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SPACINGS (Tate Modern)

By Mute Editor, 19 November 2000

Mute organised afternoon of discussion and screenings to examine the feedback loops between physical and information space.

Featuring:

Pre-fab Man Meets the Invisible CityAre you turning your Edwardian dilapidated dwelling into a pirate media ship? Could you say of wherever you lay your mobile phone 'that's my home'? Do you ever get the feeling your supermarket is watching you? Do you associate public space with franchised cappuccino bars? Have you heard of airlines' new deportation class? Do you aspire to live out of town, in the city centre or in cyburbia?

What do any of these questions have to do with each other?

Technology and culture magazine Mute is organising an afternoon of discussion and screenings to examine the feedback loops between physical and information space. How do the speeds, flows and database logic of information networks impact in urban and national geographies? Which new spaces are opening up and which ones are getting lost as public space gets 'branded to the bone' and the 'digital agora' gives rise to a wave of direct action?

A 20 minute preview of Patrick Keiller's forthcoming C4 series,"Dilapidated Dwelling" on today's housing and planning status-quo will be screened.

Invited speakers are: Ros Diamond - part-time lecturer on the MSC in advanced architectural studies at the Bartlett Graduate School (Space Syntax Department)

Kodwo Eshun - author of 'More brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction' and techno-cultural critic

Patrick Keiller - documentary filmmaker and director of a forthcoming TV series on housing and urban thinking, 'Dilapidated Dwelling', to be screened on C4.

Florian Schneider - film maker, writer and media activist, member of the collective action network No One is Illegal and co-organisor of the Cross the Border campaign

James Stevens - founder of the independent media lab Backspace and co-organiser of the user-constructed, free wireless broadband network consume.net Spacings will be moderated by David Panos - cultural critic and research director of newly formed documentary and social and qualitative research company, Year Zero