Through the web based artistic platform of Wooloo.org, Wooloo Productions launched an open call for international artists to submit videos on the theme of 'Rebranding Acts' and to participate in the exhibition taking place in Prague, thus opening the dialogue to a wide audience and acting as a democratic messenger in the global art world.

REBRANDING ACTS is an investigation into cultural identity in an age of global migration. The project asks artists to look closely at the ongoing production of "nationality" in their home countries and to examine the ways in which this public narrative includes certain individuals and groups - while excluding others.

The REBRANDING ACTS project encouraged artists to perform and document “rebranding acts” that directly intervene with the hegemony of this excluding narrative and presents a radical re-thinking of it. In other words, acts that aims to “rebrand” the national identity in question.

From all the rebranding videos submitted, the REBRANDING ACTS project has selected the most intelligent, powerful and humorous documentations and will present them as official part of TINA B. - The Prague Contemporary Art Festival taking place in Prague, Czech Republic from 25th of September to 15 October, 2008.

Furthermore, the selected videos will also travel to New York to be shown in the exhibition Ours: Democracy in the Age of Branding taking place at the New School - Vera List Center for Art and Politics from October 15th, 2008 to January 30th, 2009.

REBRANDING ACTS explore questions of cultural identity in a time where national belonging is becoming an increasingly discussed topic in political debates throughout the world. Facing the challenges of an increasingly globalized economy, combined with internal demographic questions such as the issue of aging populations, and a growing number of immigrants and refugees, a large number of nation states are currently undergoing vast transformations. Often, these transformations include a strong rise in new forms of xenophobia, fueled by the media and capitalized upon by populist political parties.

Wooloo Productions will personally be traveling to Prague to intervene live with the Czech public as part of the TINA B. Contemporary Art Festival. Simultaneously, the selected REBRANDING ACTS videos will be presented throughout the festival at the prominent Italian Cultural Institute located in Prague’s famous Malá Strana. Through these individual, transnational responses to the widespread nationalistic upheaval taking place throughout the world, RERBANDING ACTS aim to offer alternative ways of thinking about who we are and how we can live together today.

Websites

http://www.wooloo.org/rebranding/