts of the outside world. His work has been exhibited at a widespread selection of international shows and festivals. Leegte lives and works in Amsterdam. Website: www.leegte.org
Cleotronica 08 Project # 5
Stammer: A Lecture in Theory
A Live Performance and Video Installation by Shady El Noshokaty (EG)
Performance: Stammer Live Performance by Shady El Noshokaty, 9 March
Exhibition: Stammer Video Installation Exhibition: 9 -16 March opening directly after live performance
Location: Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), 10 Hussein Hassab Street, Azarita, Alexandria
The property dualism theory asserts that humans are made of only physical substances; these physical substances are the carriers of two kinds of properties, physical properties and mental properties. El Noshokaty's new performance and related video portrays an educator (El Noshokaty himself) at a decisive moment in a theory lecture he is delivering. Personal emotions, desires and symbolisms interfere with the logical stream of thought usually attributed to lectures. This interference causes an overlapping of the mental properties into the physical, jamming the educator's speech and teaching abilities and causing the closest effect in humans to when a digital satellite receiver delivers a poor signal leading to the pixilation and freezing of the picture, thus the phrase El Noshokaty uses in the lecture (The Mind is a Digital Computer)
Bio
Shady El Noshokaty (1971) is a Cairo based artist and a teacher at the Faculty of Art Education, Helwan University. With a Fulbright grant, he studied avant-garde cinema and video art at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As of 2000, El Noshokaty organized and supervised the annual experimental media art workshop in the Faculty of Art Education until its 5th edition in 2005. His work has been exhibited in numerous local and international institutions including the Kunstmuseum Bonn, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, and the Hayward Gallery, London.
Cleotronica 08 Project # 6
Tactical Media Club Alexandria
A Participatory Club for Tactical Media Moderated by Joanne Richardson (RO) and Francesca Bria (IT)
CLUB MEETINGS: 20-22 March 2008 at ACAF
Lecture1: Tactical Media: Past, Present, and Future by Joanne Richardson, Friday 21 March
Lecture 2: Social Media, Shared Culture, and the Hacker Movement in Italy by Francesca Bria, Sunday 23 March
Location: Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), 10 Hussein Hassab Street, Azarita, Alexandria
Tactical media is a concept and set of practices that emerged around the Next Five Minutes festivals in Amsterdam from 1993 to 2003. What is common to these practices is the artistic use of media technologies to subvert power. As part of the Cleotronica 2008 festival Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF) will set up a transient club for 'Tactical Media' inside its space. The club seeks to collectively explore 'Tactical Media' practices in the different contexts of Europe and Egypt, and conduct brainstorming sessions that investigate the possibility of new intersections between art, media, activism, and theory. Artists, activists, and collectives are invited to be members of the club and participate in its discussion and debate group meetings that will be moderated by Joanne Richardson (Romania) and Francesca Bria (Italy). To become a member and participate in the club's sessions please send us a brief paragraph about yourself and your interests or your collective in English or Arabic to office@acafspace.org, please include your complete contact info and write "club" in the subject box. The meetings will be carried out on the 20, 21, and 22 of March. In addition to the club meetings Joanne Richardson will be delivering a public lecture on the past, present and future of Tactical Media at ACAF on Friday 21 March, while Francesca Bria will talk about social media, shared culture and the hacker movement in Italy on Sunday 23 March.
Bios
Joanne Richardson
Born in Bucharest, grew up in New York, currently living between Cluj, Romania and Berlin. Founder of D Media (http://www.dmedia.ro) in Romania, an NGO for the production and dissemination of art and digital culture. Editor of Subsol webzine (http://subsol.c3.hu), and author of essays on social movements, postcommunism, immaterial labor, copyleft, tactical media, the history of the avant-gardes, and experimental film & video in Eastern Europe. Recent videos on nationalism, delocalization, migration, activism, precarity and borders.
Francesca Bria
Film Maker, journalist and Independent Network Activist. Born and currently living in Rome . She teaches digital media and video journalism in Rome and she is active as a free lance video journalist.She is counsultant and expert on access to knowledge policy for the Region of Lazio and the European Commission. She has been coordinating an international cooperation project between Italy and Brazil on Digital Culture and she's currently coordinating a cooperation project on free software in Venezuela. She is the author of different video documentaries and short experimental films on digital media technology, free knowledge, politics, precarity, migration and social justice. She's active in different networking and grassroot projects for the promotion of shared culture and free technology.
