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Farewell Alexei

Our main focus of recent months has been fixed on plight of beloved droog and long term collaborator Alexei Blinov. His death just last week of organ failure followed six months of struggle with pancreas and liver cancer, chemotherapy and health services.

A fabulous circle of friends enveloped him with love and support throughout, not least in respect of his creative drive and fierce intellect, but for the huge sense of fun and selflessness he encouraged in all who knew him. A very special friend indeed. A public Transition Celebration is planned for Sunday 15th December at one of Alexei’s favourite bars, Strongroom in Shoreditch London 3-10pm, please come early and celebrate his life and times.. together! A sensational gathering of friends and family shared in the unique celebration of his life and times. It centred around this wonderfully apt and beautifully crafted plasma capsule which scanned and smoothed Alexei’s passing on and up to next phase of further exploration and infinite dreaming.  See the growing collection of Alexei images and video clips in this shared album.

Alexei Blinov (10 July 1964 – 26 November 2019) was a London-based electronic engineer and new media artist working out of Raylab in Haggerston. As founder of experimental new media organisation “Raylab” he has collaborated with a number of creative artists including Jamie Reid.

He was trained as a doctor before moving to the UK. In the early 1990s he specialised in large scale high quality laser projections. Since the late 1990s he has produced a wide variety of interactive audio-visual installations. Over the past few years, he has been the creative force behind many interactive audio-visual art projects in the UK.

Between 1993 and 1996 he worked extensively in the Netherlands, creating laser projections for scientific events, music and arts festivals and for dance companies. Since 1997 he has worked mainly in the UK creating interactive audio-visual installations at a number of important art galleries including the ICA, London and the Barbican Art Centre, London. Collaborations include Ciron Edwards.

From 2006-2016 he led the technical development for feature film Dau – life and times of physicist Lev Landau, on set in the Ukrainian border city Kharkov where he revisited many period experiments and engineered his own to feature in the film. The movie is one of Russia’s largest and most controversial cinematic projects to date.

He engaged with new media projects based on wireless networking such as WiFi, and was a well known and respected I/O specialist with a passion for high voltage and radio frequency experimentation. Blinov researched electro stimulation of neural feedback and blockchain resourcing.

He has exhibited a selection of these HT experiments including the ‘Hairpin Circuit’ at Moscow University. A set of spectacular arctic ICE core holographic images were recently exhibited in St Petersburg.

Alongside Ilze Black and Martin Howse, he was a member of TAKE2030, a brave new media society that operated in parallel net media scheme. The London based collective produced public art projects, shifting social network missions into hypermedia playing fields. Past projects include RichAir2030, UK, EU (2003-2004) and Lets do Lunch, London (2005). Blinov had deep ties with the Open Wireless Network community between Moscow, London and Berlin, collaborating with Jamie Reid, Empress Stah, Shu Lea Cheang, Nancy Mauro-Flude and many others.

He died on 26 November 2019 following complications from pancreatic cancer.

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First WG1 EFAP meeting

Working Group 1 met at Tranzit for the first meeting to discuss contexts. The expansion of research across a civil society and the proliferation of practice-based research across academic landscapes have brought about new stakeholder alliances, modes of research, and applications. These are the contexts from which many Advanced Practices emerge. However, many of these initiatives are idiosyncratic (e.g., ad-hoc funding initiatives and/or efforts to think ‘outside the box’); others are deeply embedded in institutions whose cultural roles are evolving (e.g., archives’ efforts to leverage collections in response to shifts in popular interest or intellectual property potentials).

WG1 will survey these shifting contexts in order to ‘map’ currently emerging resources and adjacencies. Its goal is to develop a provisional set of typologies that are:

  1. descriptive not prescriptive,
  2. overlapping and non-exclusive, and
  3. responsive to the needs of different actors/entrants.

These typologies will not serve, even informally, as certification process or ‘registry’ of Advanced Practices; and while WG1’s mandate is to conduct diligent broad-based research, these typologies, by definition, cannot be exhaustive.

