Imperfections: Mistakes, Cracks, Noise Today – live set in Amsterdam

A live set in Amsterdam on 12th February, full information below.

Imperfections: Mistakes, Cracks, Noise Today

The Sublime Imperfections research collective (Amsterdam) devotes a round table + performance event to aesthetics & discourses of imperfection, mistakes, glitches and noise, repair and distortions. The event is part of a conference that address cravings for imperfection in design, music, art, writing, psychology, and genetics.

Date	12 March 2019
Time	18:00 – 23:00

Featuring Mieke Bal, Graham Dunning, Linor Goralik, Patricia Pisters, Ellen Rutten, Yuriko Saito, DJ Trish Trash.

12 March, 2019, 18:00-23:00, Sexyland, Ms. Van Riemdijksweg 39, Amsterdam. Entrance is free but space is limited; register via sublimeimperfectionsassistent at gmail dot com. For updates follow our Facebook event.

In recent decades, the trend to present imperfections as a plus rather than a problem has resonated across a scala of social disciplines and a range of world localities. Designers respond to hi-tech perfection with a love for wonky forms. Psychologists tell us to embrace imperfection in a mediatized age. Artists and musicians toy with electronic glitches and cracks. Philosophers and biologists plea against perfection in genetic engineering.

The Sublime Imperfections research collective (Amsterdam) devotes a round table + performance event to these and analogous discourses & aesthetics of mistakes, cracks, and noise today.

At the round table (18:00-20:00), leading thinkers and practitioners of the imperfect interrogate the contemporary craving for cracks, mistakes, and noise. When & why do artists, writers, filmmakers, and designers hail mistakes? Why do shabby chic and urban-ruin cults so easily lead to elitism or poverty porn? What does repair mean in times of love for the non-polished? And is a politics of imperfection and failure an answer to the Trumputin era?

Speakers: Mieke Bal (Amsterdam) – prizewinning cultural theorist, video artist, ASCA-founder!, and author of ao Thinking in Film (Bloomsbury 2013); Linor Goralik (Tel Aviv/Moscow) – designer, fashion scholar, poet and author of Found Life (Columbia UP 2017); Yuriko Saito (Rhode Island) – professor of philosophy, author of Everyday Aesthetics (Oxford UP 2008); Joanna van der Zanden (Amsterdam) – curator, initiator of ao the Repair Manifesto. Moderators: Patricia Pisters (Amsterdam) – professor of media studies, author of ao The Neuro Image (Stanford UP); Ellen Rutten (Amsterdam) – professor of literature, initiator of the Sublime Imperfections project.

The performance program (20:00-23:00) unites performers/DJs with a predilection for cracks, noise, and trash. DJ Trish Trash (Amsterdam) creates music & autonomous work inspired by vintage magazines, graphical and architectural shapes. Graham Dunning (London) works with array of turntables, contraptions, smashed vinyl, recycled objects. Combined his performances – which recently staged in Berlin, Oxford, London, Madrid – draw on rhythm and repetition, experimentation and improvisation. Glice (Amsterdam) – Melle Kromhout & Ruben Braeken – produces dark noise improvisations fused with post-industrial & post-classical sound structures. Curated by Caleb Kelly (Sydney) – media theorist, curator, author of Cracked Media (MIT).

‘For Bal research is pure marvel, a creative form of thinking where science becomes art’ Metropolis M

‘Windswept and expansive in its bruised intimacy’ Wire Magazine on Graham Dunning

Guests are also welcome at the Imperfections conference of which the event is a part, and which unites 17 imperfection experts and practitioners in cultural and critical analysis, history, literary studies, marketing, design, philosophy, music, art, linguistics, and area studies. The meeting, which brings together specialists from Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the United States, and New Zealand marks the conclusion of the NWO research project Sublime Imperfections. Click here for a program and registration details.

This event is supported by the Netherlands Scientific Organization, the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, and the Amsterdam Center for Globalisation Studies.