Cleotronica 08 Project # 7
RECYCLIZER
A Workshop on Sampling in Animation and Solo Show by Jan van Nuenen (NL)
Workshop: Sampling Animation Workshop 29-31 March 2008
Exhibition: Jan van Nuenen Solo Show 28 March : 6 April, Opening: Friday 28 March
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Lecture: Sampling in Contemporary Animation, Sunday 30 March.
Location: Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), 10 Hussein Hassab Street, Azarita, Alexandria
RECYCLIZER is a 3 part project by Jan van Nuenen. The exhibition showcases screenings of van Nuenen's sample-constructed animated worlds of automatons, works that can be seen as the descendants of Bosch aesthetics and imagery in the digital age. The workshop on 29, 30, 31 will concentrate on creating a collectively made animated video that will be put up on You Tube, the video will be created using samples collected by all the workshop's participants. Finally the talk on 30 March will summarize the idea and culture of sampling in Animation and its industry today, live Arabic translation will be available.
Bio
Jan van Nuenen (1978) is a video artist and animator based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He studied audio-visual design at the art academy St. Joost in Breda, the Netherlands. He has been working on short, experimental animation films and video-installations since 2002. His works are mainly animated collages of found-footage video and photographical material or samples, cut up, combined and edited with the computer and different types of animation software. The films are characterized by a complex and combined action of loops, repetitions and rhythms, where sound plays a vital role. His works have been shown at different international film, video and art festivals. Van Nuenen also creates electronic music some of which is used in his films. Website: http://www.janvannuenen.com/
/ APRIL /
Cleotronica 08 Project # 8
A Workshop on Some Aspects of "Design" as a Part of Daily Life
Realized by Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran CAMP (Bombay/Mumbai, India) 12 : 15 April 2008
Artist Talk Ashok Sukumaran: Friday 11 April.
Artist Talk Shaina Anand and project presentation: Thursday 17 April.
Location: Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), 10 Hussein Hassab Street, Azarita, Alexandria and various locations around the city
INTRODUCTRY TEXT TO THE WORKSHOP BY SHAINA ANAND AND ASHOK SUKUMARAN
Shelter, Visibility, Love
(On the design of insulations and openings)
New fissures are appearing in the categories of the personal, the private and the public. Some of these are related to electronic forms of self or exposure while others are reconfigured by new pressures within old beliefs, structures and spaces.
Electronic spaces are often seen as "flows" across the concrete, enclosed physical world. Here you can have friends and conversations remotely and yet in secret. Or have personal relations, at the same time as being physically in "public" or "private", behind your mother's back, or in front of a camera. The segmentation of life into such "virtual" parts and layers then carries the dreams and anxieties of new community formations, undiscovered and "partial" forms of intimacy, and new forms of social encounter.
At the same time, and increasingly, these technologies are embedded into existing relations, boundaries of access, ownership, morality or law. It is also clear that acts of "communication" alone may not be enough to dissolve pre-existing, deeper boundaries. Much of our ongoing work enters into this conceptual space, stretches and expands it, proposes that we think of leaks as productive, publicness as an often necessary condition, but so also refusal, being able to say no.
So "design". In its broadest sense, design aspires to making technology "sociable", massaging the interface of machines and people, commodities and experiences. But also design may about keeping things and people at a certain precise distance, so that the relationship may sit within a safe, acceptable range on the slider between the personal and the public. From the point of view that both communications and surveillance are both in some sense ubiquitous, we could then ask if the role of contemporary materials, interfaces and design strategies could be seen primarily as insulating: from the effects of unwanted attentions, or to shelter us from power. Is this the future we want? Who is being sheltered, and who is newly visible? What encounters may be crafted through the domain of "design"? To question these terms and to take them beyond the diagrammatic, we would like to in the workshop think of specific and everyday ways, in which the problem of design can be seen as a problem of how to insulate the room, while keeping the doors and windows open, to encounters with the outside.
We feel the usual concepts around this question, such as "interface", filtering, exhibitionism, publicity, Camouflage, "openness", or even insulation itself, may not fully describe the possibilities that could be found here.
By Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran, CAMP.
CAMP is a new artist-run platform for trans-disciplinary practice including the arts, based in Mumbai, India.
http://camputer.org
BIOS
Ashok Sukumaran
http://0ut.in
Ashok Sukumaran has degrees in architecture and media art. His recent work has dealt with the intersection of human habitats and technologies being embedded within them. These projects use simple hardware and software combinations towards a broad investigation of "infrastructure", individual agency, and relations between "private" and "public" spheres. The work draws from computer-based art, conceptual practices, early and pre-cinema, and architecture. Ashok's work has been shown widely in recent years, and has received several honors, including the Golden Nica (for Interactive art) at the Prix Ars Electronica 2007, and the first prize of the UNESCO Digital Arts Award, 2005. His ongoing work is supported by grants from the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology, and the India Foundation for the Arts Grant for Extending Arts Practice.
