Media & Memory / Article

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Isn’t it strange how history has been replaced by technology…?

From ‘Eloge de l’amour’, Jean-Luc Godard (2001)

I just finished an article on media and memory for a forthcoming publication on media culture in Flanders and Belgium, partly based on talks I heard and had during the ‘Media, Memory and the Archive’ conference we organised at Argos (October 6 2007, see elsewhere on this blog). It’s based on the paradox between the idea of the prosthetic, networked memory, promised to us by the ubiquitous surveillance and sousveillance technologies (including the ‘life-logging’ trend that we can see coming up in projects like ‘what was I thinking’ (MIT), Lifeblog (Nokia), MyLifeBits (Microsoft), questioned in artists’ projects like Lucy Kimbell’s ‘I measure therefore I am’ or Ellie Harrison‘s ‘Eat 22’ and ‘Gold Card Adventures’) and the inherent variability and instability of these technologies. The essay is basically a exploration of the way these new memory and communication technologies have changed our relation to the world and the past, and the way social memory is constructed. It argues that variability and flux are the new norm and perhaps even, for a whole new generation out there, the main condition of creativity. Memory institutions have to learn to cope with these new paradigms, and try to combine formal (institutionalised) with informal strategies (as in oral media, or the way games are kept alive via communities such as MAME). Like John Sobol recently wrote on the iDC mailinglist: “Loss is only real if you feel you that you have something to lose.”…

The article will be published on this blog

Caouette’s All Tomorrow’s Parties

Just found out that Jonathan Caouette, the guy who made the extraordinary ‘Tarnation’ – a touching autobiographic, home-made (edited with iMovie actually) account based on his own Super-8 home footage, photographs, audio recordings, and various pop-culture snippets (Cocteau Twins, Low a.o.), post-produced and released with the help of Gus Van Sant and Jonathan Cameron Mitchell – is working on a documentary on the music festival All Tomorrow’s Parties. The film is commissioned bu ATP and Warp films, and will future lots of “found” footage, that Caouette is assembling via the internet. On the movie Myspace page it says: ” we need your footage! We are after all kinds of material from camcorder footage through to mobile phone video. We are as interested in off stage footage as concert material. It is a low-budget film, and because of the volume of material involved, we can’t pay for footage but anyone whose material is used in the final film will be credited on the movie, be invited to the launch screening/event, get a package of Warp DVD goodies and ATP guest list to future shows”. The film will not be the result of a real (intended) collaborative effort, but the internet-mediated-assemblage idea will probably get some following – something that happened with the Beastie Boys’ concert film ‘Awesome: I ——‘ Shot That!’ (using footage shot by fans) as well (in Belgium Daan Stuyven did a similar thing).

Anyway, let’s hope some footage of the bands and songs posted here (and many others) turns up in the movie:

Video Vortex Amsterdam / Report

The second installment of the Video Vortex conference took place in Amsterdam and was hosted by the Institute of Network Cultures and the project instigator, Geert Lovink. The programme was quite varied, and there were a few very interesting perspectives on the internetvideo movement. I particularly liked the ideas of Stefaan Decostere and Thomas Elsaesser. Decostere refered to Keith Sanborn’s presentation in Brussels and introduced the concept of ‘impactology’, as a way to grasp the grasp the dynamics of the YouTube Culture, a dynamics of user driven impact, not ‘content’. Impact, not only as an object, but as a tool for analysis. He refered to ideas of Octavia PAz (“Life in the impact is a futurism”), Paul Virilio (esthetics of disasters), Flusser (information is the expression of what the user does with the image) as well as Klimov’s war movie ‘Come and Se’. Decostere propagated a distantiation form impact, creating contexts for reflection and intervention, something he want to do with his installation Warum 2.0 (a sort of ‘update’ of his ‘Warum wir Männer die Technik so Lieben’ from 1985, in which he explored the ways technology organises reality, based on interviews with Paul Virilio, Klaus vom Bruch, Jack Goldstein and Chris Dercon). In that tape Virilio analyses the close relation between war & technology. The artists – Klaus vom Bruch in video, and Jack Goldstein in paint & sound – propose their personal artistic versions of it. “Since then”, Decostere writes “no radical change occurred in the relation between war and technology. It just became more intensified, excessive that is. Technology brings the logic and reality of war ever closer into our daily lives and habitats. If a difference WARUM makes, it is 2.0, as today, not only artists, but most of us have access to parts. We all are very actively involved with media nowadays, adding value all the time. Digitization, virtualization and automation are the major massively enacted actions with technology. They guideline the basic moves possible in the playing field here.”

