ATOMIUM - BRUSSELS
20 - 21 NOVEMBER 2009
On November 20-21 2009, Cimatics festival
is hosting the 5th Video Vortex conference.
Two years after its first edition, Video Vortex
returns to Brussels, this time taking place in
one of the great icons of mid 20th century
modern architecture: the Atomium.
The past two years, the conference series
- which focuses on the status and potential
of the moving image on the Internet -
has visited Amsterdam, Ankara and Split,
growing out into an organised network of
organisations and individuals. Time for an
interim report, perhaps. We asked some
participants of the first Video Vortex editions
and publication, as well as new ones, to
reflect on recent developments in online
video culture.
Over the past years the place of the
moving image on the Internet has become
increasingly prominent. With a wide range
of technologies and web applications
within anyone’s reach, the potential of
video as a personal means of expression
has reached a totally new dimension. How
is this potential being used? How do artists
and other political and social actors react
to the popularity of YouTube and other‘user-generated-content’ websites? What
does YouTube tell us about the state of
contemporary visual culture? And how can
the participation culture of video-sharing
and vlogging reach some degree of
autonomy and diversity, escaping the laws
of the mass media and the strong grip of
media conglomerates?
DAY I: Friday 20 Nov
13h30 Introduction by Geert Lovink
14h00 System flaws and tactics
Video channels, platforms and formats
impose strict structures on how you can
interact with them. This session is inspired by
the inherent errors, disabilities and restrictions,
often conducting our behaviour but in this
case inspiring and exposing new insights.
- Liesbeth Huybrechts/Rudi Knoops (BE)
‘Play that video, all work and no play
makes Jack a dull boy.’ Both Huybrechts
and Knoops teach at the Media & Design
Academy in Genk.
- Johan Grimonprez (BE)
‘It’s a poor story if it only works backward.’
Grimonprez is an international renowned artist
best known for his seminal DIAL H-I-S-T-O-R-Y.
- Rosa Menkman (NL)
‘From Artifacts to filter. The Tipping point of
failure.’ Menkman is an artist and is currently
doing a PhD at the KHM on the subject
of Artifacts.
- Brian Willems (CR)
‘Blindness: the inability of YouTube to read
itself’. Brian Willems teaches literature and
media culture at the University of Split.
17h30 Q&A
20h30 Video Vortex at night
On Friday night everyone is invited in
the centre of Brussels at Les Brigittines for
an evening programme with:
- Filmscreening programme
by Stoffel Debuysere and María Palacios Cruz
- Artist presentations
by Constant Dullaart and Albert Figurt
- Audiovisual performance
by Kurt D’haeseleer & Tuk
DAY II: Saturday 21 Nov
10h00 Online cinema
What will happen to web cinema as we
shift from learning to see and how to feel
to learning how to participate in this new
electronic space of modernity?
- Andrew Clay (GB)
‘Web cinema: Mind the Gap!’ Andrew Clay
is lecturing in Critical Technical Practices
at De Montfort University, Leicester and
programme leader of BSc (Hons) Media
Technology in the Faculty of Computing
Sciences and Engineering.
10h45 Categories of enactment
/ Strategies of resistance
The two speakers have been contributing
to the previous Video Vortex Reader. They
are both artists and theoreticians and share
a common attitude of resistance. In this
session they will update and further expand
their contributions to Video Vortex.
- Keith Sanborn (US)
‘Beyond YouTube.world’. Sanborn is
media artist and theoretician focusing
on the investigation of public images and
private perceptions with great interest in “user-generated-content” and web footage
in general.
- Stefaan Decostere (BE)
‘Impact, complicity, fascination’. Decostere
is a Belgian artist and has been producing
documentaries for tv since ‘79. In ‘99 he
founded CARGO, a foundation for creation
and development with media.
12h00 Lunchbreak
13h30 Artist practices: (sub)versioning
(Sub)versioning - the contraction of the
Situationist ’subversion’ and the common IT
practice of ’versioning’ - might best describe
the practice of the artists in this session.
They approach online video as a means
for subtle restructuring of existing popular
media and as a basis for investigating
new modes of constructing and relating
meaning brought about by the Internet.
- Oliver Laric (TR) & Aleksandra Domanovic (RS)
Berlin based artists Laric and Domanovic
two of the co- founders of the platform
VVORK. Their work has been the subject of
numerous presentations at previous Video
Vortex conferences.
- Constant Dullaart (NL)
Dullaart is an artist and teaches at the Gerrit
Rietveld academy, and curates several
events in Amsterdam such as the Lost and
Found evenings.
15h00 Politics of online video
In a dispersed society with a seemingly
vanishing mass culture, online video
is challenging traditional channels of public
communication, oppositional media.
A session providing us with some remarkable
case-studies and research-projects about
participatory communication, the White
House and citizen journalism.
- Simon Yuill (GB)
’Citizen Journalism vs Oppositional Media’.
Simon Yuill is an artist based in Glasgow,
was involved in hacklabs and Free Media
Labs and has written on aspects of Free
Software and cultural praxis.
- Elizabeth Losh (US)
’The White House’s use of YouTube and
the reactions of privacy advocates’. Losh
is Writing Director of the Humanities Core
Course at the University of California and
recently published ’Virtualpolitik’.
- Stephen Crocker (CA)
’Filmmaking and the politics of remoteness’.
Crocker is associate professor of sociology
and assistent director of the Humanities
Program at Memorial University, Newfoundland.
He writes about media, social theory,
philosophy and the sociology of the image.
17h00 Closing Q&A
20h00 Opening Cimatics festival
Performances by AGF (DE), TVestroy (CA),
Boris & Brecht Debackere (BE) + party
http://www.cimaticsfestival.com
http://www.networkcultures.org/videovortex
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