video

vortex
xi
23-25 Feburary 2017
Kochi
video vortex xi
VVXI Organising Team

conTENTS
1 Video Vortex: a Brief History
Geert Lovink

2 Video Vortex XI
Rashmi Sawhney

5 VideoTheory
Andreas Treske
Programme Director:
Rashmi Sawhney
12 Video Installations
Programming Committee:
Andreas Treske 20 Video Screening Programmes
Ahmet Gurata
Rashmi Sawhney
36 Workshops
Exhibition Curatorial Team:
Aishwarya Viswanathan 42 Invited Video Curations
Keerthi K. Shastri
Neha Kasana
Shruti Rao 52 Artists’ Talks
Soubhagya Pai
Syeda Zainab Akbar 60 Conference Papers
Catalogue Design:
Neha Kasana 74 Participants’ Bios
Aishwarya Viswanathan
Syeda Zainab Akbar
Keerthi K. Shastri

Production Head:
Meena Vari

Production Team:
Lubna Hamza
Sreenadh K. Jyothinadh
Nimisha Singhal
 Video Vortex: a Brief History Volcanic Residues: Video Vortex XI
by Geert Lovink by Rashmi Sawhney

Welcome to VideoVortex, a network on the VideoVortex is critical research, it’s exper- The conference is seen as a meeting point, exist across different spaces – unlikely spac-
politics and aesthetics of online video. It is imental visual art, screenings and installa- the coming together of people with a shared es, sometimes – while attempting to enable
the oldest and most successful living net- tions;, it is websites, channels, social media purpose. The vortex is the high point of the conversations across silos, that exist on their
work of artists, designers, activists and geeks, rumors and snaps. Join the movement! conference, a culmination of sorts. VV XI has own, yet are acutely aware of the presence of
founded by the Institute of Network Cultures been a journey with many culminations, others; similar sometimes, often different.
in Amsterdam (NL) late 2006 when YouTube Geert Lovink many beginnings, but no ends, and the vor-
had just started. The story of online video founder of the Institute of Network Cultures tex that assembled in Kochi this February, Fragments, Inserts, Displacements:
had been a long one in the making with first was more like a volcanic mountain with the i. The insertion into the VV network and an
experiments going back many years earli- Website: lava spilling out in all directions -- trickling announcement that the next vortex was like-
er. The world was waiting patiently for the http://networkcultures.org/videovortex/ down, hardening, taking shape, then set- ly to be held in India made for an untimely
technology, and bandwidth, to develop, and Two VideoVortex readers, free to download: tling into another solid formation – than a event. The previous edition of VV was meant
then, with the invention of the embedded Mailinglist: dormant one, whose peaks lie in waiting to to have been held in London, but could not
video, it unfolded quickly. http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/vide- be scaled. be materialized due to a lack of funds. Since
ovortex_listcultures.org ------------------------- its inception, VV has been mostly confined to
Online video is not merely the remediation On the 13th of March 2016, I reached Anka- Europe, barring on the one occasion when
of the old content of film, television and vid- VideoVortex #1: ra where I was going to live for two months, it was held in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Geert
eo onto a next platform. Our question from Brussels, Belgium, October 2007 on a teaching fellowship at the University Lovink, the founder of the Institute of Net-
the start was what happens to the status of VideoVortex #2: of Bilkent. The Chair of the Dept. of Com- work Cultures, has worked closely with Sarai,
the moving image when we start looking at Amsterdam, The Netherlands, January 2008 munications, Ahmet Gurata picked me up having edited several of the Sarai Readers, yet
a database, the question Lev Manovich first VideoVortex #3: from the airport, took me to my lodging at India had not been a vortex so far. Locating
raised in this 2001 text The Language of New Ankara, Turkey, October 2008 G-07/219 on the Bilkent campus, made me VV XI in Kochi/South Asia, opened up a whole
Media. What is database cinema? What does VideoVortex #4: trudge up and down the hilly campus -- a range of questions about region in the con-
it mean that we can comment and quote Split, Croatia, October 2009 task my impoverished lungs dealt with with text of ubiquitous digital technologies. Does
videos on our smart phones? What are the VideoVortex #5: great difficulty -- before we headed out to the internet of things erase region or does it
cultural implications of a visual culture that Brussels, Belgium, November 2009 Kizilay to get dinner. While we were tend- get inscribed more strongly? Can one think of
records video anywhere, all the time? If film VideoVortex #6: ing to a bottle of wine at the Sakal bar, a region outside of the notion of representa-
was defined by montage, and television by Amsterdam, The Netherlands, March 2011 loud sound – the measure of an obnoxious tion and in terms of infrastructures and
the live broadcasting, then what defines our VideoVortex #7: Diwali cracker – resounded. I jokingly said, “I forms? How does one think about vernacular
age? Video cannot be reduced to the stat- Yogyakarta, Indonesia, July 2011 hope that’s not a bomb,” and seconds later aesthetics and can one imagine a different
ic screen plus DVD experience. These days, VideoVortex #8: Ahmet’s phone was flooded with videos aesthetic of art and politics, whose roots ex-
we swipe through the time line, ignore the Zagreb, Croatia, May 2012 and messages about the bomb blast near a tend across geographies, but stop spreading
image and only listen to the sound track, VideoVortex #9: public park in Kizilay we had walked through out at some point, through and under the
we witness our dearest friends and fami- Lüneburg, Germany, February 2013 merely ten minutes ago. The dramatic shock soil? Could we map region differently if we
ly, live, through Skype or Facebook Live. A VideoVortex #10: of being in Erdogan’s Turkey manifested it- dug up the earth and laid bare the cables
decade into the medium, we have not start- Istanbul, Turkey, September 2014 self in visceral ways that marked the rest of that carry our data, their beginnings and their
ed to scratch the surface of what’s possible VideoVortex #11: my stay there. VV XI was in many ways, trig- ends? Or are we bound to continue to wear
when we carry a 4K in our pocket. How are Kochi, India, February 2017 gered by that bomb blast. There were four the mask of identity – circumscribed by im-
we going to curate and archive this massive more blasts reported in the two-month span agined notions of belonging? Because we’ve
explosion of creativity? What’s the role of that I was there, and possibly others that spread ourselves thin, we belong a little bit
‘platform capitalism’ in all this, with only a went unreported. here, a little bit there, and mostly nowhere,
handful of monopoly players dominating the unless we let the roots dig deeper than they
global market? How do we make the most of How does one think of a vortex when our can spread. It depends, I suppose, on what
mass interactivity? How can we increase vid- worlds as we know them are being shat- kind of tree we want to be.
eo literacy? How do we develop a common tered, and scattered as shreds? What does a
vocabulary, developed by young critics and vortex mean in a political climate that is divi- ii. From Spinoza to Hardt and Negri, the ‘in-
theorists, of our everyday video life? What’s sive; that snubs out the possibilities of collec- sert’ has been a potent idea. VV XI inserted it-
the latest in the development of the ‘web tives, of collaboration, of communities, of to- self into the space of the Kochi-Muzeris bien-
1 documentary’ genre? In short: what’s video getherness? How does one break down the nial, amidst much uncertainity. As a collateral 2
aesthetics today? walls of convention and allow elements to event, it occupied the space of a child that
 was born to a surrogate mother; tied by the -chives’. The work of carefully going through what constitutes an event itself, we decided campus of Srishti, the individual home/work
umbilical chord, but not necessarily borne each artist’s videos (many sent us more than that the vortex needed to not be contained spaces of various people who were a regular
out of love. Out of no deliberation, but due to one piece of work, some sent us about 20!) either spatially or durationally. In order topart of my skype night life for several weeks.
pure necessity, we were told the main venue involved hundreds of hours of viewing time, mobilise this spread, the VV XI website vide-What we have put together in this publication
for the conference, the Cabral yard, would be and coordination with my co-organisers, An- ovortex11.net was set up to provide a plat- is a catalogue of the different ideas, videos,
unavailable merely a week before Vortex XI dreas Treske and Ahmet Gurata in Turkey. form for extended discussions, video talks performances, workshops, provocations, and
was scheduled. This was due to the fact that While skype and other modes of online com- and interviews with artists who were not conversations that formed VV XI. It is not the
the President of India, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, munication worked in the initial stages of the able to physically join us in Kochi, as well conventional conference or exhibition cata-
was to speak at a conference being held at selection process, it was impossible to col- as to establish a repository that coexisted logue that accompanies (and indeed precedes)
the Cabral yard on the 2nd of March, and laborate on the setting up of the exhibition, along with the Video Vortex blog estab- the ‘event’ in some ways, but is part of the ‘af-
there were chances that the venue would given the geographical distance. I decided at lished by the Institute of Network cultures ter-life’, a continuation of the gathering and
be cordoned off a full week before this. The this stage, to introduce VV XI in a large way (networkcultures.org/videovortex). channeling of energies that did indeed come
bomb squad and fanfare would follow, need- into the syllabus for a postgraduate module together in one physical space briefly, to be-
less to say. on ‘Display and Curatorial Practices’ that I VV XI therefore, gathered form across two come a vortex.
taught this semester. continents, multiple time-zones and cur-
iii. An insert, always needs a clearing. It needs rencies, diverse physical and digital spaces
to displace something else, to edge in-be- Even as VV XI was inserted into an institu- which included the conference venue at No Rashmi Sawhney
tween, shuffle; like the crowds on the trains tional syllabus, it opened up a clearing for 18 Hotel in Fort Kochi, the exhibition space Programme Director, Video Vortex XI &
and buses in India poke elbows into other the work of our postgraduate students to be at The Mill Hall in Mattancherry, the N5 Head, M.A. Programme In Aesthetics and
bodies to say, hey, make some space for inserted into the Kochi-Muzeris biennale by Visual Cultures, Srishti Institute of Art,
me. Displacement is normally thought of in way of the exhibition. Several scholars be- Design and Technology
terms of victimhood, but displacements can came important to our explorations around
be of many kinds, including those practiced digital technologies, region, video and the
by plants and people who make a clearing. curatorial: central to these inquiries were
VV XI made a bit of a clearing too. What has Mieke Bal’s ideas on translation, Nancy Adaja-
been displaced through the act of holding VV nia’s work on globalism, Iritt Rogoff’s essay on
XI in India is the overemphasis on benevolent smuggling, and Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson’s
omnipresence: video as a ubiquitous object, significant anthology on Curation and the Ed-
democratic, live, a repository of memory, ucational Turn. As we progressed with our
willing, available, cheap. Does video theory discussions to conceptually explore different
need to account for electricity failure? What aspects of the curatorial, we also simultane-
happens when the carefully coded appa- ously engaged with the very hands-on work
ratus of a VR installation begins to heat up of going through the videos, classifying and
and crackle and melt in the sultry summer re-classifying them, taking note of technical
of a Kerala battling power-cuts. How does requirements and spatial design, and consid-
one get around the firewalls erected by the ering possible exhibition formats (this was
Naval Service in Fort Kochi, that make inter- especially crucial given that we were working
net signals erratic if not completely elusive. on a modest budget very generously provid-
Where lies the balance between excavating ed by Dr. Geetha Narayanan, the founder-di-
and collating histories of analogue video rector of the Srishti Institute of Art, Design
(with which a large part of Indian popular and Technology, Bangalore). The difficulty of
and political history is linked from the 1970s doing all this was compounded by the fact
onwards) and investing in the hyper-satu- that VV XI was to be held in Kochi, and not
rated, collaborative, cloud-based archives of in Bangalore, where we were all based. None-
the contemporary? These are questions that theless, we managed to pull it off, and this
perhaps need to seep back into the melting publication provides at least a glimpse into
folds of the vortex as it flows on. the diverse range of art work, presentations,
talks, screenings and workshops that consti- VV XI Organising team: Ahmet Gurata, Rashmi Sawhney, Andreas Treske, Geert Lovink (L to R)
-------------------------------------- tuted VV XI.
When we sent out the Call for Responses for
VV XI we were instantly flooded with emails Since we were also interested in addressing
3 predominantly from video artitsts, respond- the question of what constitutes an exhi- 4
ing to our core theme of ‘art, activism, and ar- bition or a vortex as an ‘event’, and indeed,
 <VideoTheory> Shiny things so bright
Manifest and Overture
by Andreas Treske

