public work/s: QR ACTIVATIONS
QR ACTIVATIONS are a series of participatory, SLOW MOTION interventions in public spaces employing the QR code in 4d network design. Other projects include: WE DO ~SURFING THE APOCALYPSE.
Two to five performers walk in slow-motion carrying a fragile sculptural relic suspended by a sling. Performers hold smart phones in one hand displaying an original QR CODE designed to suggest film content and invite participants to enter a QR PORTAL.
The portal opens to a string of QR CODES, embedded between curated clips of our current apocalyptic narrative. QR ACTIVATIONS offer participants access to another parallel narrative - content produced by artists as well as other active, socially-engaged communities concerned with material change to environment and the social body.
HOW IT WORKS
Once a public/participant activates a QR Code (through a performer’s smart phone), a film begins. Each time a new QR CODE appears in the film, one participant must COLLABORATE with another participant to ACTIVATE a new project about global, social-creative engagement. This becomes an infinite network of socially positive actions. QR CODE FILMS reveal a world-wide network of communities curating socially and environmentally sustainable space.
QR ACTIVATION / WALL STREET Wall Street, New York, NY, Wed. Nov. 3rd, 2022
ICAI Performers: Daniel Subkoff (pictured), John Halpern, Margret Wibmer, Emily M. Harris, James Merewether, Fanny Perez, Ailin Zhou; Videography: Andy French, John Halpern, James Merewether.
QR ACTIVATIONS: HOW TO
If you’re curious about our public works, QR ACTIVATION PROJECT, or what people see when they connect with the QR code on our smart phones, please watch this video by filmmaker/artist John Halpern. The video incorporates multi-tiered aspects: contemporary news reels, QR logos/codes, community creation, recent public interactions, and local/global creative solutions that often go under the radar in our awareness of the climate crisis. Let’s empower each other, strengthen the collective, and discover the future together.
Oculus & WALL STREET
QR ACTIVATION REHEARSAL
Margret Wibmer and Emily Harris scout locations in the Oculus and rehearse for Wednesday’s performance intervention.
Video: John Halpern.
As we cautiously enter in-person (Post-Covid-lockdown) we recognize the power of in-person contact and live events. Scheduling for our Tuning Fork episodes have switched to 1 x/month and we began designing and implementing public interactive interventions by invitation, by demand, and independently. Join us tomorrow, Wed. Nov. 2nd.
If you would like to participate or contribute to the development of a future QR ACTIVATION, Send an email to: instituteforculturalactivism@gmail.com
ARIA DI CAPRI, QR ACTIVATION: VILLA LYSIS
Sept. 1 - Nov. 1, 2022
Aria di Capri, A walking intervention through Capri’s history, cultural roots, and nature. The public are invited to slow down, activate a QR Portal and contemplate our collective potential for change. Capri:Paesaggi (1922-2022). Artist/Performers: John Halpern, Emily Harris, Margret Wibmer; Invitation and support from Polis 3.0; Support from Federal Ministry Republic of Austria.
John Halpern, on the steps of the Villa Lysis, describes with students from Axel Munthe.
Photo: Daria
QR ACTIVATION: GOTTENBERG, SWEDEN
Sept. 15-17, 2022
John Halpern introducing passersby to LIVE ACTION 17 QR CODE FILM. Photo:
Film edited with assistance from Ailin Zhao.
WE DO: SURFING THE APOCALYPSE
FRIDAY, JULY 22, 2022 8:30PM
MULTI-MEDIA ENVIRONMENT AND SINGING RITUAL.
UPSTATE ART WEEKEND
ROSEKILL ART FARM
155 BINEWATER RD., KINGSTON, NY WWW.ROSEKILL.COM
QR ACTIVATION / CAPRI ISLAND
Studio Trisorio, Capri Island, Italy, July, 2022
ICAI Performers: Margret Wibmer (with wheelbarrow and lemon tree), Emily M. Harris; Videography: John Halpern.
Thanks to Polis 3.0, Studio Trisorio, Museo Madre, the Municipality and Community of Capri.
The QR ACTIVATION’S SLOW-MOTION format evokes a contrasting, contemplative, sensitizing atmosphere, enabling onlookers and participants a thoughtful and considerate regard for actions in the everyday world. QR CODE FILMS enable tactile and socially conducive sensations for interaction, cooperation, synergy and effective relationship with others and the environment.
