Exhibition opening @ inIVA, Tuesday 12 November, 6pm - 8pm

[Natasha Anderson]

Institute of International Visual Arts (inIVA)

msdm: mobile strategies of display and mediation 

exhibition:	Outsourcing
dates:		13 November - 06 December 2002
venue:		TheSpace at inIVA 6-8 Standard Place, Rivington Street, London EC2
open:		Wednesday - Friday, 12noon - 6pm
preview:		Tuesday 12 November, 6pm - 8pm

msdm (mobile strategies of display and mediation) is a collective laboratory that explores the mobility, distribution and presentation of artworks. 

Initiated in 1998 by artist Paula Roush, msdm attempts to negotiate the socio-political structures that intersect with the creative industries. msdm 
operates across many different platforms, engaging elements of contemporary culture including web streaming, brand identity, computer gaming, activism, 
statistics and software design.

Outsourcing - when a corporation subcontracts labour that is often cheap and located in low-cost (i.e. non-western) economic zones - has been a central 
objection of the anti-globalisation movement for some time. msdm's new work Outsourcing interrogates the relationships between art, labour and productive 
systems by exploring the different facets of branding, commercial arts funding and anti-corporate activism. Outsourcing questions the outmoded categories 
of the artist, curator, critic and funder and proposes that the entire chain of cultural production is an interlocking network. 
Additionally, the title Outsourcing makes reference to the way in which the exhibition's contents are outsourced from the geographical and socio-
political context of inIVA.  

Outsourcing features different components that have been outsourced to other artists, among them a 'bot' software device, Coybott, that robotically 
searches the internet for information and a publication about labour, social thought and aesthetic production. The core of the exhibition will contain 
elements relating to rooms from different periods in the Geffrye Museum in Shoreditch. The project will also include parallel activities, such as a film 
programme curated by Anthony Iles and a collection of audio-visual narratives on work and labour presented by El Sueno Colectivo. On Friday 22 November 
2002, 2pm at TheSpace at inIVA, Zeigam Azizov (artist/critic) will be in conversation with Paula Roush on the 'Domestication of Visual Pleasure'. This will 
be followed by a guided walk to the Geffrye Museum. (Refreshments will be provided.)

Outsourcing is produced in collaboration with sound artist and media activist Sasha Costanza-Chock and Octavi Comeron, an artist and publisher. 
Outsourcing addresses the relationship between 'hardware' (as the physical production of goods displayed in the exhibition space) and 'software' (as the 
production of meaning and codes via both the 'producer' and the audience).

Outsourcing is the final project for inIVA's Soft Season, a series of events, collaborations and interventions that explores the creative collision 
between artist and curator.

www.iniva.org