and mixing of personal means of expressions But as Adorno mentioned: “Whoever speaks
Talk at Video Vortex XI Kochi/India sacralised representative space of the church pushes a wide range of technologies and ap- of culture speaks of administration, whether
24/02/2017 -Draft text without references and provides an experience of lights and plications for the web and devices. this is his intention or not.” (Adorno, 1978)
colours not transformed by the dominating While defining a status quo, academic insti-
“Sul cominciare e sul finire” narrative of the medieval space. Through the Web space is developing into a video space tutions of the moving image are becoming
(On the beginning and the ending) change of light Richter’s work gains a state of with distinct aesthetics. Snapchat and Insta- more and more suspicious. Speaking about
permanent uninfluenced change. gram stories as apparently ephemeral mo- the moving image appears like looking
bile applications are setting new temporal through the ghost of an invisible object, an
1st Movement - The Window Such a state of permanent uninfluenced standards and push forward to animated, object, which is not there, the meta of the
The history of film theory starts with the change of light might be created by all the looping, moving contents, removing still meta in language on something historical
metaphor of reflection on the window. The billions of cameras from us and around us, image representations and doubles. Profile defined by some post temporal power.
screen appears as an opening to another constantly uploading, sharing, linking, and images can integrate cinematographic loop-
world constructed by the projected mov- relating. It appears that a blue ocean is cover- ing elements, while images on timelines will For a new theory we need to storm the ac-
ing image. From early cinema and early film ing our planet, an ocean of video. Of course, be looking back and following our gaze. Stills ademia, the shopping malls of knowledge,
theory to video, the computer and software if the assumption that the totality of video is are paused images of intersecting timelines their classified shops, and turnover their
have come a long way, with various ap- blue might be valid.... of temporary events or event formations, shelves to describe things, objects and sen-
proaches and methodologies applied to a point on a multi-dimensional map in a sitivities, to catch the moving image on the
describe and understand what happens with What might look as bluish noise and dust non-cartesian space. run.
the moving images we are creating and how from the far outside, might embed beautiful
this shapes/ affects us. and fascinating living scape of moving im- A multitude of actors, a world of possibili- But we don’t see. We have learned that we
ages, objects and light impulses constantly ties, an evolving industry pushes towards a don’t see, that we can’t see if we don’t have
By visualising all the videos available togeth- changing, re-arranging, assembling, evolv- personal cinema and the personal gesture, the right tools. We rely on patterns, sequenc-
er lined up, the resulting image might resem- ing, collapsing, but never disappearing, creating and rendering constantly the data es, blocks and chains, and the frame as a
ble an image we are already familiar with. As something like a pulsar or like a real cinema of self as its product. The web space embeds basic category for chunks of information of a
data is expanding exponentially into incred- (if cinema is basically the change of light these personal gestures and creates through status from a specific time, a status or record-
ible amounts that a single human being is through movement). video a sphere or living cell, expanding our ing of difference, a non-existence.
never able to make meaningful associations physical space endlessly. The Web through
of, even nano-scale amounts, automatic and In “Video Theory - Online Video Aesthetics or video advances to an actor in our environ- John Cage already defined in “The future of
algorithmic visualisation tools (like the ones the afterlife of video” (Treske, 2015) I tried to ment, an ecological system and a live-like music” from 1937 the frame as a basic unit
Manovich is researching and applying) cre- describe and theorise what you might wish being that is not just related to us, but exists for temporal events, a basic measurement
ate a compression or extraction of an under- to call phenomena, objects or things former- with us in various forms, and shapes - shift- of time. Sounds for Cage can be organised
standable or meaningful chunk, resembling ly named as video, including their forms, be- ing. Around us and with us. in a simple frame, which would be the ac-
of course another common standardised or haviours and properties. I ended up looking tual score. Structure is based on the length
stereotyped image. at Gerhard Richter’s window and its marve- Video itself as this ubiquitous something of time. Influenced by Luigi Russello and
lous colours, with the light shining through. (Tom Sherman) absorbs every other medi- the Futurists, Cage claims that sounds are
In 2007, the south transept glass window of um. As a transformative technology, online just sounds, and are all equally valid. There-
the Cologne Cathedral was inaugurated. The video collapses walls of classifications, sys- fore a composer discovers new possibilities
window was designed by the German artist 2nd Movement - Online Video tematisations, specificities, “barriers erected through the technological experiment. Cage
Gerhard Richter and had an enthusiastic re- Online video has not only become the driv- by broadcast corporations and the art- world emphasizes time as the basis for musical
ception. Richter had used small squares to ing force on the web. From a static line the machine” (Miller Hocking 2013) including ac- structure.
create what appears to be a kind of modern web itself evolved to a dynamic audiovisual ademia. There is a definite need for models,
pixelated image of colours and light shining network, constantly creating and operat- methodology and theory as the established Video is much more close to sound as it is
through. Richter used an aleatoric (incorpo- ing temporal objects. Video enabled devic- ones including late born “Digital Humanities” to the photographic image. Even the cine-
ration of chance into the process of creation) es are more or less responsible for the net are not adequate anymore. The paradigm matographic apparatus is a transport vehicle
computer program to design the windows, blackout in huge parts of the US in 2016. As change has to be done and will be automat- of stillness. Video does not know such still-
meaning some elements were left to chance. a personal media on the web, the moving ically, overturning the established conceptu- ness. Therefore precisely its forming structur-
Richter’s work rejects an obvious mean- image is the most significantly spreading alisations, already redefining culture. al element is movement and time.
5 ing or message. He seems to neutralise the form. The recording, editing, distributing 6
 The photographic image as a time com- peaceful world-order was borne from the define new patterns of meaning for us, melo- stated: “There are no more simple images.
ponent of a frame is just a single mark in a proliferation of crystal cities and floating con- dies of life for humans. Machine seeing is su- The whole world is too much for an image,
linear landscape, a single perspective, one tinents of chromatic glass, a vision summed perior as non-human seeing results in trans- you need several of them; a chain of images.”
point, one POV. It does not relate exactly to up in his aphorism: “Colored glass destroys lation and action, but how, and on what, for (Manovich, 2001)
the world. It is not even a cut or a slice. The all hatred at last.” (Morse, 2015) what, when and why. We are experiencing
photographic image can be anything. This an alienation of difference, and otherness to- Godard’s ‘chains of images’ still seem to be
is what makes images so weak, prone to vi- Only more than a decade after its birth in wards the seeing as we are trying to see the a very linear approach. It is a single layer of
olation and misuse, fragile construction of a 1991 the web was able to embed video in chains we are creating in and with. images. Cinema suggests that images are
possible death frozen, always in need of an containers, plug-in’s for web browsers to al- organised in a linear chain, one image jux-
explanatory vectorial layer to point to some- low viewing of video. “Dancing Baby” (1996) The sneezing of a baby is a movement best taposed to the other and so on. We might
thing, semiotical signifying. was a strange thing, an object needed to translated as a signal through impulses or call this cinematic chain a horizontal chain
be somewhere in a specific location to be frames. Frame and signal are close to particle oriented or directed on an x-axis in the
Video is a part of an always evolving system. pointed to. The preceeding technical devel- and wave. The basic signal is the information graphical representation system. Movement
Video has no beginning and no end. Video opment goes hand in hand with the digital of a change. The signal has changed, translat- in cinema means moving along this chain
is by definition in constant flow. The time video revolution in film making of the early ed into light, or movement. Position change horizontally, to advance forward in time on
based unit frame creates an imprisonment 2000s and culminates in the 2005 birth of of a known object means again change of one horizontal level. At the same time as we
for readability and speak-ability, confirming YouTube. light, change of sensor information. Frame are moving we would experience a vertical
a set of data, a massive expanding data. The and signal are a way of reading and writing. extraction or extension at every point of the
time based unit frame might be too small for With HTML 5 coding the web is not only un- Through this video overcame darkness. chain as well as a depth extension. Multilay-
a human life as well as too big for a single hu- derstanding “video”, it actually is about to ering of chains over, below, and in each other
man life, too small for a moment and too big become like video itself. Its basic numerical The recording of a repairman by the neigh- creates at every point in time a multitude of
for a moment of a human life. The time based code, its logic and structure will be or is al- bour on a mobile device, as well as stream- crossing shiny things.
unit of the frame like in a block chain of data ready video-like. Therefore I argue that video ing the conversation live to others far away,
delivers an original, individual, never chang- absorbs the web. is in principal a similar normal gesture like We are linear but acting on a point with mul-
ing and private address for a block of data, streaming a live audiovisual signal of a pro- tiple references. Early analog video artists
high density information packages, thick and Online video touches and merges with every test against a government or the industrial and thinkers like Paul Ryan and the writers
spherical. other object space in a variety of forms and military complex, etc. The signal emphasizes of Radical Software in the 1970s seemed to
practices, leaving webobjects as skeletons and underlines the gesture, the act. have had already a sense of what is video’s
3rd Movement - Shiny Things Substantial for video wraps or liquid chains. Like hyper- capability, when they were more interested
What is the essence? The substance of video? text interactive video stacks build parent The photographic image is by definition in the signal character of video and saw vid-
So far If I tried to look from the outside, then and child relations, creating inner and out- the constitutional basic of cinema forming eo much more like an ecological system.
now I should move back inside. . . . Like with er worlds living with us, in us, around us, or movement through loading and reloading 4th Movement - Heaven on Earth
Google Earth zooming back into the bluish as granular and molecules forming tissues into projection. It is a mechanical informa- Gene Youngblood’s last sentences of Ex-
video ocean and deeper, inside shiny things, clothing us, and building new transparent tion surface, slice of a chunk of data. panded Cinema (1970):
crystals and diamonds of temporality ap- skins temporarily shifting.
pear. While I first tried to describe the inside A website is another slice of data - time “The limits of our language mean the limits
as assemblages, building blocks, lego-like Video becomes an easy packaging tool for an stamped and postal addressed - browsing of our world. A new meaning is equivalent to
objects, paradoxically chains appear fluid. I enormous amount of data, and a fast meth- appears as cinematic movement and creates a new word. A new word is the beginning of
am wishing to dive along with Dorothee and od of transport - big data simplified. The cinematic sequences and emotional cues. a new language. A new language is the seed
Alice, Humpty Dumpty as my companions to frame as a temporal unit of video is a block A score in music translates in an orchestral of a new world. We are making a new world
wonder through shiny things so bright. I am of data in a chain, a ring of pearls, similar to experience. The form of coding of the web as by making new language. We make new lan-
a flaneur strolling through the crystalline vi-the prayer beads that are used by members video creates a dynamic temporal cinematic guage to express our inarticulate conscious.
sion of structures similar to the ones of Brunoof various religious traditions. The chain of form. Our intuitions have flown beyond the limits
Taut, Paul Scheerbart and the architects and temporal audiovisual data organises in a of our language. The poet purifies the lan-
artist of German Expressionism after World repetition of spherical elements, containing The conventional cinema apparatus, the dis- guage in order to merge sense and symbol.
War I, moving chains of glass pearls at my themselves a similar substance. The frames positiv cinema itself turns out to be to slow We are a generation of poets. We’ve aban-
fingertips. like the pearls are a mode of counting and and to heavy. We need to confirm that the doned the official world for the real world.
coding time, stamping each other to keep audiovisual is not mechanic anymore. Cine- Technology has liberated us from the need
Paul Scheerbart’s influential treatise, Glass countability and structure. ma has moved. of officialdom. Unlike our fathers we trust
Architecture (Glasarchitektur, 1914) “foretold our senses as a standard for knowing how to
of a sublime, technocratic civilization whose Chains anytime and anywhere create and Already a long time ago Jean-Luc Godard act. There is only one real world: that of the
7 fine new patterns of meaning for us, 8
 of the individual. There are as many different
worlds as there are men. Only through tech-
References:
nology is the individual free enough to know
himself and thus to know his own reality. The
Adorno, Theodor. 1978. Culture and Admin-
process of art is the process of learning how
istration. Telos September 21, 1978: 93-111.
to think. When man is free from the needs
of marginal survival, he will remember what Cage, John. 1937. The Future of Music. [On-
he was thinking before he had to prove his line] Available from: http://www.medienkun-
right to live. Ramakrishna said that given a stnetz.de/source-text/41/
choice between going to heaven or hearing
a lecture on heaven, people would choose Manovich, Lev. 2001. The Language of New
the lecture. That is no longer true. Through Media. The MIT Press.
the art and technology of expanded cinema
we shall create heaven right here on earth.” Morse, Eric. 2015. Dreams from a Glass
[ 419] House: An Interview with Josiah McElheny.
The Paris Review. February 9, 2015. [Online]
Available from: https://www.theparisreview.
org/blog/2015/02/09/dreams-from-a-glass-
house-an-interview-with-josiah-mcelheny/ Andreas Treske presenting his
Treske, Andreas. 2015. Video Theory. Online paper
Video Aesthetics or the Afterlife of Video.
Bielefeld: Transcript.