Possible typologies might include: areas of interest (e.g., oceans, logistics, national security), practical methods (e.g., rules/guidelines for collaboration), participant needs (e.g., individual or institutional aspiration), and/or formats/techniques of dissemination.

WG1 objective: ‘Map’ emerging resources and adjacencies in order to develop typologies for understanding Advanced Practices.

WG1-specific activities: Identify a wide range visual/textual models for mapping findings; develop flexible/extensible system for annotating typologies and other useful annotations and indexing techniques.

WG1-specific tasks: (1) Develop a shared, rich-media user-writable resource (e.g., a wiki) to maintain provisional typologies linked to examples and supporting resources; (2) identify relevant typologies; and (3) populate and annotate the mapping platform.
WG1 milestones: (1) Setup of online working environments, and (2) publishing a dynamic map of Advanced Practices.

WG1-specific deliverables: Visual maps of annotated typologies of Advanced Practices

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A State of Limbo

A State of Limbo explores the concept of identity in the Mediterranean at this time of migratory crisis. A multidisciplinary exhibition, large-scale paintings and installations are presented by artist James Micallef Grimaud a.k.a TWITCH. Curated by Rachel Formosa, the exhibition brings forward a visual narrative which examines the socio-political context of an unprecedented crisis in Europe. Featuring elements of street art, the exhibit illustrates the Mediterranean Sea as a paradoxical place, and how populations flock to it in search of freedom. Whilst some do so for pleasure, others seek refuge even though they may not reach their destination. As part of its programme, the exhibition will host hardcore punk band Double Standard, in the Theater of Spazju Kreattiv on Friday the 6th of December.

Curated by Rachel Formosa, a State of Limbo presents a multi-disciplinary exhibition of large-scale paintings and installations by James Micallef Grimaud a.k.a TWITCH, which explore the concept of identity in the Mediterranean at this time of migratory crisis.

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FRAGMENTA – Art and Life in Public Space 2013 – 2018

FRAGMENTA book launch “FRAGMENTA – Art and Life in Public Space 2013 – 2018”. You get to see the overview of all events, a mind-blowing selection of Maltese headlines (we wished the headlines extended to 2019 at this point) and celebrate art and life. You can buy copies of the book if you missed the indiegogo campaign. Or collect your preordered ones.

SUNDAY Dec 8th, 5 – 10pm at MAORI, Valletta.

With FRAGMENTA Artists: Jon Banthorpe, Gina Levante, Adrian Abela, Kris Van Dessel, Goele de Bruyn, Aksel Høgenhaug, Ritty Tacsum, Samir Ramdani, Jagna Ciuchta, Bettina Hutschek, Aiden Celeste, Stefan Nestoroski, Alexandra Pace, Hassan Khan, Teresa Sciberras, Roxanne Gatt, Erik Gong, Sandra Zaffarese, Aaron Bezzina, Christof Zwiener, Sonya Schönberger, Charlie Cauchi, Erik Smith, Darrin Zammit-Lupi, Karen Irmer, Anna Block, Sarah Maria Scicluna, Ryan Falzon, Sharon Kivland, Pippin Barr, Carl Gent, David Pisani, Karine Rougier, Kay Turner, Mario Asef

Designed by Jon Banthorpe, printed by LONGO.

The event is free of charge and open to all.
Come any time between 5pm and 10pm. Bring your protest posters.

TIME: Sunday, December 8th, 5pm – 10pm

Location: MAORI. Triq il-lanca, VLT 1820 Valletta

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boattr.eu @AIS conference

Adnan presented boattr.eu – Awareness raising regarding the Central Mediterranean Migration crisis during the AIS conference.

