Departments
of the Government of Leistavia
Federal
Bureau of Information
The
Bureau of Information was formed as a consequence of collating votes for the Constitution.
Originally a branch of the Research Centre for Multiple Identities, the workload
and expertise developed is such that a stand alone research unit has been created.
The Bureau is available for statistical form and questionnaire writing, collation
of statistical information and creating data summaries for organisations across
the public and private sector.
Other
outputs of the Bureau include Created Identities: hybrid culture and the internet
Convergence 2005 Volume 11 Number 4 p44-59. London, Thousand Oaks and New
Delhi: Sage Publications.
The
bureau is prearing data visualisations for the exhibition Silicon chips are
made of sand at Wanganui UCOL in March 2006.
The
Research Centre for Multiple Identities
The
Research Centre for Multiple Identities is centrally funded by Leistavian ideology
to explore multiplicity in identity. The Centre co-ordinates projects that assists,
identifies and authenticates multiple identities.
Projects
that the Centre co-ordinates fall into four main categories: hybrid identities,
multiple identities, the multiple identities database and authenticating identities.
The Centre is always interested to hear of
proposals for projects.
Hybrid
identities
Hybrid identities can be made of diverse parts, based on contingency
and circumstances as they arise. If the Centre visits your local town or city,
local and online participants are brought together, with everyone profiling themselves
and their other selves. When the collated data is turned into statistics, a hybrid
local-Leistavian personality profile can be generated. Characteristics of the
local community, in terms of default personalities and nominated personalities,
can also be summarised and profiled.
Multiple
identities
The idea that the self is a singular entity is only one concept
of self. Clearly for those who believe in reincarnation, there can be more than
one sense of self. In times of oppression, people will mask an identity in order
to prevent their freedom being restrained - a political activist might obscure
true intentions in order to achieve a greater goal. In former times, people who
were gay often felt they had hide their sexuality, in order to progress in their
job for example. However, this is the 21st century and in many places times have
changed. It is no longer necessary to hide such things.
The
Research Centre for Multiple Identities invites people to celebrate the differing
sense of themselves in positive ways. Bring out the alternate you. Name your other
self. Have two birthdays a year, or more. Be you, and the other you as well. Are
you perhaps tired of the stress of just one personality with all those conflicting
pressures and requirements? Burdened by expectations of your age, gender, sexuality
or ethnicity? The Centre for Multiple Identities is here to help with the load,
by giving you a space to be free, to explore, to just have a good time dreaming
and roaming personal space.
Multiple
identities database
The
Multiple Identities Database gathers information about multiple identities cohabiting
within one. Marcel Duchamp had Rose Selavy; Andy Warhol was aka Drella. In the
South Pacific nation New Zealand Aotearoa, a one person collective of artists
known as et al and and consisting of merit groting, blanche readymade,
p mule, minerva betts and others, recently won a prestigious award and exhibited
at the Venice Biennale. You are invited to
email information about people with multiple personalities especially where
these are named or formally identified by images.
On
account of privacy and related issues, the Centre reserves the right to monitor
submitted information and if there is a complaint about data held in the register,
it may be withdrawn.
Currently
the Centre is in an information gathering phase. Most data located to date falls
into the following broad categories - multiple artist identities, the changing
of immigrant names at cultural borders, the creation of imaginary and fictional
societies, the adoption of other language names by students studying abroad and
psychotic multiple identities. The data will be released when an appropriate context
is located.
Authenticating
identities
A
major activity of the centre is authentication of hybrid and multiple identities
through the issue of birth certificates and ID cards. These can usually only be
issued within the context of a local exhibition occurring at the same time as
internet based participation.