Youngblood, Gene. 1970. Expanded Cinema.

New York. Available from: http://www.vasul-
ka.org/Kitchen/PDF_ExpandedCinema/book.
pdf

Audience at Mill Hall

9
10
Video Installations
 Gyrated: Pareidolia
by Elena Knox by Anjana Kothamachu
Hula audiovisual interface Video Installation

Synopsis: So much of our present image Synopsis: The word ‘pareidolia’ translates
consumption happens while sitting and to making meaning from random stimu-
watching a screen, our bodies static and lus. Integrating a variety of media (draw-
purely receptive. We’re encouraged to ing, animation, open source code and
vary our visual focal length, or to stretch artificial intelligence algorithm), the work
occasionally. But there’s no avoiding the addresses the intersection, or divergence
fact that, in the extremely digital present, of creation and consciousness; whilst play-
we are becoming more sedentary. ing with the idea that we project our reality
Gyrated brings the body back, rendering onto the world around us, rather than pas-
us, as image-consumers, kinetically pres- sively experiencing it. In the video there is
ent. This participatory installation uses a a construction and de-construction of the
custom-made hula hoop by which people experience of reality whilst under duress.
can “drive” video and sound playback. Not This video depicts the state of trauma as a
confined to the face and fingers, Gyrated movement from emptiness and alienation
asks you to work your booty to get the im- to bewitchment by dark powers, which
ages rolling, creating a fun, enlightening in turn leads to an eruption of huge af-
and reciprocal bond between body and fect. There’s a slow transformation of the
technology. protagonist that involves a breakdown in
Engaging both the nostalgic and contem- memory, awareness, identity and/or per-
porary popularity of hula hooping, ception. The narrative is an excavation and
Gyrated is a joyfully literal take on being re-working of memory, bleaching and re-
a cog in a machine. Thematically, it man- ordering reality in the process.
ifests the (post)human emplacement in
the networked image-machine itself, and
a lively critique of the disembodied, minor
effort usually spent in consuming digital
content. It requires a full-body commit-
ment to confronting our extreme digital
consumption practices, and of our actual
emplacement and complicity in the
13
image-scape. 14
 Special Service
by Ujwal Utkarsh Titchener’s Cage
(with Nayanatara Manchala and Pratyush Raman) by Nadav Assor
Interactive Video Installation Interactive Virtual Reality Installation

