Intersections 2009

KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Friday, March 20, 2009 at 7pm
Student Campus Centre, Room SCC 115
Ryerson University
55 Gould Street

Meltdown Media : Communication in the Current Capitalist Crisis
Nick Dyer Witheford

Abstract: Media are a crucial component of the present crisis of global capital. This talk seeks to open a discussion of the communicative dimensions of the emergence, current state and future unfolding of this crisis.

Nick Dyer-Witheford is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at the University of Western Ontario. He is author of Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism (1999); with Stephen Kline and Greig de Peuter, of Digital Play: Markets, Technology & Culture (2003); and, with Greig de Peuter, of Games of Empire: Global Capitalism & Videogames (2009, forthcoming).

CREATIVE KEYNOTE PRESENTATION
Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 7pm
Student Campus Centre, Room SCC 115
Ryerson University
55 Gould Street

Transmission Machine
Istvan Kantor aka Monty Cantsin

Istvan Kantor's work has been described as intellectually rebellious, anti-authoritarian, as well as technically innovative and highly experimental. His action based media art explores the body and technology. Also known as Monty Cantsin Amen!, he has recently infiltrated Berlin's underground art and music scene, performing his karaoke style revolutionary-songs at such highly rated secret gardens as the KingKongKlub, Eschschloraque and Karmanoia. In october/2008 Kantor/Cantsin was seen waving a red flag in the streets in Ottawa, Toronto, and Calgary. He also appeared as special guest at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema in Montreal and at the 25th anniversary of the Documentary Film and Video Festival in Kassel, Germany.

Kantor studied medical science in Budapest. He lived in Paris, Portland, New York, London, Berlin and presently is a resident of Toronto where his three children, Jericho, Babylon and Nineveh were born in the 90's. In collaboration with legendary correspondence artist David Zack, Kantor launched the Monty Cantsin open-pop-star project in Portland, Oregon in 1978. He initiated the international operations of Neoism in 1979 in Montreal. In the mid 80s he relocated to New York, re-emerging as "self-appointed leader of the people of the Lower East Side".

He has been arrested and jailed many times. He is also a recipient of the Governor General’s Award of Canada for Visual and Media Arts (2004).

Kantor’s work at Intersections 2009 will comment on the power and authority in technological society, the dominating control of broadcast technology as a driving force of gentrification and will explore his long-term initiative to redefine the body as a transmission machine.