In 2019, the  theme of the Association of Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS) annual conference will be Interdisciplinarity in Global Contexts. Since a defining feature of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity is not to abstract or isolate problems but rather to approach them in their real-world contexts, this conference theme asks participants to consider the global and local contexts of interdisciplinary education and research. Obviously, contexts differ in scale and can be defined at microscopic or macroscopic levels: chemical properties are influenced by molecular configurations, for example, organic functions by bodily states, individuals by their societal environments, public health by geographical and climatic conditions, and cities by their world-wide connections. Adding to this complexity are various dynamic interactions across these dimensions, further making an interdisciplinary perspective necessary.

This paper presents the envisaged interdisciplinary boattr.eu research project. boattr.eu is planned as a European research project currently initiated by the Migration Research Cluster of the University of Malta. ‘boattr.eu’ (b.eu) stands for boat migrants, forced migrants, and the aims of the boattr.eu project is to stimulate discussion and offer counter-narratives surrounding the current forced migration situation in Europe, through the use of novel immersive experience (IX) technologies which provide a complete sensory experience for participants. To achieve this aim, four case studies on particular events that have triggered different reactions to the migration crisis in the dominant public discourse of four European countries, namely Malta (Solidarity), Italy (Containment), Greece (Criminalisation), and Spain (Militarisation), are planned to be used as a basis for developing the relevant sensory experiences.

As long as there is no option of safe passage to Europe, people will continue risking their lives, forced to take what is now the host of some of the the world’s most dangerous migration routes, the Mediterranean Sea. [Fargues Philippe, “Four Decades of Cross-Mediterranean Undocumented Migration to Europe” (International Organization for Migration, 2017)] Setting off in flimsy rubber boats, many soon find themselves heading for rocks or sand banks that can readily capsize or sink a dinghy. Others are abandoned by smugglers who drop them at beaches that are inaccessible via land. The majority of people are wearing fake life jackets, giving them a false sense of safety. [Hannah Al-Othman, “Tricked into death: 150,000 migrants’ life jackets – many of which are useless fakes- lie piled on the coast of Lesbos in a grim memorial to those who die crossing the Mediterranean” (The Daily Mail, 2017)]

The boattr.eu research project envisages using the expertise from the Immersive Lab project in order to allow researchers to create immersive experiences around the central Mediterranean migration crisis. Sound and image constantly surround us, their presence is ubiquitous therefore we are all part of an immersion, whether or not we are aware of it. Immersive experiences introduce audiences to digital journeys where they are transported through the content of, for example, a science project, an architecture simulation, a documentary, an art installation or a performance.

Goldsmiths College also hosts the Forensic Architecture agency and the Forensic Oceanography project, which recently published a report on the central Mediterranean migration crisis entitled Mare Clausum [Mare Clausum, a report by Forensic Oceanography (Charles Heller and Lorenzo Pezzani), affiliated to the Forensic Architecture agency, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2018] which offers the boattr.eu research project a conceptual awareness raising method for the unfolding migration crisis at the borders to Malta.

The mission of the University of Malta Cluster for Migration is to offer a dialogical space in which researchers from different academic disciplines can work towards understanding all the evolving aspects of international migration, including that of belonging across generations. The long-term goal is to thereby contribute to an equitable, more sustainable and more inclusive society that brings benefits to migrants and their families, communities of origin, destination and transit, as well as their sending and receiving countries. Today the migration crisis renders the Mediterranean an opaque space, removed from the public eye, where the key founding values of the European Union are put under strain, making the Migration Cluster initiative all the more necessary. The cluster can help to shed light and raise awareness among stakeholders, policy makers, and the general public about the unfolding crisis at the common maritime borders of the Member States.

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EMM’s Annual General Meeting for 2019

During EMM‘s annual general meeting Adnan joined the board.

It’s been more than four years since Electronic Music Malta held its first ever meeting at Spazju Kreattiv. It was a meeting during which this, then new, organization set its primary goals and objectives with the aim of providing a different type of contribution to the electronic music community in Malta.

Following its successful application to become a recognized Voluntary Organisation, EMM established its first group of volunteers who, as a committee, charted its initial path and activities. According to EMM’s statute, this committee was renewed in 2017, and again, this saw us organize more events most of all our yearly conference, Circuits, which also formed part of the Valletta 2018 programme of activities. Circuits continued to be held year after year with 2019 being its fourth edition in a row!