Synopsis: On January 17th 2016, Rohith Synopsis: Edward Titchener was the psy-
Vemula committed suicide. He had been chologist who coined the English word
facing opposition and even harassment at “empathy”, but in his original definition
the hands of his university administration the meaning had more to do with sub-
because he belonged to a particular caste jective sensory and aesthetic experience
and his active role in Dalit politics on cam- of other people than with purporting to
pus at the Hyderabad Central University. “feel what’s it’s like to be another person”
With his demise, a wave of protests swept - a claim which is too often made with re-
across the country. The state tried to and gards to the “empathy boosting” capabili-
succeeded in suppressing many of them. ties of VR technologies.
Amongst these was a candle light vigil Titchner’s Cage is a site-specific, Mixed
organised at India Gate, New Delhi, in Ro- Reality installation in which the viewer
hith’s memory led by his mother, Radhika puts on a VR headset only to be confront-
Vemula and attended by students from ed with the altered physicality of her own
all over the country, and his contingent body, and by a cast of visitors pulled from
university. Unsurprisingly, the state didn’t a growing archive captured earlier on-site
allow this peaceful vigil either. All the at- as 3D point-clouds. The visitors appear just
tendees including Radhika Vemula were as tangible as she is, and choose to address
detained by the police and taken by to a her in a variety of modes, from the inti-
nearby police station in DTC buses, nor- mate to the confrontational. Each, when
mally the public transport vehicle of the recorded, was given complete freedom:
city, which were marked ‘00 Special Ser- the viewer can choose at any point to eject
vice’. This piece is a reflection on the series herself from her body, and acquire an “out
of events that took place on the evening of body perspective” on the interaction
of the ‘peaceful vigil’, symbolically trying between her and these ghostly visitors.
to light the candle that wasn’t lit that day.
This piece is an interactive piece which
plays till the candle on the table is kept lit.

15 16
 What you don’t see is what you get Splintering the Gaze: Harun Farocki
by Sharath Chandra Ram by Vasanthi Mariadass
Audio Visual Interactive Installation

Synopsis: This piece of work shifts the Synopsis: The work of interpretation is
critical focus away from the aesthetics of never complete or completed, and yet a
fetishised interfaces of access amplified few adamantly remain and block others
by today’s networked consumer tech- from emerging, therefore, reinterpretation
nologies, towards invisible broadcast in- is an untiring vital activity of Harun Faro-
frastructures and data ecosystems that cki’s (1958-2014) composition. His images
exist in demarcated ‘signal’ territories that move slowly from one to the other, often
harness the natural re-source of the wire- pausing, gradually forming image and
less electromagnetic spectrum as well as thought on the lingering pupil of the eye:
terrestrial inter-networks and infrastruc- The image is etched and multiplicities of
tures. It revisits practices from art- science meanings collide on the retina.
explorations that deal with information His works are archives with a difference
encoding for visual imagery, that point to allowing re-interpretations or “other” in-
possibilities in hybrid media networks for terpretations repressed by the politics of
remote access, distribution and archiving imperial forces: they are predominantly
and opens up discussions around telecom populated by anti-war politics and his cri-
and access policies. From intercepting im- tique of media and technology. His cam-
agery from the local TV broadcast stations era excavates and sutures images with sur-
and polar orbiting satellites to ways of in- gical precision and follows the Deleuzian
terpreting film as a sonic remote re-trans- n+1 logic of the “and,” wherein obvious
mission of text, its also consider ways in or well-known readings managed by me-
which offline spaces and online interfaces dia doctored politics are emphatic but a
could be bridged by experimental media cognitive irritation is at once initiating the
broadcast infrastructures. emergence of alternative meanings.
The formal and the political are inextrica-
bly entangled in his work hence discus-
sions on the two works, namely, Serious
Games (2009/2010), and War at a Distance
(2003) will engage with Gulf and other re-
cent “interventionist” wars in the middle
17 east
18
Video Screening
programmes
 Memories of Inheritance of emotional gradients moving between
anger and happiness. It highlights the
Christin Bolewski’s Shizen unravels in the necessity of the human spectator in mak-
traditional Japanese scroll format while re- ing sense of these algorithms.
flecting on the conflicting relationship be-
tween tradition and technological progress. Jillian Mayer’s #Postmodem is a series of
Bolewski ultimately tackles a larger global works that plays in the digital realm while
question and challenge for mankind: to co- incorporating interactive and technolog-
exist in harmony or to control, master and ical elements to create a non-linear meta
narrative.
Curatorial note

By: Aishwarya Viswanathan, Keerthi K Shastri, Neha Kasana, exploit nature?

Shruthi Rao,Soubhagya Pai, Syeda Zainab Akbar
Zlatko Cosic’s Only the Chimney Stays ex- Meta Meditation
plores themes of identity, memories and
displacement post the Yugoslovian war.The Rahee Punyashlok ‘s Noise Reduction II:
In a world plunging towards the future in the hope of a digital utopia, fragmentation of the visuals and sounds Chinatown engages with the transition
we are constantly confronted by conflicts between the physical and the are reflections of the displacement of peo- from celluloid to digital by re-enacting the
digital, the past and the future. The tension between preserving roots and ple, experiences and the way we processes ‘death of film’ while playing around with
keeping up with technological change forms an important point of en- memories. the idea of the cheap digital copy through
quiry for this video programme. It compels us to reconsider histories and a reinterpretation of Polanski’s film China-
traditions, thereby challenging the dominant narrative of progress. Mona Vatamanu and Florin Tudor’s Gagarin’s town.
Tree is an interview with philosopher Ovidiu
Straddling both physical and digital spaces, videos are becoming increas- Tichindeleanu, who proposes a new histor- Anna Beata Baranska’s Recycle explores
ingly ubiquitous. In this hyper populated video landscape, the ontology of ical consciousness by engaging with issues the manipulation of news and information
video becomes an essential line of enquiry. Digital appropriation seems to of space exploration, imagination and prop- through audio and video distortions. All
eliminate indexicality, materiality, sensory experience and ultimately the aganda in the socialist utopia. content is recycled and television broad-
essence of classical video. However, digital duplication also renders the cast becomes an abstract image, leaving
real world ‘original’ imperfect, through the losses and glitches that the the field to open a multi-faceted interpre-
film and video tapes suffer during digital transferance. tation.
Lost in Remediation
Several of the videos included in this programme question their own Mikio Saito’s Stripes too Stripes evokes a
Duncan Poulton’s Pygmalian attempts to ad- sense of primitive motion pictures. Con-
form: including their histories, constituent components and modes of
dress ancient ideas of perfection and beauty stant repetitive motion of stripes produces
circulation and consumption. The videos borne out of this investigation
that have been carried forward into the digi- the characteristic movement of the analog
tend to be experimental and self-reflective, tackling questions of what the
tal age. It explores the notion that perfection image.
eye sees and what the mind perceives.
no longer resides in objects themselves, but
in the very act of their faultless and perma- Lohit Grover’s STVq TrEm is an experimen-
The screenings are categorized into three programmes: Memories of In-
nent duplication. tal short that can be viewed as an exercise
heritance, Lost in Remediation and Meta Meditation, which are accom-
panied by eight single-channel installations. All the videos will play from in non-narrative cinema. Parallel storylines
Katya Yakubov’s Maps to the In-Between and mediums (subtitles, audio and video)
11am-7pm, through the duration of Video Vortex, from 23-25 February. constructs a landscape in a digital space with communicate the narrative to the audi-
recurring characters and hints of a narrative. ence, all jumbled up.
The physical space in its digital manifesta-
tion is initially enhanced by technology until
eventually it begins to turn on it and the im-
agery begins to fall apart.

Ruben van de Ven and Christina Cochior’s

collaborative project, Eye Without a Face is a
catalogue of faces of varying expressions. An
emotion detection algorithm selects facial
expressions uncritically resulting in a portrait
21 22
 #postmodem
Jillian Myers| 2013 | HD video |14’30”

#PostModem is a comedic, satirical sci-fi mu-

sical based on the theories of Ray Kurzweil
and other futuvrists. It’s the story of two Mi-
ami girls and how they deal with the techno-
logical singularity, as told through a series of
cinematic tweets.

