Prof. Treske will first talk about his book Video Theory. The publisher’s review details the significance of the work, noting that “video is a part of everyday life, comparable to driving a car or taking a shower. It is nearly omnipresent, available on demand.” Because cameras all around us are constantly creating video and ‘uploading, sharing, linking and relating,’ what the reviewer calls ‘an ocean of video’ has come to cover our planet. Although this ocean might look like ‘bluish noise and dust” from far away, it may in fact “embed beautiful and fascinating living scapes of moving images: objects constantly changing, rearranging, assembling, evolving, collapsing but never disappearing—a real cinema.’ In the book, the author ‘describes and theorizes these objects formerly named video, their forms, behaviours and properties.’

Then we will discuss the Video Vortex 12 conference: Video Vortex, an artistic network concerned with the aesthetics and politics of online video, will gather again in Malta for a conference in late September 2019 (http://vv12.org). In this edition, we are in particularly focused on bringing new research, theory and critiques of online video – in addition to questions around its integration with social media – to Malta. If you are a graduate student or researcher/critic engaged in the theoretical challenges of contemporary (moving) image cultures, then please do join us for the conference.

Given its ease of access and use, video has historically been aligned with media activism and collaborative work. Now, however, with video’s prevalence across social media and the web, its dominance of the internet of things, the role of the camera in both the maintenance and breaking down of networks – in addition to the increasing capacity of digital video to simulate that which has not occurred –we require novel theories and research. That is to say, that rapidly changing technological formats underscore the urgent need to engage with practices of archiving and curation, modes of collaboration and political mobilisation, as well as fresh comprehensions of the subject-spectator, actors and networks constituted by contemporary video and digital cultures.