REBRANDING ACTS is an investigation into cultural identity in an age of global migration. The project asks the global Wooloo community of 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. Taking the form of an open call, the REBRANDING ACTS project encourages artists to perform and document "rebranding acts" that directly intervenes with the hegemony of their national narrative and presents a radical re-thinking of it. In other words, acts that aims to "rebrand" the national identity in question. The specific context and method of the rebranding act can take any possible form but the act must be documented in video format.

From all the rebranding videos submitted, the REBRANDING ACTS have selected the ten most intelligent, powerful and humorous documentations and presented them as official part of http://tina-b.eu/eng. The Prague Contemporary Art Festival that took place in Prague, Czech Republic from 25th of September to 15 October, 2008. Furthermore, the selected videos are now shown in New York at the exhibition http://www.branding-democracy.org "Ours: Democracy in the Age of Branding" taking place at Parsons The New School for Design, the Sheila C. Johnson Center, New York 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.

In 2006, Wooloo Productions (the artists collective behind WOOLOO.ORG) performed our first rebranding act with outset in the case of contemporary Denmark. We did this exactly one year after the infamous publishing of Muhammad caricatures by the Danish nationwide newspaper Jyllands Posten and we launched the campaign Defending denmark as "an international campaign to rebrand the country of Denmark". The Defending denmark project included 18 months membership of the ultra-right Danish Peoples Party, several video interventions, as well as a worldwide media frenzy with national identity at its center.

Please go to http://www.wooloo.org/defendingdenmark to read more.

While REBRANDING ACTS is predicated on the argument that hegemonic nationalist constructions often exclude identities that don't fit the mold, the project's open call invites anyone to add their voice to the discussion. 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.

DEADLINE for submissions were Sunday, August 31st 2008. Image Credit: Marco Ponce http://www.wooloo.org/marcoponce