CCTV East
Zlatko Cosic|2010 |video| 3’
Synopses

CCTV East (Close Circuit TV East) touches

themes of freedom, surveillance and privacy.
The holes in the Berlin Wall serve as camera
views that switch through eight different
angles, looking from the west to the east
part of Berlin. As the views change, a girl in
a red jacket appears, passing by, stopping
and looking at the viewer. She is an ordinary
person who wants to escape and change her
life. The uneasiness of surveillance and loss of
privacy makes people vulnerable and emp-
ty. This work focuses on individuals, whose
freedom is affected by government decisions
and political games.

Eye Without a Face

Ruben Van & Christina Cochior | 2016 |
single projection video |11’32”
Whether the video frames are ordered by
time or by emotion will not make a differ-
ence to a computer. For it, both orderings
are just as logical. However, for the human
spectator the reordered display of frames be-
comes a disruptive process. In Eye Without A
Face, the human is positioned as a required
agent for meaning making in an algorithmic
procedure. Cristina Cochior and Ruben van
de Ven went manually through the Eye Film
Museum’s public collection in Amsterdam,
and catalogued faces by surrendering them
to an emotion detection algorithm. Cutting
from one face to another, its uncritical selec-
tion produced a new portrait of emotional
23 gradients moving in-between anger and
24
happiness.
 Fernweh/Heimweh Maps to the In-Between
Florine Mougal |2016 |digital animation |45’ Katya Yakubov|2015 | HD video |7’23’’

Made out of personal archive pictures and A mining of a digital space finds charac-
accidental encounters, the film shuttles be- ters and forms in dialogue, and a playful
tween wanderlust and homesickness: up hint of narrative begins to emerge in this
and down, in and out, or was it the opposite? twice-appropriated landscape. Eventually,
Itʼs a passengerʼs smooth poetry on human the great apparition lets it all fall down.
desire and confusion. Itʼs a composite of re-
sidual experiences, a tale of travellers beyond
space and even further. The sharp black and
white collage aesthetic refers to silent surre-
alistic films. But the digital image composed May I Dance?
with the use of a computer, is pixelated, in- Vasco Diogo | 2010 | HD video | 3’55”
carcerated roughly. The sound performance
accompanying the visual part is another lay- May I dance? is a short video-dance piece
er. The complete film emerges only during its based on the recording of ordinary move-
creation process, its hybridization. ments that were not previously rehearsed
nor based on existing music. The impos-
sible choreography was constructed by
a multi-track chroma editing process,
Gagarin’s Tree fragmenting the performer’s identity. It is
Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor|2016 | film | influenced by noise, punk, hip-hop, glam
22’50” disco and a desire to experiment with an
aesthetics of failure. In Video Voretx XI it
The film is a video interview with philosopher was shown as a single channel experimen-
Ovidiu Tichindeleanu who engages with issues tal film.
of space exploration, imagination and propa-
ganda in the socialist utopia. The post-commu-
nist condition as liberal colonisation is linked
‒ Ovidiu proposes ‒ to other sites of decolo- Meta-Mata
nisation through a new historical conscious- Arya Sukapura Putra|2013 |HD video | 3’
ness. The protagonist’s reflection departs from
the unstable nature of today’s ruins: these are
Meta-Mata is a ‘metaphysical sensory per-
the ruinous future of different pasts, of dif-
ception’. How the eye metaphysically blurs
ferent messianisms, or modes of conceiving
out the boundaries of perception between
the notion of historical destination in the last
real-virtual and private-public spheres. The
decades. Ovidiu’s analysis revolves around the
eye systematically invades our neighbor-
reciprocal construction of pasts and futures,
hood. It also identifies and records all so-
ideas of renewal or historical horizon, tempo-
cio-cultural phenomenon in societies. This
ral or spatial ‘elsewheres’. The backdrop for the
video criticizes the notions of psychologi-
conversation the film proposes is the Gagarin
cal terror and the omnipresence of surveil-
Youth Centre, in Chisinau, Moldavia, where
lance in our societies.
most of the footage was filmed. Now deserted,
and waiting to be replaced by a construction
more adapted to today’s oligarchic liberalism,
the building reads like a palimpsest of unreal-
ized historical projections, perhaps captured in
the large mosaic of outer space labor: a worker
ploughing the universe.
25 26
 Nano Sound Postcards from beyond, from elsewhere ..
Giovanni Salice|2015 | Single Channel Chiara Passa | 2017| interactive digital
Video| 6’19” widgets

The video is a collection of images that have Postcards from beyond, from elsewhere. . ., is
been discovered in 2013 at the Center for a series of several interactive widgets ready
Functional Nanomaterials – Oak Ridge. They to be installed between the desktop interface
appear for the first time on the screen and and the dashboard, just writing few simple
show nanostructures that have never been command lines in Terminal. The widgets un-
seen before. However, the widest physical fold in a very liminal space/place: between
manifestation of these processes is still so the network and the computer - between
small that it can only be described by using the Internet and the post Internet. So, the
data. In order to make even the smallest widgets are the conjunction between the
parts/deepest layer of the matter compre- medium and the message. Postcards from
hensible, the data has been transformed into beyond, from elsewhere. . ., is the metaphor
sound by the process of sonification. of a new imaginary and interactive media
that would mediate impossible desires be-
tween machine and audience. These sorts of
‘spiritualist widgets’ are absorbed into an illu-
sory threshold, hence they can be augment-
ed through AR, or they can answer replying to
some existential and philosophic questions...
Only the Chimney Stays being totally dynamic and interactive.
Zlatko Cosic|2010| video| 5’30”

Fifteen years after the war ended, I felt it was Pygmalion

time to address the past. As the result of the Duncan Poulton| 2016| single channel
war, I lost my Yugoslavian identity and re- digital video |7’
fused to follow others in choosing national
and religious affiliations, which were only
Pygmalion attempts to address how ancient
worsening the conflict. The neutral position
ideas of perfection and beauty have been
I chose partially inspired my work Only The
carried forward into the digital age. In literal-
Chimney Stays. The fragmentation of the
ly moving through, inside and beyond forms
visuals and sounds are reflections of the
of antiquity, Pygmalion attempts to reconcile
displacement of people, experiences and
the difference between the crafted original
the way we processes memories. The poetic
object and its weightless, infinitely replica-
narrative is the recollection of my personal
ble computer- generated double. Pygmalion
experience and the effects of not belonging
contemplates what it is to be a statue - the
here or there. Mixed with uneasy memories
tragedy of being a still object in a constantly
is a simple beauty, which moves me forward
moving world – and explores the notion that
to fully enjoy my life but still be aware of the
perfection no longer resides in objects them-
issues that surround us.
selves, but in the very act of their faultless
and permanent duplication.

27 28
 Noise Reduction II: Chinatown Shizen
Rahee Punyashlok |2016|digital video |16’ Christian Bolewski |2015| HD video| 7’16”
The lament over the ‘death’ of film is re-en- Shizen draws upon tradition and contem-
acted digitally, as the screen-as-landscape re- porary video making techniques. The video
acts to the material exegeses of film-scratch- unravels in the traditional Japanese scroll
es, splices, sprockets, dust etc., that are format while reflecting on the conflicting re-
digitally [de/re]constructed, in (im)probable lationship between tradition and technologi-
verisimilitude to celluloid. This re-action hap- cal progress. A poem by the famous Japanese
pens over the ‘media offline’ screen, which poet Yamabe no Akahito is juxtaposed against
has become characteristic of the most ma- nature and the changing technological and
terial quality that our digital ‘editing suites’ cultural landscape of the world. Bolewski ul-
can afford to have. Supplementing the same timately tackles a larger global question and
are a sound design, voice-overs, and texts challenge for mankind: to coexist in harmony
which bring out complex inter-relations in or to control, master and exploit nature?
the video including, a hint at the injunction
of the digital media as a kind of a made-in-
China product, as well as a (post) post-colo-
nial reading of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown
among other things.

