Get connected to the Studio XX

GET CONNECTED TO THE STUDIO XX NETWORK

Everybody is welcome at all events.

THURSDAY, May 20

Noon to 5pm :: XX + XTLab
Explore the potential of the revolutionary operating system redhat fedora at XX’s new Linux project lab. *free

7pm :: Studio XX presents the world premiere of: “Computers Are A Girl’s Best Friend”
At Local 7154 St-Urbain (intersection Jean-Talon).
$3 members/ $5 non-members

Computers Are A Girl’s Best Friend is an exploration of the contradictions that exist between the hyperbolic rhetoric of the computer industry and the dreadfully real affects on the lives of women. This piece will counter the sexiness of the computer industry by disrobing the truth of the exportation of toxic electronic waste to Asia, the trafficking of women online, the globalization of maternal love, telesexuality, Real Dolls and other extraordinary affects of the computer revolution on the female subject.

Appropriating De Beers Diamond Company’s marketing strategy of producing the 1953 musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and the theme song Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend, Computers Are A Girl’s Best Friend transposes the lyrics and dance routine to the new hit. The performance will feature ribald musical theatre interspersed with monologues, audio of interviews with cyber theorists Anne Balsamo and Paulina Borsook, and video montages.

FRIDAY, May 21
9:30 – 5:00pm :: PRABatelier: Interactive Seminar TechnoMythologius
at StudioXX, 338 Terrasse St-Denis

In Praba Pilar’s words; “We live in an era inundated by TechnoMythologia. The political right was promoting the late 90s, neo-liberal global capitalistic order brought on by the “Information Revolution”. The progressive left, ironically, has spouted the same nonsense, speaking of a true democratic capitalism and the new “postmodern” economy. I have been working the last four years on bringing to the fore these mythologies of emergent digital technologies, IT, biotech and surveillance tech, while insisting on a local perspective to the high tech rhetoric. I have attempted to instigate a critical dialogue from a Latina perspective about the impact that the systems of power, mode of production and the selling of high-technology have on marginalised cultures as well as the overarching socioeconomic, cultural and environmental global consequences of these technologies and their myths.

In this experimental workshop, I will examine the centralisation of surveillance powers via the proliferation of computer networks, from the stance that ‘you don’t have to be connected to be affected’. This means that even though poor people of colour don’t have access to emerging technologies they are deply affected in ways which go beyond the myth of their buying power and complicity, as military surveillance tech is utilised by urban police with computers and specialised software to predict crime and corral inner city folk; it is also passed down to INS and border control to criminalise and militarise borders, and to develop panoptic systems of control in prisons as well as public spaces. This exploration will question the basic premise of the debate around issues of surveillance being about middle class issues of privacy to one about civil rights. The upper and middle classes tend to prefer ‘security’ and convenience over ‘privacy’ even though there is a lot of lip-service and fear-manufacturing around to the so-called ‘loss of privacy’. The people that feel the force of the vision machine are the immigrants, urban folk of colour, the poor; the people who are generally policed (in today’s political climate it is those of Arab descent, Muslim affiliation and activists).

Questions such as the following will be raised: What gets these diametrically opposed groups to be speaking the same rhetoric? What drives techno visions of radical change, access and equality for all? Why is it that we can’t critique technologies of control without being labeled a Luddite? Does an unquestioned faith in technological change remain? Or is it deeper that that?”

Participants will be invited to work collectively to strategise on counteracts of resistance.

Interactive seminar TechnoMythologius offered by MONICA PRABA PILAR at Studio XX, registration required: (514) 845-0289
20$ members/ 30$ non-members

SATURDAY, May 22
8pm on CABARET TECHNO at Quartier Éphémère

Come and experience performances by: Nathalie Derôme, Alexis O’Hara, kondition pluriel, Lesbians on Ecstasy «accoustique», Julie Méalin, Monica Praba Pilar, WWKA, Zazalie Z Groove to the mood created by DJ Cyan and Lynne T, accompanied by VJ’s bee woo and Michelle Kasprzak.

Quartier Éphémère, 745 rue Ottawa, (514) 392-1554, www.quartierephemere.org.
$12 in advance/ $15 at the door.