Shaina Anand
http://chitrakarkhana.net
Shaina Anand trained as a filmmaker, and now does various projects with "expanded video": television, cable TV, CCTV and so on, in ways that challenge the traditional methods and usual consequences of image capture and distribution. Recent interventionist projects such as RustleTV (2004), WICity TV (2005) and Khirkeeyaan (2006) have made use of such present and accessible technologies to create temporary autonomous communication zones, and other provocative media landscapes. In 2001, she founded the independent media platform chitrakarkhana.net, and is now also co-director of CAMP, a new arts initiative in collaboration with Khoj.
Ashok and Shaina live in Mumbai, India. They recently co-initiated an artistic collaboration called CAMP, a way of critically responding to the regional art and technology context. http://camputer.org
Cleotronica 08 Projects # 9 and # 10
The first Cleotronica: Festival for Art, Media, and Socio-Culture, January - May, 2008 is approaching its final stations; Project # 9 and Project # 10. Project # 9 is the Cleotronica 08 Finale Exhibition at Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), opening at 7.30 pm on 1 May 2008 and presenting works by Miltos Manetas and Igor Stromajer for the first time in Egypt, the exhibition runs till 14 May 2008. Project # 10 is Hyperlinked: Art, Technology and the Socio-Political Domain an international symposium on media art practices taking place on May 1 and May 2 at the Goethe Institute headquarters in Alexandria. The Symposium will be composed of a series of separate lectures that present and analyze different positions in the wider body of media and art driven socio-cultural practices. From the curating of media art to the politics of digital culture and from the educational possibilities of 3D virtual worlds to the notion of "cultural difference" and its impact on media-based communicative projects, the symposium hopes to paint a lucid and multiform picture of media and art and their current relational equation to a larger sphere of daily life. The symposium's speakers are: Inke Arns, Tarek Atoui, Elif Ayiter, Andreas Broeckmann, Miltos Manetas, Nat Muller, and Igor Stromajer.
Hyperlinked: Art, Technology and the Socio-Political Domain
1-2 May 2008
An Internatioal Symposium on Media Art Practices organized by Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF) at the Goethe Institute Alexandria as part of Cleotronica: Festival for Media, Art, and Socio-Culture
Location: The Goethe Institute Alexandria, 10 Rue des Ptolemees (Batalsa Street), Azarita, Alexandria, Egypt
Speakers:
Inke Arns (Dortmund/Berlin)
Tarek Atoui (Paris/Beirut)
Elif Ayiter (Istanbul)
Andreas Broeckmann (Berlin)
Miltos Manetas (London/Milan)
Nat Muller (Rotterdam)
Igor Stromajer (Ljubljana)
Bios:
Inke Arns
www.inkearns.de 
Dr. Inke Arns, artistic director of Hartware MedienKunstVerein Dortmund (www.hmkv.de); 2004 PhD (Dr. phil.) at Humboldt University Berlin. Since 1993 independent curator and author focusing on media art, net cultures and Eastern Europe. Her curatorial work includes international exhibitions, festivals and conferences - most recently "History Will Repeat Itself", HMKV Dortmund / KW Berlin 2007/2008, and "The Wonderful World of irational.org", CCA Glasgow 2007. Books include Netzkulturen (2002), Neue Slowenische Kunst (2002) and Avantgarda v vzvratnem ogledalu (The Avant-garde in the Rear-View Mirror, Ljubljana 2006). She published numerous articles on media art and net culture and edited numerous exhibition catalogues.
Tarek Atoui
Tarek Atoui is a Lebanese born musician, computer programmer and curator. He moved to France in 1998 and studied contemporary and electronic music at the French National Conservatoire of Reims. As a musician He works primarily digitally, creating a uniquely abstract sound world with his experimental approach. Using his own programs, he makes soundscapes, often with beats, subject to breaks and asymmetries. In 2004, He co-founded the Asa Djinnia Collective with Uriel Barthelemi, involved in organizing and presenting creative and artistic events, and began working with the Puce Muse studios and IRCAM, along with several theatrical and dance companies. He since started to return to Lebanon and to the Middle East where he has initiated and curated several types of multidisciplinary interventions and events such as concerts and music/ technology/ performative art workshops for artists, university students and teenagers. He is currently the co-artistic director of the Steim studios in Amsterdam where he is developing several projects.