What is Changing?

EMM’s work has received support from various private and public entities in Malta. Testimony to this is the EMM’s upcoming event which will see a world renowned theremin player coming to Malta to perform, thanks to support received from the Goethe Institute (through the German-Maltese Circle) and Heritage Malta who will be providing us with a magnificent venue! Also our forthcoming documentary will see its’ very film-maker participate in the event by holding a brief talk prior to the screening… and this thanks to the University of Malta. And there is more in store!

We have upcoming projects and collaborations with the University of South Africa (UNISA), the University of Malta, Black Box Pro, support from the Malta Arts Fund, the Malta International Arts Festival and, of course, Spazju Kreattiv!

EMM will no longer merely organize events but will commence training programmes, networking sessions, commission projects, exhibitions, performances and, yes, build its first synthesizer module!

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Use from Below

Social media is not very social. It instigates a human inclination towards taking fast, often a priori positions, which enflames an already polarized society. The resurgence of ideologies does not come for free either, as we click and share more when we are steered to take certain angry stands. But there is no beaten track to turn anger into change in the society we live in today, where engagement beyond a local scale comes at the price of surveillance and data sharing . What we lack is a constructive, free platform to challenge the corporate sector’s media industry and address pressing political concerns.

Use from below is a double solo show of artists Ahmet Öğüt and Adelita Husni-Bey and originates from their commitment to make art a platform for socio-political engagement. Both their practices express the need for a structural change and question our life in a world where capitalism seems the only viable option. The title appropriates Professor Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s concept of “ab-use” theorized in the book An Aesthetic Education in the Era of Globalization (2012), in which she subverts the cliché that a colonized culture like India should break free from the legacy of the European Enlightenment. It should, instead, use it from a different perspective.

Professor Spivak also proposes to overcome inflated dichotomies such as modernity-tradition and colonial-postcolonial, applied to all institutional circumstances but yet are nothing more than an exercise in abstraction. This methodology resonates in Ahmet Öğüt and Adelita Husni-Bey’s deep engagement with reality. The phrase itself, Use from below, suggests a shift and a need for a shared sense of agency, because it sounds like an instruction and prompts action. In a context where systemic forces such as globalization, automation and climate change threaten our ability to find meaning or even carry on, while the algorithms of the attention economy swallow up our energies, Use from below encourages us to hold to our power, and take action.

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EFAP Kick-Off meeting

EFAP, the European Forum for Advanced Practices, will be launched in a kick-off meeting in Madrid from October 10-13, 2019. The events will take place in CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo. The program on Thursday and Friday from 1800-2200 is open for the public. Participation in the working group sessions requires prior registration.

PROGRAM

THURSDAY, 10.10.2019

Public program
18:00: Welcome by Manuel Segade, Director of CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo
18:15: Presentation by Irit Rogoff.
18:45: Lecture by Maria Hlavajova
20:15: Conversation: Andrea Phillips & Jesús Carrillo
21:15: Conversation: Sybille Peters & Victoria Pérez Royo
22:00: El Drama de una realidad Sur Performing lecture by Javiera de la Fuente

FRIDAY 11.10.2019

12:00 – 18:00
Core group meeting

Conference/public program
18:00: Video Conversation with Brian Massumi by Florian Schneider
18.30: El texto como Notación (experimento de escritura). Lecture by Jon Mikel Euba
20:15: Conversation: Andrew Patrizio & Héctor Tejero
21:15: Conversation: Inés Moreira & Ethel Baraona 

SATURDAY, 12.10.2019

Working Group sessions

10:00 – 11:00: Welcome
11:00 – 12:00: General introduction into the WGs
12:00 – 18:00: WG parallel sessions

SUNDAY, 13.10.2019

Working Group sessions

11:00 – 14:00: WG parallel sessions
15:00 – 17:00: Debriefing (optional)

 

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Video Vortex #12

Adnan gave an Interview to Kultura.TV on the Video Vortex XII conference.

