Constant
bio
Constant is a non-profit association for art and media, based and active in Brussels since 1997. Constant works in the fields of open source, free software, cyber-feminism, social interaction and participation, copyleft and copyright alternatives, the conditions of cultural work.
Constant develops radio works, electronic music, database projects.Constant functions as a networked laboratory for a group of artists, designers and researchers. We generate reflection on network culture through the creation of artprojects, networks, and interdisciplinary collaborations. Networks and links between cultural producers shed new light on the conditions of work, and make analysing the transfer of digital information necessary.
Constant mentalities and principles:
1 Laboratory: Constant uses contamination as a method of generating creative processes. Our projects aim to bring about a continuous contagion between researchers, artgroups, public and institutions. In this permanent state of incubation; a period of mutation, transition, of vulnerability and exchange, we think about digital technology, our own positioning, we write about this, archive our work and pass it on. At the same moment we question the language of archiving. The language itself, its code, its grammar, its structure, its use and its social and political implications. If we speak about contamination, we are not talking about an unconscious contagion. We think of social action and intervention, in terms of transmission, genealogy, history.
2 Connectivity: What happens when you link different elements from society? In organising events we take into account all levels of organisation. We think about the catering in a feminist manner. Who prepares that food for you? All productive operations are potential carriers of political and creative meaning. In that sense there is no difference between the artist building an installation, the cook, or the participant to the debate. In our work we try not to hierarchically differentiate between form and contents.
3 Feminism: Constants practice asks fundamental questions from a free software and feminist perspective. 'Feminism' must be understood as a productive, interrogative force. Not only does it concern the biological difference between man and woman, but it raises questions about power relations, sites, situations, routines, contexts and interstices? Questions rising from a feminist approach situate themselves in the deconstruction of social class, of raciality, of each possible commonplace which somehow withdraws from a critical analyses. In contemporary arts asking these questions is important too: Who has access to the resources, to exhibition spaces, to the means of producing critique and discourse? Who is spoken about and why? Constant talks in terms of feminism, but we are a bilingual mixed gender group. Therefore, our 'feminist approach' scrutinises masculinity as well as femininity and investigates what 'gender' means for being an artist or author; an ongoing attempt to deconstruct mythologies.
4 Open licences / open source: Copyleft is not the same as renouncing to copyrights, it only redefines the way those rights are enforced. It is an inversion of the copyright. Because I am the author of a work, I can by means of a contract grant my users the freedoms which they are denied by law. In the world of informatics, the context in which the copyleft movement was born, the reuse of code is of fundamental importance. Programmers write a generic code on which others can create applications of a higher level. Opening a basic code creates an enormous advantage: hackers can dedicate their time to exploring new possibilities. Without this basis each programmer must re-invent the wheel over and over again.
works
Cyberfeminism + Digitales
Cyberfeminism
A meeting point between art, archive practices and thoughts about relationships to technology and about work in a technological world, being creative, domestic or computer work, always on the move, changing.
Digitales
The Digitales project is part of the ADA Belgian network which aims to create an exchange, thought and action network on the subject of women and NTICs. Digitales is organised in collaboration with Constant vzw and The Centre of Research on Equal Opportunities (Het Steunpunt Gelijkekansenbeleid).
Open Source Publishing
This weblog is for designers curious enough to try. We will make an attempt to seriously test out what the possibilities and limitations of Open Source software are in a professional design environment, without expecting to find the same experience as the ones we are used to.
Open Source Video
Open Source Video is a project of Constant, a Brussels based organisation for Arts and Media. This weblog is a collective testsite for producing and distributing open source video. Here we keep traces of experiments with software for sharing and editing video, and report on what we found to be effective hardware, good linux distributions and helpful configurations. Also: tips and hints on where to find manuals, practical info on using software etc. This blog contains posts on annotating, tracing, collectively editing and sharing video online.
Copy.cult & The Original SIgN
At first, the Copy.cult news service was created to support the solidarity campaign against the censorship of the Mouchette's website. It now provides news and pointers towards various aspects of the culture of the copy. We especially would like to relay relevant information about the relationship between censorship and copyright, surveillance and intellectual property. And also hopefully to highlight the initiatives who create alternatives to these coercitive models.
documentation
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Presentation Laurence Rassel (Constant) – Symposium Curating new media art - 2005
[report]
28/07/20082005 - From a quotation to embodied questions, 9 years of practices in the interstices of culture and technology.* This talk will trace \"my\" to \"our\" experiences in the fields of so-called art and new media, inside of a non profit organisation named Constant.
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Contemporary Visual Arts in Flanders - part I
[text]
Marc Ruyters, Eva Wittocx, 2008Among the modern-art crowd, Belgium is known as the country with that 'surrealist' lineage: James Ensor - René Magritte - Marcel Broodthaers. While this is certainly a fine compliment for three artists of far-reaching significance, a great deal has changed in this country, which has been a crossroads of the Roman and Germanic cultures, a key logistic point between Great Britain, Germany and France, and home to the European Community.
Constant
een vereniging voor kunst en media
Constant is a non-profit association, based and active in Brussels since 1997 in the fields of feminism, copyright alternatives and working through networks.
T: +32 (0)2 539 24 67
F: +32 (0)2 539 24 67
E: info@constantvzw.com
W: www.constantvzw.org
1060 Brussel, België