Elif Ayiter
www.citrinitas.com 
Elif Ayiter is an artist, designer and educator, specializing in the development of hybrid educational methodologies between art & design and computer science. She has presented research output at conferences including Siggraph, Consciousness Reframed, Creativity and Cognition and Computational Aesthetics. She is currently studying for a doctoral degree at the Planetary Collegium, CAiiA hub at the University of Plymouth.
Andreas Broeckmann 
Dr. Andreas Broeckmann is an art historian and curator who lives in Berlin. Independently curated exhibitions include projects at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam ('Image:Process', 2008), Media Art Biennale Seoul ('media_city_seoul', 2008), Skuc Gallery in Ljubljana ('KRcF - Room for Maneuver', 2006), at TENT/Witte de With in Rotterdam ('Tracer / Neuralgic', 2004), and with Kontejner / MaMa in Zagreb ('Runtime Art', 2004). From 2005 till 2007, he was one of three artistic directors of TESLA - Laboratory for Arts and Media in Berlin. From 2000 to 2007 he was the Artistic Director of transmediale - festival for art and digital culture Berlin. From 1995-2000, he worked as a project manager at V2_Organisation Rotterdam, Institute for the Unstable Media. Broeckmann studied art history, sociology, and media studies in Germany and Britain. He holds a PhD in Art History from the University of East Anglia, Norwich/UK. He is a member of the advisory board for Visual Arts of the Goethe Institut, and of the Council for the Arts, Berlin. He co-maintains the Spectre mailing list and is a member of the Berlin-based media association mikro. Co-founder of Les Jardins des Pilotes. In university courses, curatorial projects, and lectures he deals with art, technology, digital culture, and the aesthetics of the mechanic. He is currently working on a study about 20th century machine art.
Nat Muller 
Nat Muller is an independent curator and critic based in Rotterdam. She has held positions as staff curator at V2_, Institute for Unstable Media (Rotterdam) and De Balie, Centre for Culture and Politics (Amsterdam). Her main interests include: the intersections of aesthetics, media and politics; (new) media and art in the Middle East. She has published articles in off- and online media; and has given presentations on the subject of (new) media art (inter)nationally. Her latest projects include The Trans_European Picnic - The Art and Media of Accession (Novi Sad, 2004), DEAF_04: Affective Turbulence: The Art of Open Systems (Rotterdam, 2004); INFRA_ctures (Rotterdam, 2005), Xeno_Sonic: a series of experimental sound performances from the Middle East (Amsterdam, 2005), DEAF07 (Rotterdam, 2007), the workshop 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place?', Negotiating Artistic Practice, Audiences, Representation and Collaboration within Local and International Frameworks' (Amman, 2007). She recently co-edited the Mag.net Reader2: Between Paper and Pixel with Alessandro Ludovico (2007), and is working on Mag.net Reader3: Processual Publishing, Actual Gestures, based on a series of debates organized at Documenta XII. She is co-initiator of the Upgrade! Amsterdam, and has taught at the Willem de Kooning Academy (NL), ALBA (Beirut), the Lebanese American University (Beirut), and A.U.D. in Dubai (UAE). This year she was a jury member for the prestigious Berlin-based media festival Transmediale. She will be curator-in-residence at the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo from April 2008 to April 2009.
Cleotronica 08 Finale Exhibition: Works by Miltos Manetas and Igor Stromajer
Opening: 1 May 7.30 pm at Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF)
Miltos Manetas
www.manetas.com 
Miltos Manetas (1964- ) is a Greek-born painter and multimedia artist. He is well known for his paintings of computer hardware and his cunning online-art websites. He is also the starter of the Neen Art Movement which is a kind of new Dada, and an international art movement for the digital age. Today Manetas lives and works in London and is putting all this experience together under a new term, "Existential Computing". In 2007, The Hayward Gallery commissioned Manetas to conduct a workshop on the idea of the Existential Computing.
Igor Stromajer
(Intima Virtual Base: www.intima.org)
Born 1967, defines himself as an intimate mobile communication artist. In his artworks he researches emotional states, intimate guerrilla tactics and traumatic low-technology strategies. He has shown his work at more than a hundred exhibitions in fifty countries. The two most widely known are Ballettikka Internettikka and Oppera Internettikka. He has received several awards for his work (in Moscow, Hamburg, Dresden, Madrid, Maribor etc), and his projects form part of the permanent collections of institutions such as, the Georges Pompidou centre - Musee national d'art moderne in Paris; the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid; Moderna galerija - the Slovene Museum of Contemporary Arts in Ljubljana, Slovenia; Computerfinearts Gallery - net and media art collection in New York, USA. As artist-in-residence and guest he has lectured at universities and contemporary art institutions in Europe, North and South America and Asia.