Diagonal Thoughts

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

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.

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!

21 October 2007, Bozar Brussels. Co-production Argos and Bozar.

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What does ‘Cinema’ mean today? In the aftermath of its one hundredth birthday the field of cinema seems to be expanding further and further, split up into countless media and modalities, based on wide-ranging technologies and motives. Now that the analogue image is being quickly replaced by the digital one, beyond the materiality of video and film, more is being produced and distributed than ever before, but at the same time the way we watch, listen and experience cinema is being severely fragmented and individualized. Cinema no longer holds a specific place of its own; it is everywhere, intertwined with and integrated into other cultural forms. Within that context we today witness a significant renewal in the ways of approaching cinema and the audiovisual arts, not only in the work of a great number of artists, but also on an institutional level. The familiar opposition between the ‘black box’ and the ‘white cube’, between cinema culture and museum culture, can no longer be sustained, and the call for new models resounds more and more. What kind of shifts in meaning do these evolutions and contaminations entail in the way we look at and reflect on art and film? Do visual arts provide filmmakers with a free zone, where they can finally fulfil their most radical promises, or is it more like a transit zone, an intermediate stage in the re-thinking of the cinema project?

12 October 2007, Argos Brussels
Philippe-Alain Michaud

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Le lieu du film

“Sous l’effet simultané de la numérisation généralisée de la culture visuelle et de l’irruption du film sur la scène artistique, la désintégration récente du modèle de la black box nous oblige à repenser le lieu du film autrement, à la croisée des arts visuels et des arts de la scène.”

Art historian and curator Philippe-Alain Michaud (FR, 1961) is responsible for the audiovisual collection of the Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Georges-Pompidou in Paris. Based on the collection he put together the exhibition Le Mouvement des images – Art et Cinéma in 2006, presenting a new take on the 20th century, through the history of cinema. He particularly investigates the twilight zones and frictions between the visual arts and cinema, among others with Hollywood Déconstruit : remontages, remises en scène, resucées (2004), a film programme exploring the way how experimental filmmakers and visual artists (re)interpret the world of Hollywood cinema. He published the books Aby Warburg et l’image en mouvement (1998), Le peuple des images (2002) and Sketches. Histoire de l’art, cinéma (2006), in which he points out, among other things, that the representation of movement is by no means a privilege of cinema.

19 October 2007, Argos Brussels
Mark Nash

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Between Cinema and a Hard Place: dilemmas of the moving image as post-medium

Mark Nash (UK, 1947) heads the department ‘Curating Contemporary Art’ at the Royal College of Art in London. He published globally on various types of cinema and audiovisual art (including the likes of Screen magazine) and he is considered one of the foremost British film theoreticians and critics. Over the past years he has also been active as a curator, including Documenta 11 (2002), the film section of the Berlin Biennale (2004) and the exhibition Experiments with Truth (2004-5), for which he explored the documentary tendency in contemporary film and video. As a scenarist and producer he has worked with Isaac Julien, for instance, on the acclaimed Franz Fanon: Black Skin White Mask (1996). One aspect of his current research entails the role of audiovisual art in the museum and the gallery, and the broader meaning of the moving image in contemporary art.

26 October 2007, Argos Brussels
Laura Mulvey

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Filmmaker and critic Laura Mulvey (UK, 1941) is professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Her work as a critic during the 1970s, particularly her essay Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975), is considered to be one of the main foundations of feminist film theory. During the period 1974–1982 she produced numerous theoretical films with her husband Peter Wollen, touching areas in the discourse of feminism, semiotics, psychoanalysis and left-wing politics. Later she also produced the film Disgraced Monuments (1993) together with Mark Lewis. Her recent book Death 24x a Second: Stillness and the Moving Image (2006) offers a number of reflections on the impact of new technologies on the cinema experience. Particularly with regards to the relationship between the moving and the static image, since the possibilities to decelerate the image, repeat and freeze it, creates a shift from a voyeuristic to a more fetishist relationship with the cinematographic object.

9 November 2007, Argos Brussels
Jean-Christophe Royoux

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“De l’écran unique aux dispositifs d’images : pourquoi (au moins) deux plutôt que un ? Pourquoi le multiple ?”

Starting from the example of Time Square, Jean-Christophe Royoux showed how multi-projection is one of the exemplary forms of the exhibition paradigm, which has been for a very long time, as was shown by numerous authors, poets, philosophers and architects since the middle of the 19th century, the paradigm of the modern city. Only since 2006 this has become the most widely spread way of life for a majority of people here on earth. The experience of multi-projection is quite simply a highly concentrated experience of the world we live in. Once this urban genealogy is recontextualized and put into perspective, Royoux focussed on the pivotal question, recurrent, typical of any image installation, of any type of exhibition cinema – the question about association, about the nature of a relationship between one and the other, which in fact amounts to the question of what common means, and what community is all about. In that sense the “at least two” of multi-projection is echoed, as was expertly shown by Jean-Luc Godard in Numéro Deux, in the typical contemporary concern of knowing the circumstances under which we can coexist.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, art historian, critic and curator Jean-Christophe Royoux (FR, 1961) explores the in-between areas between cinema and the visual arts. This has resulted in numerous essays and artist monographs, on artists such as Marcel Broodthaers, Stan Douglas, Pierre Huyghe and Tacita Dean, as well as exhibitions, such as Multipistes (2005, Argos), focusing on a number of young French artists presenting post-cinematographic forms in their work, deconstructions or alterations of the familiar notions of projection and identification. Royoux sees this “Cinéma d’Exposition” mainly as a catalyst for new narrative modalities, which make it possible to define the work of art as an intermediary between the author and the viewer, a structure for activating reading and experience of the processes of thought and memory.