Recycle Signal Works

Anna Beata Baranska |2013 | HD video Elia Vargas |2016 | video |9’10”
The world is an arena of continuous events,
conflicts and wars. Every day in every coun- Signal Works is a single channel video and
try, we receive an overwhelming amount musical composition exploring repetition in
of information from media. News is often analog and digital bodies. Working through
manipulated to serve a specific ideology. TV habitual gestures and flows, Signal Works
images for the average viewer determine concerns itself with the production of mean-
current trends. This video is an expression of ing that emerges from the representation
rebellion against the worthless content that of repeated movement and embodiment.
is broadcasted by popular television produc- How do pixels and particles flow through
tion companies. Content distribution through different spaces? What happens when com-
television is subjected to intentional manipu- mon movement breaks down and common
lations, through consistent audio and video meaning disappears? How do these pro-
distortion. Disturbances initially are small but cesses relate through digital and analog
they gradually deform the image by reducing space? How can water be used as a tool to
it to the multiplicated center line of RGB pixels think through material information flows?
in CRT TV, which is accompanied by classical Additionally, Signal Works is a platform for
music. Television then becomes an object of video signal exhibition, featuring the work of
audiovisual art. All content is recycled and artists working with signal, including: trans-
television broadcast becomes an abstract im- media composer and artist, Andrew Blanton,
age, giving the field to open a multi-faceted sourceless video artist, Andy Puls, composer
interpretation. and net artist, Gavin Gamboa, and cellular bi-
ologist, Breanne Sparta.
29 30
 Stripes too stripes The circle of life
Mikio Saito| 2010 |single channel video Milan Zulic | 2015 |PAL video on loop| music:
loop| 8’14” Adrian Portia| 3’30”
The ancestors of cinema (optical toys, ear- Circle of life is my old grandma’s lace which I
ly projection devices, and visual research at unlaced, part by part, and scanned each part
the pre-cinema time) had simple but indis- of the lace to move them in a line to form a
pensable factors for today’s visual devices, new lace created through digital technology.
and they are magical and mysterious though This is a story of my contact with my ances-
we are very used to seeing motion pictures. tors, and the circle of life of each of us.
Constant repetitive motion of stripes are un-
der the basic concept of recreating a sense
of primitive motion pictures. Repetitive mo-
tion itself were one of the important factors
in moving image since pre-cinema time, for The Separation Loop
example, optical toy Thaumatrope which has Leyla Rodriguez| 2015 | video |3’56”
two pictures appeared to combine into a sin-
gle image due to persistence of vision. And
The separation loop: the phrase is neither
the horse’s sequential photographs shot by
the only odd thing, nor the only paradox of
English photographer E.Muybridge with mul-
the film. It is emblematic, since the film over-
tiple cameras are one of the earliest motion
comes our ways of being, to see, the status
pictures with loop structure. As for the film
of objects and living creatures. It shapes its
viewer Kinetoscope of Thomas Edison, the
territory bringing closer landscapes of dif-
machine itself was the loop structure. I tried
ferent spaces or continents. Background?
to produce the characteristic movement of
Argentina. An island, big, then islets, a high
analog sort of way, and reproduce the illu-
mountain country and a close-up on a stone,
sion which moving image have originally had
streams and the sea, very close, first over
at the pre- cinema time.
flown then faded in. Planes and shooting
axes diverge - as the camera moves back or
STVq TrEm comes closer, approaching precisely or mov-
Lohit Grover|2015| video | 7’14” ing away - from this invention of an earth
where to live without more precision. This
union of diverse regions concerns animals as
The video explores juxtaposition and chance
well: a lama on a mountainous terrain before
occurrences across three mediums, namely
a close-up on its moving ears, reindeers run-
subtitles, audio and video. It tries to link the
ning through the steppe, sheep, close, then
existential with the arbitrary seen through
far, on the rocks. All fitting in this geography,
various lenses ranging from poetry, to porn,
they mingle in the landscape, but a Przewal-
to the random musings of philosophers on
ski horse with its dense mane, its back cov-
philosophies and other philosophers, to
ered with a tablecloth instead of a saddle, be-
devilish innate character of human beings
comes leitmotiv and rapid scansion, as well
as expressed in the world of wrestling enter-
as a strange character: a young woman, seen
tainment. This experimental short uses four
once already, emerging from a pile of fabrics
parallel storylines and the three mediums to
to unfurl the strange flag of this non-country,
construct a jumbled-up narrative for the audi-
of all the countries. The city and its artifacts
ence. While it could be termed as an exercise
are being visited, jumping from one to the
in non-narrative cinema, on closer reading,
other without a logical route. The movement
connections emerge between the four sto-
becomes more complex as the circle of the
rylines allowing the a spectator to formulate
film takes possession of the movement as
their own narrative.
31 well as of the patterns. 32
 Under Blue White Mountain
Yao Cong |2015 | single chanel video | 6’38” Emma Charles|video|16mm transferred to
HD video| 20’30”
Under Blue explores gender politics through
beauty, pleasure, disgust, danger, violence,
White Mountain is a 16mm docu-fiction film
the erotic and the artificial, the dance of the
is set primarily in the Pionen data center, a
brush and the movement of the camera,
former Cold War-era civil defence bunker in
imparting an uneasy feeling of voyeuristic
Stockholm redesigned in 2008 by architect
power to the viewer. Under Blue broadly
Albert France-Lanord as a data center to
speaking fits into the performance and body
house servers for clients, which at one point
art trend in video art, but its exclusive use of
included Wikileaks and The Pirate Bay. White
close ups and the effect of not really under-
Mountain uncovers the varying forms of tem-
standing what we’re looking at. In the work,
porality brought about through an explora-
the fragmented body, body movement, color
tion of data space and geology. Gathering
and textures appear between real and surreal,
vibrational and electromagnetic sound from
our attention to those colors and textures is
the rock face above the data center as well as
greatly rewarded, even as we understand the
deep inside the server room itself, a sound-
context even less.
scape has been created both revealing and
processing the reverberations of the hidden
environment.

Vision II
Julian Scordato|2012 |audio-visual | 7’|3’20” Ella Talking Art
Vision II blends elements – including two Katharina Kakar|video| 3’01”
graphic scores by Robert Moran and the
soundscape of the city of Venice – which
came together accidentally, as objects of Katharina Kakar works in a variety of media,
a dream and a vision. Not the vision of the including drawing, installation, text and vid-
world (i.e. the cosmology of positive and eo. Her creations engage with the spaces she
negative), but the counterpoint between works and lives in, often in an attempt to un-
appearance and anatomy of the image in its derstand collective history through personal
sound quality. The visual part determines the narratives. Ella, the parrot, was named after
sound design aspects: it generates and con- the famous jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, and was
trols the sound, integrating the particularity born in India in December 2014. She started to
of the instant and the contingent. speak when she was only around six months
old. Today, she talks, sings and plays all day
long. Every morning Ella and I practice her
vocabulary. Ella realized early that language
is a means to connect and interact with me,
which allows me to train her easily. Her new-
est accomplishment is counting till five and
learning a Buddhist mantra.

33 34
Workshops
 Beyond the State of Internet Criticism:
Lessons to be learnt for Contemporary
Art Criticism

With Geert Lovink

This workshop consists of two parts. The

first part will address latest development
in internet criticism, its latest issues and
differences in comparison with, for in-
stance, literary and film criticism. The
second part will focus on new tech-
niques art criticism can use to go beyond
its paper ghetto of the art magazine and
the newspaper. How can critics use on-
line video, podcasting, blogs and social
media? How does the use of these tools
change the relationship towards the art
works, the artists, the art system, and last
37 but not least, the audience? 38
 Networked Performances and
Ubiquitious Webjaying
With Anne Roquigny
The Internet can be perceived as a gi-
gantic external hard drive, a stockage
mechanism which allows us to down-
load an infinity of visual, textual and au-
dio content in real-time. The WEBJAYS
performances are envisaged as online
explorations and incursions. Artists, cu-
rators are invited to use the device and
to imagine playlists of websites. The
playlists reveal unexpected associations,
aesthetic narratives based on online re-
sources. The <surf> a typically intimate
and individual activity becomes a shared
and collective experience where the
viewer in invited. The WEBJAYS perfor-
mances aim to show that the internet is
not only a commercial space, but also a
space full of teeming artistic potential.
The WEBJAYS performance draws upon
the material generated during the 4 day
workshop that Anne conducted the fol-
lowing artists in Kochi: Jitin Abraham,
Webjays performance at the Mill hall, Mattanchery Kiran Sasi, Akshay Das, Aditya Patil,
Antony KA.