PRESS: Yacht Capri Magazine
EXHIBITION: Villa Lysis, Capri, Italy, September - November, 2022
RECENT QR ACTIVATIONS: LIVE ACTION 17, GOTTENBERG, SWEDEN;
new consume & the qr code
Through the application of an art practice called NEW CONSUME (©️ john halpern, 1991, Switzerland), the conventional commodity system QR symbol is assigned a new (aesthetic) value and function. As such, it becomes a POP ART Mandala evoking an entirely other universe or space in contrast to its original marketplace purpose. Its new (New Consume) value lies in its capacity to engage users in a healing role or empowerment, in its relationship to material consumption and socially determined algorithmic A.I. (ART IMPACT) and force.
In the New Consume Redesign process, existing (consumer) products and systems become the basic material for interactive / culturally active transformed (ART IMPACT/A.I.) products, systems and events. Here, the algorithm considers the “user” not as a commodity or consumer but as a person with potential Entity Impact.
Since the existing consumer marketplace depends on the false value of individuals as consumers, fabricating desire to consume; the results separate individuals in society; produce (destructive) competitive identities and communities; isolation (manufactured anxieties) of individuals in economy; and the development of consumers as products (through algorithms). In sum, the (opportunistic) adversarial social dynamics expressed in racial and political spaces, today, seem inevitable.
So, our high speed industrial societies and their exploitation of the natural environment, together with the separation and disintegration of community, the disastrous apocalyptic conditions and social crises today, appear, by design, intentional.
In the New Consume Perspective (N.C.P.) the underpinnings of these systems, with its (destructive) industrialization, (opportunistic) social polarization, and commodification (isolation) of the (diminished) individual, and the (exploitive) depletion of the natural environment, appear as subversive.
Through a creative point of view and an art historic context, the vortex of the potential demise of humanity and the advancement of virtual/digital and industrial technology provide infinite opportunities to reframe the roles of the individual and synergy of community to activate a New Consume culture, through Cultural (intervention/s) Activism/ Art Economy.
Hence, the New Consume method of assigning new meaning/value to existing products and systems and launching them in a new (aesthetic/ “disruptive”) context is a corrective (and humorous) strategy.
QR CODE
Design: Emily M. Harris, Costumes: Margret Wibmer, Concept: John Halpern
“I want to expand the idea that our work is not subversive. The status quo consumer marketing etc. is subversive, obviously socially detrimental and environmentally destructive.”
~ John Halpern
ARIA DI CAPRI / FRESH AIR
A QR Activation Event occurring on Capri Island, Italy, in the Mediterranean Ocean, Summer 2022. This is a nomadic event, traveling from country to country. A community of specially costumed performance artists walk slowly in procession through the town, displaying a logo comprised of a QR CODE and a Lemon insignia. The public engage by snapping photos and activating the QR Logo MediaStream.
By activating the QR Stream the public become part of an expanding virtual network. They are exposed to a curated video film of evocative scenes alternating between the harsh, apocalyptic realities of today and cultural activist, utopian art performances and worldwide, socio-ecologic generative projects.
The Slow-Nature aspect of the public performance implies another speed or time/space reality within which we can deliberately care for every step, care for every breath and collectively care for the interconnection with each other and all things.
The audience/social engagement element of the activity references both the virtual algorithmic and ecologic impact any community can intentionally have and the longterm consequences of living un/consciously as “consumers.” In other words, “Consumers are the Producers of the Future.”
Capri Island has historically occupied the role of a refuge for creatives, cultural and political shape-shifters and visionaries (Edwin Cerio, Axel Munthe, Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach; sites: Villa Fersen/Villa Lysis, commissioned by Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, a French baron, as an escape for he and his lover. It was a gathering place for artists, intellectuals, poets and writers. Villa Orlandi, a retreat for artists: Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Jannis Kounellis, Cy Twombly, and others.
The action is created by the collaborative, Institute for Cultural Activism International, a US non-profit.
Clips of international artists' works included: Gwen Charles, John Halpern, Emily Harris, Laetitia Hohenberg, Margret Wibmer, Zosia Zoltkowski.
A Feature Film was created for the site-specific installation at Villa Lysis, Capri, Italy, September, 2022