VideoVortex, an artistic network concerned with the aesthetics and politics of online video, will gather again in Malta for a conference in late September 2019. In this edition we are in particularly focussed 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 that is engaged with the theoretical challenges of contemporary (moving) image cultures, please 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.
Conference and screenings: September 26-29, 2019.
Exhibition:  September 13 until October 27, 2019 (in Spazju Kreattiv)

Download the full program here.

All events are held at Spazju Kreattiv, except for “Session 2:
Activism”, on Day 2, which will be held at Aula Prima, University of
Malta Valletta Campus . Please refer to details below and in the program.

VV XII conference registration:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/video-vortex-xii-conference-tickets-63022752750

VV XII screening registration:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/video-vortex-xii-screenings-tickets-63025027554

Special: ASMR workshop
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/video-vortex-xii-special-asmr-workshop-tickets-63027029542

Schedule of Video Vortex #12 Conference:

Day 1: Thursday – September 26, 2019

15:00: Video Vortex Pre-Screening: Dance: Please refer to the screening pages for the detailed screening schedule.

17:00: Opening of Video Vortex Conference

• Geert Lovink (Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam)

•  Wilfried Agricola de Cologne: Curated screening – The W:OW

18:30: Opening Lecture & Performance

• @lbert figurt: Lecture: Desktop Horror

• Annie Abrahams, Lisa Parra and Daniel Pinheiro: Performance: DISTANT FEELINGS #6

20:00: Meet the Video Vortex Artists

• Vince Briffa and Michael Alcorn: OUTLAND

• Ryan Woodring: The oldest new structure

• Q&A with video vortex artists: Werther Germondari, Letta Shtohryn, Pablo Núñez Palma, Bram Loogman, Tivon Rice & Hang Li (together with Caroline Rosello)

Day 2: Friday – September 27, 2019

09:00: Welcome, Registration & Coffee

10:00: Session 1: Online Video Theory I

• Andrew Clay: The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. Oakley in the Land of the Video Bloggers

• Karla Brunet: Online Video Cartography

• Ana Peraica: Disinterested and Dead: Spinning Visual Media Reporting Events

• Kathy Rae Huffman: ON/IN Time – video art from outsider to insider

12:00: Break

13:00: Session 2: Activism

NOTE: this session is at a different Venue: Aula Prima, University of Malta Valletta
Campus

• Donatella della Ratta: The vanished image: who owns the archives of the Arab uprisings?

• Aishwarya Viswanathan: Staged Fear: Real and Imagined Audiences of Mob Lynching Videos in India.

• Confusion of Tongues: Moving Membranes

• Miguel Oliveros Mediavilla: Dictature 4.0: ‘La prison à plein air’

15:00: Break

16:00: Session 3: Streaming & Platforms

• Dino Ge Zhang: A Theory of Livestreaming Video

• Andreas Treske and Aras Ozgun: Narrative Platforms: Towards a Morphology of New Audience Activities and Narrative Forms

• Tomasz Hollanek: The Netflix Clinic: (experi)Mental Entertainment in the Age of Psychometrics

• Antonia Hernandez: There’s something compelling about real life: early webcam tropes on current sexcam platforms

Special: ASMR workshop (parallel session on invitation only)
Lucille Calmel & Damien Petitot: Soft Screens Soft Skins Soft: an ASMR workshop

18:00: Break

20:00: Video Vortex evening screening
Please refer to the screening pages for the detailed screening schedule.

Day 3: Saturday – September 28, 2019

09:00: Welcome, Registration & Coffee

09:30: Special: Breakfast Screening

• Colette Tron: Screening: Digital images and films, what’s the matter?

10:00: Session 4: Online Video Theory II

• Colette Tron: Digital images and films, what’s the matter?