39 40
Invited Video
Curations
 REIMAGINING THE NEW MAN – political research and projections, lecturer method) and their followers from USA – Jo- List of Artists and Videos
a selection of videos from Central Asia Natalia Kuntuvdii, provided some futurolog- nas Mekas (the founder of Anthology Film
(Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) ical scenarios pertaining to the further devel- Archives), Craig Boldwin (“found footage” 1. ALLA RUMYANTSEVA [Tajiksitan]
compiled by Stefan Rusu opment of this situation in Afghanistan and principle), and some other filmmakers. The I MET A GIRL
Central Asia after the NATO military forces aim was to share this experience with par- 2014 | video | 4’02 |
The presented texts and visual materials withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014. ticipants from other Central Asian countries.
are the results of joint efforts on the part of Two other contributions related to this topic 2. MURATBEK ULUU AYTEGIN [Kyrgyzstan]
the Dushanbe Art Ground team. The aim of The theoretical part of the project (the public were presented in lecture part of the work- WELCOME TO THE NEW COUNTRY
the project was to understand, analyze and program) generated a climate of engaged shop, i.e. John Davis’s text on legal issues sur- 2014 | video | 3’38 |
question civic engagement as well as partici- conversation and debate, which became an rounding intellectual ownership and Mark
patory practices in community development important incentive for the workshop partic- Boswell’s writings on the principle of col- 3. SURAYO TUICHIEVA [Tajiksitan]
and to transfer this knowledge through the ipants and general audience. This part of the lectivity in relation to the development and GENERATION “NEXT”
use of social and visual media in Tajikistan. project consisted of lectures and films select- consolidation of independent initiatives and 2014 | video | 4’55 |
The DAG center’s resources were mobilized ed by the project team in order to introduce film production in the face of the dominance
to fulfill this project. Thanks to the enthusi- concrete examples of civic responsibility and of commercial film industry in US. 4. ALEXANDR NIKOLAEV [Uzbekistan]
asm of the Tajik art community and contri- youth participation in various aspects of so- MANKIND
butions by participants from Uzbekistan, cial life. The collected archival film material served 2014 | video | 10’00 |
Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan the project was as the basis for workshop activities, which
carried out with close interaction on a re- In addition, it is worth mentioning that the centered on the appropriation of found foot- 5. KHOLIKOV JAMSHED [Tajikistan]
gional level. project was preceded by intense preparation age . Analogue films were digitalized by the THE ENEMY, THE ADVERSARY, THE HOSTILE
and research of archive resources. Efforts workshop participants and then re-contex- SOMEONE OR SOMETHING
The project concept was partly inspired by were particularly focused on the identifying tualized by including new content. Thus, the 2014 | Video | 6’06 |
the principles of agitprop and mobility de- and acquiring some 80 items analogue 16- workshop participants created new video
veloped by A. Medvedkin and D. Vertov. In mm films for the center’s collection. These works based on a film script developed in the 6. SULEIMAN SHARIFI [Tajikistan]
addition to the production of films the pro- films were selected in accordance with the workshop and using materials from various THE DAY OF GROUNDHOG
ject included a number of trips with pres- major trajectories in the development of the archival sources (including the Dushanbe 2014 | video | 6’18 |
entations and screenings of the video-films former socialistic society (dealing with topics Art Ground’s film archive). The film produc-
created during the workshop and of selected such as the state economy, political educa- tion process was accompanied by working
analogue 16-mm films from the Soviet era to tion, urban construction, health, civic duty sessions with the project team and intense
popularize practices of civic engagement in practices, youth organizations, etc.). Such communication with invited lecturers. The
Tajik society. films (features and short films, documenta- results of all these efforts are collected in a
ries, etc.) were distributed within the USSR publication, which includes texts prepared
The idea behind this project was to provide a by the relevant film department that exist- by the lectors and invited media artists,
project-based experience to remote regions ed practically in all Soviet republics. Such photo documentation of the theoretical and
of the country. They also aimed to create a departments distributed feature films and practical parts of the project and a DVD with
platform for sharing ideas about how the newsreels in rural and remote areas through- the workshop results.
attitudes towards and practice of civic re- out the entire country.
sponsibilities changed in Tajikistan before In conclusion, I would like to add that the
and after the country gained independence During the project preparation the carefully workshop “Re-imaging the New Man” was
in 1991. Analytical research on the altered selected analogue films were the basis for designed as part of “Practicing civic duties
practices of civic duties in Tajikistan has the practical part of the project, the “Reim- through debates, social and visual media”
been thoroughly carried out and published aging the New Man” workshop. The con- project, that also included a public program,
by lecturers such as Muhidindzhan Faizul- tent of the workshop was jointly developed a series of public debates related to reeval-
laev and Zebinisso Iskandarova. The project by the Dushanbe Art Ground team in close uation of practices of civic engagement and
experience also included an analysis of the collaboration with media artist John Davis youth involvement into this process as well
given regional context, i.e. the developmen- from San Francisco, USA, and Mark Boswell, as a number of film screenings and presenta-
tal processes of Tajikistan and other Central theorist and video-artist from New York, USA. tions of the project results in various regions
Asian countries, as determined by the dis- Our main task was to integrate the legacy of of Tajikistan (Khorog-GBAO, Khujand- Sogd).
integration of the Soviet Union followed by filmmakers from the Soviet avant-garde, in-
the impact of internal political and religious cluding the conception of film language de- Stefan Rusu
processes in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. veloped by A. Medvedkin (critical approach – Project Curator, Dushanbe, 2015
In addition, working from contemporary to reality), Dziga Vertov (“Kino-Eye” montage
43 44
 CologneOFF 2017 India: Asia Focus curated by Wilfried Agricola
de Cologne
From W:OW Art Film & Video Festival (We Are One World // Art Film &
Video Festival)

ALLA RUMYANTSEVA [Tajiksitan]

I MET A GIRL Curatorial statement
2014 | video | 4’02 | Anupong Charoenmitr (Thailand)
The selection Focus/Asia includes artists
To Face, 2014, 5:55
from Western and Eastern areas of Asia, eg.
One important thing that human beings
Palestine, Israel, Turkey, Iran, Singapore, Thai-
require for understanding the event is “the
land, Taiwan, China, Philippines and Japan.
confrontation” with the situation by the in-
The very short “moving images“ use a com-
stinct of self.
mon pictorial language which is character-
ized by individual aesthetics and philosoph-
Mehmet ÖGÜT (Turkey)
ical concepts – Ying and Yang are nearly in
ALEXANDR NIKOLAEV [Uzbekistan] The Basket Seller, 2014, 5:40
harmony, wouldn’t be there a typical subtle
MANKIND I tried to visualize this story belonging to my
criticism, which does not accuse, however
2014 | video | 10’00 | childhood. My aim is not to communicate
– abstractly transformed into symbols and
a story to the viewer but enable the viewer
metaphors which need to be decoded first.
construct his own.
Differently than the familiar narratives of a
short or feature film, these videos start a pro-
Noriyuki Suzuki (Japan)
cess or even multiple processes, but do not
Fragment, 2012, 6:31
KHOLIKOV JAMSHED complete them - leaving the viewer in con-
Urban landscape fragmented
[Tajikistan] fusion inviting him to complete the process
THE ENEMY, THE via reflecting. In this way, each video is incor-
MURATBEK ULUU AYTEGIN [Kyrgyzstan] Shuai-Cheng Pu (Taiwan)
ADVERSARY, THE prating a kind of interactive component. The
WELCOME TO THE NEW COUNTRY Consciousness Spin Project, 2015, 5:39
HOSTILE SOMEONE OR presentation format in shape of a screening
2014 | video | 3’38 | Consciousness Spin Project develops a struc-
SOMETHING giving the viewer only one chance to view
ture beading delirious thinking and disorder
2014 | Video | 6’06 | requires a particular attention, also because
thoughts using video and sound media to
the non-linear structures of the individual
represent the ideas.
video and the screening program, as such,
are generating again and again - the unex-
Richard Legaspi (Philippines)
pected.
Making Love with the Wind, 2015, 9:40
Making Love with the Wind is a poetic doc-
Details of Artists and Videos:
umentary shot in the mountainous province
of Biella, Italy. It tells the never-ending jour-
Sai Hua Kuan (Singapore)
ney of countless migrants about existence,
Space Dawing No.5, 2009, 1:02
dreams, life mysteries and space for accept-
Space Drawing No.5 was created in 2009 in
ance along with how they fortuitously fall
Russia. Through the simplest yet most funda-
in love to a place that they can never own
mental function of a line – to divide, subtract
– similar to the wind.
and define a space, Space Drawing attempts
to capture a moment of transitory energy.
Sanglim Han (S.Korea)
Bloom, 2012, 3:35
Mani Mehrvarz (Iran)
A woman is lying on the floor upside down.
Wistful Affection For The Past, 2013, 3:06
Fluids, which look like thick slimy paint, start
In this video I have tried to deliberate about
to drip down on her face. She seems to be a
our historical background and how our per-
SURAYO TUICHIEVA [Tajiksitan] part of the painting.
ception of it is shaped.Through this inves-
GENERATION “NEXT” tigation I was interested in the question of
45 2014 | video | 4’55 | SULEIMAN SHARIFI [Tajikistan] how we define our historical memories with
THE DAY OF GROUNDHOG images and sounds.
46
2014 | video | 6’18 |
 CologneOFF 2017 India: World Focus there is no turning back. Just as the butterfly Oksana Chepelyk (Ukraine)
Weigang Song (China) in this video: “Fourteen seconds to decide, «Letter from Ukraine», 2014, 7:31
– The Refugee Film Collection curated
Walling Dissensus, 2014, 5:01 will you stay or fly away?” Whether the but- Letter from Ukraine, fed by obscured history
by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne terfly decides to stay or to fly, the circle closes and political urgencies acts as a catalyst for
Experience in any social activity is primarily
a physical experience. Expressed through anyway and takes away any possibility to go the culturally charged encounters – a shared
From W:OW Art Film & Video Festival (We back on the tracks. breath – that materialize in the performance.
movement, voice and inevitable violence,
Are One World // Art Film & Video Festival) It is referring to the civilisational breaks we
our body is manipulated by our personal
consciousness, which forms different visions Mauricio Saenz (Mexico) live now on the background with unnotice-
of collective behaviors in different social ac- Curatorial statement Flight simulator, 2014, 4:17 able changes.
tivities. The selection “Focus/World“ is based on Flight simulator explores the concept of ob-
“The Refugee Film Collection“ at The New struction as a result of geographic borders Mohamed Thara (Morocco)
Shahar Marcus (Israel) Museum of Networked Art – initiated by and their given limits. By means of images As Long As I Can Hold My Breath, 2016, 9:40
Seeds, 2012, 5:03 Wilfried Agricola de Cologne in 2015 on oc- generated at the banks of the Bravo River, Video installation that consists of three vid-
The works deals with mines that are still casion of the international refugee crisis. The in the Matamoros, Mexico and Brownsville, eos projected into a black room. The first
buried in the ground after the war was over. selected videos created by artists from Ger- US border, the work converges on the idea video tells of the sinking of a migrant boat
Three professional mine-removers looking many, Israel, Morocco, France, Netherlands, of the impossibility of a displacemet to a de- south of the Italian island of Lampedusa. An
for mines in no-man’s-land find some and re- Mexico, Croatia and Ukraine, deal with the sired objective and the reaction caused by audiovisual recontextualization of the ar-
move them. The artist, dressed as a pioneer, globalwide phenomenon of transmigration the feeling of transgression that every limit chives of the sinking. Opposite, the second
follows, while sowing seeds on the same which these days have acquired a particular or prohibition carries within. video shows swallows that leave Europe in
track the mines were removed from. The relevance through military conflicts and ter- autumn to winter in Africa. In the middle,
sowing as a healing gesture suggests a new ror, as well as poverty and lack of perspec- Les Riches Douaniers (Gilles Richard & Fab- the third video is composed of excerpts from
hope to come. tives, exacerbated by failed national and rice Zoll) (France) poems by Georg Trakl, an expressionist Ger-
international politics and economics and the The Lonely Migrant, 2011, 16:15 man-speaking Austro-Hungarian poet who
Mohammed Harb (Palestine) natural and human-made climate change Developped by modifying the look of GTA IV, died of an overdose of cocaine in 1914, and
Without Windows, 2009, 5:00 resulting in countless individual human The Lonely Migrant is a meditation on transi- committed suicide at the age of 27. Poet of
A work of video art-making in the Gaza Strip - tragedies. The videos offer a view on differ- ence, mirage, and illusion. Slouching towards the apocalypse, decadences and transgres-
the Gaza captive between four walls. The vid- ent sides of transmigration, for those who the Promised Land, a man reaches the end sions. His poetry is dark, morbid, evil and
eo is reflecting the view of human life, a bond migrate an uprooting, but on the other hand of the road. perverse that feels the proximity of death,
to the news and television screens. also a chance for survival. But for those who are still relevant. At VV XI this was played as a
are supposed to give them “shelter” migrants single chanel screening
Yovista Ahtajida (Indonesia) are too often percieved as a threat causing a Johannes Christopher Gérard (Germany)
Re-Interpreting Trump, 2016, 1:15 loss of priviledges manifested in foreclosure, disorientated displacement, 2016, 05:02 Lucija Konda Labas (Croatia)
A Young, Moslem, Jihadist tries to re-inter- xenophobia, racism and violence. The artists The work tries to reflect the feelings of dis- We are the dogs – Wir sind Hunde, 2016, 1:11
preting Donald Trump Speech. Turns out, in this video programme reflect on ideas of placement , the traumatic experiences and The work explores the multiple levels of
it has the same goal, language and gesture empathy and humanity. flash backs , finally the mental disorienta- concept of humanity in today’s (post-hu-
even though they were contradicted. tion often resulting in a trauma. Matters you man) time. In general it comments/criticizes
Details of Artists and Videos: can´t notice everytime from outside of a the very common inhuman approach and
refugee treatment of those who are different, subor-
dinate, weaker or unprivileged. It is referring
Maria Korporal (Netherlands) to the actual circumstances of the refugees
Stay or fly away?, 2015, 0:49 Masha Maria Yozefpolsky (Israel) on the borders of the European Union, and
One of the most neglected aspects about ref- In Between SiO2, 2016, 10:00 openly asking questions about the state of
ugees is that they are in a situation of emer- In BetweenSiO2 is a critical video poetry of humanity in the modern era.
gency in which they have to take a decision our turbulent contemporary existence in a
immediately, and whatever they decide world of diminishing resources. This is an era The project emphasizes the main artist
of immeasurable abandonment while our- concept: “The being (the dog) which is not
selves are being stolen from us, lacking the human is more humane than the man.” The
‘shelter within’, we are drifting towards con- authenticity of this discourse is provided in
tingent territories of obscure perspectives. artist’s text on German called “Wir sind Hun-
de” narrated by indicative voice of a girl.