Warum 2.0 will be premiered at the ARTEFACT festival in Leuven in February. “The changed attitude towards documentary images is the main theme of WARUM 2.0. A 360° panorama amidst transparent screens and multiple interactive access points turn the installation into an arena where visitors can interfere with and add value to the images.Late 2007 a new conversation was recorded with Paul Virilio. Both at the installation and online, new tools by Christian Decker, Edwin Uytenbroek, Chris Devriese, Jonas Hielscher and Sander Korebrits are available. The footage used is shot in Haiti, Iraq, Gaza, Darfur, Kosovo and Afghanistan by freelance cameraman Daniel Demoustier.”
More info.

Another talk I liked a lot was Thomas Elsaesser’s “Constructive Instability’, or The Life of Things as the Cinema’s Afterlife?”. He drew on the potential relationship between cinema and biopolitics (something that was explored during a research project at Van Eyck, instigated, I think, by Stefan Geene of BBookks) and borrowed the notion of “constructive instability” (the neocons in the States use it to describe their strategy in the Middle East, especially after the Israeli bombings in Lebanon, backed by the US of course. The Bush administration also uses the expression “You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs”, or in Rumsfeld’s words “Hey, Shit Happens”) to describe the dynamics of serendipity and volatility at work in networkcultures. It’s all about the potential, productive performativity of faillure. To make his point he started a trail through YouTube content, starting with the idea of collapse as bipolar : from the Honda log ad and remixes, to Fischli & Weiss ‘Der Lauf der Dinge’, to various Rube Goldberg machines and domino Toppling videos. As in a picaresque novel, the YouTube user is always trapped between the joy of epiphanies and a constant threat of entropy – a bit like cellgrowth: cells die, repenish and rework themselves constantly.

Also picked up: Florian Schneider’s idea of “imaginary property”, as something to chew on, and Dominick’s Chen‘s idea of ‘Prochronism’ – Bateson’s concept applied to “digital content or to any agent, entity or organisation to evaluate and share the embryological processes as creatively valuable information”, with reference to the Japanese videosharing site Nico Nico douga where comments are “becoming constituents of the original work, affecting both authorship and spectatorship. On Nico Nico Douga, a movement has emerged that uses original material and builds upon it by using, for example, the VOCALOID sound plugin.

I also liked Sarah Cook’s projects: the Broadcast Yourself exhbition @ the AV festival, in which she researches the different ways artists have related to televison in the past (Ant Farm, Bill Viola, etc.) and how the internet has opened up this potential in exciting ways. She also mentioned Star and Shadow Cinema , a grassroots and community project that deserves following (also here in Brussels, athough we already have Cinema Nova).

I also remember a quote of Godard (of course) mentioned by Geert, that has a lot of truth to it: “Die Ziet: Do you concern yourself with new media and technology? Godard: I try to keep up. But people make films on the Internet in order to show that they exist, not in order to look at things.”

More reports on the site of Masters of Media

Images on Flickr

Some musical surprises in 2007

Yeah, OK, Robert Wyatt once again released a brilliant album, there has been some lovely stuff by the likes of Loren Connors, Oren Ambarchi and Giuseppe Ielasi, sure Radiohead’s last album wasn’t bad, not at all, and the ghosting sounds of Burial and Shackleton left quite an impression. But this is some stuff that truly surprised me last year:


Without any doubt one of the best things I’ve heard came from Ben Frost, an Australian (well, now based in Iceland) dude in his late twenties who made a remarkable mature album with ‘Theory of the Machines’. It has a physical tension and dynamic touch I haven’t heard in quite a while – it’s, as he says himself, a work of and about restraint. Also check the re-issue of one of his earlier albums, ‘Steel Wound’, it has a more “Shoegazer” influenced sound (especially Flying Saucer Attack), but looking back all the elements of his current explorations were already in place. I missed him live on stage, but next time he’s around I’ll be there.