• Mitra Azar: From Selfie to Algorithmic Facial Image

• Jack Wilson: PLAYING FROM ANOTHER ROOM

• Chris Meigh-Andrews: EDAU Artists’ Film and Video Study Collection

12:00: Break

13:00: Session 5: Experiments in Aesthetics

• Dan Oki: The Absence of Telepresence

• Hiroko Kimura-Myokam: Video hosting service as a presenting space and a repository

• Patrick Lichty: Not Really Like Being There

• Richard Misek: A Machine for Viewing: a virtual reality video essay

15:00: Break

16:00: Session 6: Workshops/lecture on tech issues

• Pablo Núñez Palma and Bram Loogman: Jan Bot

• Heiko Recktenwald: Montage der Sensationen

• Adnan Hadzi, Simon Worthington and Oliver Lerone Schultz: VV12 after.video book

Special: ASMR workshop (parallel session on invitation only)
Lucille Calmel & Damien Petitot: Soft Screens Soft Skins Soft: an ASMR workshop

18:00: Closing Ceremony

• Andrew Alamango and Andrew Pace: Magna Żmien (Time Machine)

• Judit Kis: Practices Beyond the SELF

Day 4: Sunday – September 29, 2019

14:00: Replay Day
Please refer to the screening pages for the detailed screening schedule.

Schedule of Video Vortex #12 Screenings:

Day 1: Thursday – September 26, 2019

15:00: Pre-VV12 Screening: Dance

• Rita Al Cunha: Error 500, 1:44

• Daniela Lucato: When I dance, 67 min.

• Vito Alfarano: I have a dream, 11:00

17:00: Curated screening – The W:OW

Wilfried Agricola de Cologne, 61 min

Day 2: Friday – September 27, 2019

20:00: Screening I: Structures

• Adam Fish: Points of Presence, 18:46

• Albert Merino: Bestiary, 5:10

• Lotte Louise de Jong: BRB, 5:25

• Esther Polak and Ivar van Bekkum: Go Move Be, 9:50

• Samantha Harvey: Auto tune me, 4:31

21:00: Screening II: Internet, Sadness, Love

• Andres Azzolina: Puntomov, 15:15

• Glasz DeCuir: Yes I saw an angel, 2:37

• María José Ribas: Torremolinos Match, 8:51

• Pedro Gomes: Mutilated Dreams, 10:22

• Salvador Miranda: Aim Down Sights, 7:30

22:00: Screening III: Myself Any Other Night

• Sofia Braga: I stalk myself, 13:26

• María José Ribas: Seismographical, 2:03

• Zimu Zhang & Zheng Lu Xinyuan: Just like any other night, 29:33

Day 4: Sunday – September 29, 2019

14:00: Screening I: Structures

• Adam Fish: Points of Presence, 18:46

• Albert Merino: Bestiary, 5:10

• Lotte Louise de Jong: BRB, 5:25

• Esther Polak and Ivar van Bekkum: Go Move Be, 9:50

• Samantha Harvey: Auto tune me, 4:31

15:00: Screening II: Internet, Sadness, Love

• Andres Azzolina: Puntomov, 15:15

• Glasz DeCuir: Yes I saw an angel, 2:37

• María José Ribas: Torremolinos Match, 8:51

• Pedro Gomes: Mutilated Dreams, 10:22

• Salvador Miranda: Aim Down Sights, 7:30

16:00: Screening III: Myself Any Other Night

• Sofia Braga: I stalk myself, 13:26

• María José Ribas: Seismographical, 2:03

• Zimu Zhang & Zheng Lu Xinyuan: Just like any other night, 29:33

17:00: Screening IV: The W:OW

• Wilfried Agricola de Cologne: Curated screening – The W:OW (ca 60 min.)

18:00: Screening V: Crash Theory
•  Adam Fish: Crash Theory, 45:00

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Video Theory & Video Vortex

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.
Speaker profile

Professor Andreas Treske is an author, media artist and filmmaker, writing about online video and culture. He graduated from the University of Television and Film, Munich, where he also taught film and video post-production. He lectures with the Department of Communication and Design at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. Since 2008, he has been involved in the Video Vortex network.