Banner Repeater is asking for submissions of works that emanate from artistic practice, as individuals or collectives, as well as other trans-disciplinary working arrangements, for a group exhibition to be held at Banner Repeater in June – August that considers the following:

“When the structure that something takes influences the shape the content takes, and also the ways that people might approach that content and use it, and likewise, the content begins to affect the structure as well” (1), we can begin to understand the binding between humans and technology as a co-evolution.

Of particular interest are new relations that come of issues regarding copyright, patents, trademarks, and the consequences of trade secrets, brought to the fore by digital media.

“Intellectual property rights, at least for patents and copyrights, may be considered rights in ideal objects. Patents can be obtained only for “practical” applications of ideas, but not for more abstract or theoretical ideas.  Philosophical, mathematical or scientific truths cannot be protected under current law on the grounds that commerce and social intercourse would grind to a halt were every new phrase, philosophical truth, and the like, considered the exclusive property of its creator.

But the distinction between creation and discovery is not clear-cut or rigorous.  Nor is it clear why such a distinction, even if clear, is ethically relevant in defining property rights. No one creates matter; they just manipulate and grapple with it according to physical laws. In this sense, no one really creates anything. They merely rearrange matter into new arrangements and patterns. An engineer who invents a new mousetrap has rearranged existing parts to provide a function not previously performed. Others who learn of this new arrangement can now also make an improved mousetrap. Yet the mousetrap merely follows laws of nature. The inventor did not invent the matter out of which the mousetrap is made, nor the facts and laws exploited to make it work.”

For this exhibition Banner Repeater is interested in works that consider how content might be shaped by structural form and vice versa, that appropriate objects, and structures beyond the object, that challenge or critique all, or any of the above ideas, that might address:

the means of production,

and systems of distribution,

legal structures and new issues of copyright,

social media and the production of social relations,

institutional structures,

educational systems,

structures of the gallery, art market, and beyond….
It is worth noting that whilst often these affects are most visible through digital technologies, older technologies may also be of interest here.

Please send your submission to info@bannerrepeater.org with OPEN SUBMISSION in the header by the 31^st May.

Successful submissions will be notified by 5^th June, and must be able to deliver work to Banner Repeater (where appropriate) on 10^th – 12^th June, ready for opening on the 14th June.

The open submission fee is £10 (to cover administration costs)–please via the Banner Repeater site link here.

Selecting panel bios: 

Ben Vickers is a writer, network analyst, curator, technologist and luddite. He makes a living and finds a vocation in understanding how systems of distribution, both human and other, come to affect our personal perception of reality. Vickers is currently Curator of Digital at the Serpentine, co-runs LIMAZULU Project Space, is an active member of EdgeRyders, leads Brighton University’s Professional ‘Reality’ Development Program and facilitates the development of unMonastery, a new kind of social space designed to serve the local communities of towns or small cities throughout Europe in solving key social and infrastructural problems.

Alana Kushnir is a freelance curator and art lawyer based in London. She is completing the MFA Curating program at Goldsmiths and prior to this, was working in Melbourne, Australia at the law firm King & Wood Mallesons, where she specialised in competition and intellectual property law. Her curatorial practice and research explores the intersections of intellectual property law, curating and art practices influenced by internet culture. Recent curated exhibitions include TV Dinners at BUS Projects, Melbourne (2012), Acoustic Mirrors (co-curator) at the Zabludowicz Collection, London (2012), Paraproduction at Boetzelaer|Nispen Gallery, Amsterdam (2012) and Fourth Plinth: Contemporary Monument (co-curator) at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2012-13). She has presented her research in a wide range of contemporary art publications and academic journals, including the Journal of Curatorial Studies, Leonardo Almanac and the self-published exhibition-zine, Paraproduction.

Helen Kaplinsky is a London based independent curator, tracing the confluence of contemporary art and the history of design. She has worked with the Arts Council Collection since 2011, having received a fellowship with the collection whilst studying Curating MFA at Goldsmiths University from 2009-11. Upcoming projects include a residency with Flux Factory (NYC), Muscle Memory and Auto Couture (both London). She lectures in Art and Design at City Literacy Institute. Her current research concerns consumer technologies, the Romantic imagination and post-fordism.

Ami Clarke both facilitates the running of Banner Repeater: reading room and project space, on Platform 1, Hackney Downs train station, opening up an experimental space for others, whilst dually sharing the goal in her practice to explore ideas that come of publishing, distribution, and dissemination: how the performance of language increasingly impacts upon daily life.  BR commissions new art-writing for the imprint: UN-PUBLISH ISSN 2045-8266: a series of critical works published on paper, determined by ideas of shifting time and labour relations the co-evolution of humans and technology, that bear witness to epigenetic affects that may come of these new conditions of time.  She is also a co-founder of the Diagram Research, Use and Generation Group (DRUGG).  Upcoming projects include Data-Pool 3, and Low Animal Spirits.