Like the return of an old friend. Siltbreeze is back on track. The label that introduced us to a lot that was going on in New Zealand in the 1990’s, releasing fantastic records of Dead C, Alastair Galbraith, A Handful of Dust, Bruce Russell and others (Eternally thanks to Klakke and (K-RAA-K)3 for sharing all of that, back in the days) has some new talents on offer. ‘Cleaning the Mirror’, The full length debut of Pink Reason, the outfit of one Kevin DeBroux, is a wonderfull avant-pop record that has an appealing homemade, muzzy bittersweet crudeness about it, that reminds me at times of Jandek. Although the music of Psychedelic Horseshit has similar roots in psych pop and rock, it doesn’t have the grainy melancholia of Pink Reason. Instead, it rocks away big time. Their ‘Magic Flowers Droned’ is an exciting collection of ramshackle, distorted tunes that starts where Pavement left off after ‘Slanted & Enchanted’ (or even before). Both bands are playing on the 2008 (K-RAA-K)3 festival (1 March in Brussels). Not to be missed. Other new stuff on Siltbreeze I still have to check: Factums, Ding! XNo BbqX, Alasehir, Sapat and a new Times New Viking.


One nice discovery was pedal steel guitar player Susan Alcorn, who’s ‘And I Await… The Resurrection of the Pedal Steel Guitar’ blew me away at times. She lets herself be inspired by Messiaens, Coltrane, Penderecki, as well as big band geniuses such as Stan Kenton (I forgot about him, but digging his records up again). The result is an intimate, haunting record in the vein of Loren Connors. Check it out. Who’s bringing this lady to Belgium – she’s never been here before??


Now that Wolfgang Voigt is out of the picture, we’re wondering what happened to his legacy. Surprisingly (or maybe not), the best post-Voigt vibes are not to be found in the minimal techno-sphere (perhaps to some degree in some tracks of the Field), but in the work of British underground veteran Neil Campbell (who is really obsessed by Basic Channel stuff and Voigt’s Gas project). The reissue of his solo album ‘SOL POWR’ as well as Astral Social Club’s new ‘Neon Pibroch’ (dedicated to the memory of Textile Records founder Benoit Sonnette) explores new regions of improvised drone-based music, incorporating celestial loops, swathes, shimmers, drones and even beats, producing a truly vast 21st century psychedelic sound.

And of course the Belgians: I heard some great music of the Funeral Folk people (Silvester Anfang, Hellvete, amazing how they’ve matured so fast.. well, their sound anyway (-:), Ignatz (amazing second album on (K-RAA-K)3. Have to look for his recent tapes as well) and the talented youngsters Orphan Fairytale and Bear Bones Lay Low – btw all of these people are portraited in Jef Mertens’ documentary ‘Dronevolk’. I’m happy that de Portables are starting to get the attention they deserve (at least around here). Looking forward to the new Ovil Bianca. Good idea: Joris Vermeiren of Discodesafindado wants to remix R.O.T.

the Shock Doctrine in moving images


Alfredo Cuaron (the director of ‘Children of Men’, a.o.) made a shortfilm based on one of my favorite books of 2007, Naomi Klein’s ‘Shock Doctrine’. I’s a sort of condensed version of the book, based on well chosen found footage and featuring Klein’s voice. Consider it as an introduction to Klein’s (as well as Cuaron’s) work. Time for a rude awakening. Also check out Cuaron’s documentary ‘The Possibility of Hope’ – it’s part of the extras of some DVD versions of ‘Children of Men’ and features not only Klein but also Zizek, Sassen and others.

“When it comes to war, America means business” is the brilliant tagline of John Cusack’s (seen ‘Being John Malkovich’ or ‘High fidelity’?) feature film ‘War inc’. It’s inspired by Klein’s writings on Iraq and offers a satiric view on the burgeoning new economy that has sprung up around the war on terror, and Baghdad’s Green Zone, which Klein calls “a heavily armed Carnival Cruise ship parked in a sea of despair.” Looking forward to that one!