We are seriuos 
I once had a very nice job at the local art museum here in leipzig (Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst) as a part of the Counter Strike project that SUPERFLEX did there i the beginning of 2003. (go to the home page of Superflex to read more about it).
My job was very easy; play counter strike with those who was visiting (mostly males in their late teens, early twenties) -- and being guide for those that wanted to debate the exhibition (most did not). I did not know counter strike that well before I started to work with the museum and the artists, but I knew that it was illegal a short while in 2002 due to a a-level pupil that shot his co-pupils and teachers in Erfurt in Eastern Germany (just som few miles away from Leipzig) -- as it was clamed that the game was to blame for the kids violate behaviour. It was basically clamed that Counter Strike and games like it was more or less concerned with ideas, or based on ideas that was a bad influence on kids. It was blamed for being idelogical. I guess that one might say that a game is ideological -- for as Ian Bogost of watercoolergames says to the Guardians game blog

"Games represent part of how things work in the world, and there is no way to escape a worldview when one is designing a game"


I guess he has a point, there is a stand to everything, there is no objectivity in game making, one cannot stand outside all societies of man kind and then make a game.

But a more important note that he makes in this interview is that there is a need to see writings on games that "contextualizes games in the broader sweep of human culture.." instead of those who just look at the technical bit of it all. One need critics he clames, game critics that read and see connections between a given game and other human activities they be many things. This is a thought that is interesting espescially since there is only a few years since the first PhD on games.
He could have mentioned the very good game studies - a online magazine, with editors and reviewers from different universities in Europe (mostly).



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the return of reto pulfer 
being in berlin last weekend, seeing some shows that was interesting, like Annika Ström at Atle Gerhardsen and Sean Snyder at Galerie Neu -- I went to the "opening" of Knut Henrik Henriksens part of the evolving group exhibition in berlin mitte called Longing Balloons Are Floating Around the World. It is a baulücke in mitte where the two curators Caroline Eggel & Christiane Rekade have installed a small space for 12 months. On of the eleven artists will open his/hers part of the exhibition once a month. Or have I missunderstood it? I think they are breaking up the exhibition into smaller parts so that some artists will have solo shows there.


The two curators did an offspace show in 2004 called Was ist in meiner Wohnung wenn ich nicht da bin?, I think that is the only show from belin not being in a gallery or an institution that got a critic's pick at artforum.com (you have to registrer to read it).

At the opening was also Reto Pulfer. He used to hang out a lot in berlin some odd two years ago before moving to paris and then new york. And now he's back. Some of his work are to be seen at the artnews.info site and one can download one of his noisy tracks called Glue at Internet Archive.
He turned out to be a fan of Nurse With Wound and we talked about the project they did for artistic interruptions last year in Lofoten.
It was a sort of strange thing, because the local/regional radio, that usually is sort of mainstream was for a time being overtaken by strange sounds and samplings like the ones one can listen to at brainwas radio. A nice project I had to admit in the midle of a mediocre biennale (www.liaf.no), and the rest of the large format or documentary projects that was realised at that time in nordland...

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artforum.com - conflicts of interest 
it is such a relief to read MAN, and I am very glad every time he touches upon the very delicate subject of Artforum.com and their sloppy editorial work.
here is another take on the subject.
I think the reason is that the art world does not have the same look upon conflic of interest that the rest of the publishing world has. We had an incident here in norway as well.
Two magazines, one subject, same writer, almost identical texts. And this happened twice. This without talking about this to any of the editors. It is not the same, but still interesting and on the same line.




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It is a sad day indeed... 
the best nordic blog on contemporary art and art criticism Sarts - in swedish - is closing down. The main player, Rikard Ekholm, is glad to have done this as a project. but as he states in his last post states, he has to concentrate on other projects...

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more about Art in Nordland 
During the project Artistic Interruptions, Art in Nordland has produced 18 new projects, some of them moving into documentary. Several of them is stirring quite some debates either internaly in the municipality where they are done others by the artists themself
(one project is defined as a failure by the artist and one artist closed her project). The one most debated is the project by the Norse duo Charlotte Thiis Evensen and Lisa Karlsson and their project in Nyksund. The unusual situation at hand is that the producer of the documentary film (art in nordland) would like the film stopped from being shown.

One can follow the debate on the norwegian version of th website only.







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