47 48
 a site of displacement - a space where data demic death, culminating in a fiery rebirth in
German language in this context is a sym- people. Berta Caceres, a Honduran activist becomes relegated and expelled as “infor- the ground of aesthetic experience. This ges-
bol of power, but also empathy and a kind whose work included indigenous, LGBT, and mation (to be) processed by the other” to ture, like all others, is dialectically bound to
of deliverance. The dog is a symbol of the environmental rights, was a staunch critic of sustain the illusion of transparency. https:// forever gnawing away at the hand that feeds
oppression, but also honesty, courage and the project, claiming the government was newhive.com/netmeat/information-pris- but refuses to nourish. Come and throw your
humbleness. breaking the law by selling off their land on-round-robin junk on the pyre.”
without consent. Her activism against it
Anna Faroqhi & Haim Peretz (Germany) earned her international recognition and the - Monocropped by Andrew T Crum
Lichtenberg Cleans Up, 2016, 4:34 Goldman Prize. In March 2016 Berta was as- This portion documents a gesture of self-sur- - Do Mechanical Turks Dream of Mechanical
The documentary observes a day at the initial sassinated at her own house. The murderer veillance as a potato is spray-painted onto a Sheep by Fei Liu
reception for refugees AWO Refugium Licht- has not been determined. Her Sovereign wall, a mural symbolizing the homogeniza- Using Amazon Mechanical Turk to explore
enberg. Residents, social workers and staff Body presents Berta Caceres’ corpse to the tion of space, language and history. While violence in the digitization and subsequent
clean up the premises of the hostel in a joint audience. Through technologies of text and graffiti artists usually tend to avoid CCTV destruction of labor. What does it look like
action. The hostel is situated in a prefabricat- sound, it questions what the physical body cameras for fear of beng prosecuted, this ar- inside the opaqueness of digital black box
ed panel building in GDR-style in an industri- means, especially when it is used to exercise chival gesture expresses a desire to reclaim labor? If these Mechanical Turkers residing
al area of Berlin. The action is completed by political action against the body of the na- ocular technologies as a means of self-reflec- in this opaque black box do not enter our
a grill party. tion. By presenting her corpse as scattered tion on the conditions in which art is created. consciousness in the real world due to their
texts over internet browsers, the project also . Potlatch by Klara Vincent Novotna distance from our realities, their anonymi-
becomes vulnerable to the violence that it Klara: “Contemporary existence is made of ty, and their reduction as mere entities that
is interrupting. Because this dissemination immaterial virtual tendrils surreptitiously complete “human intelligence task”, does
VIOLENT OPAQUE: of words relies on the Internet, it becomes extending into the personal terrain. The that mean they exist as citizens inside of a
part of the systems of sousveillance set up by pump-and-dump proliferation of made-in- hidden or parallel world? In this iteration of
SCREENING PROGRAMME nations across the world to control the polit- China, the bored excess of the pledged alpha the project, I will act as a “tourist/tour guide”.
ical nature of the bodies they are supposed consumer, and the grubby mutation of every In order to go on my “tour” to visit the ex-
to look after. Therefore, through a perfor- possible form – each of these phenomena otic locations of Amazon’s digital workers
- Diaoyu Islands by Gabriele de Seta mance of absence, Her Sovereign Body calls expess a vicious cycle of ‘stimulus’ which surroundings and landscapes, I need to earn
A series of GIF animations of image search attention to the daily violence nation states echos the rhetoric of the systems which per- the money by completing HITs (human intel-
results from queries about different con- inflict onto our bodies in order for their per- mit it. Each download // upload spree repre- ligence tasks). The outcome of this portion
tested islands in the South China sea. Fast formance to succeed - a violence that is felt sents a fitting-room fling in the marketplace will be an edited video compilation of all the
animations looping through augmented unequally throughout society as it often falls of manufactured identity. Alibaba has been tasks I will be completing, as well as scenes
representations of uninhabited territories onto the subalterns body. In this case, that delivering talismans to me in the form of from my current surroundings. Plays off ideas
conjure nationally-charged geographical im- subaltern was Berta. facebook sidebar ads. Anomalous objects, of “poverty tourism”, “conflict tourism”, and
aginations of places most people will never algorithmically, paired, feeding back into me “ruin porn” and both exploits yet reveals the
set foot on. - IPRR by Wang Rou (Tan Ray Tat) what it thought I fed into it already. Thanks workers as individuals.
People and events are constantly being mon- Alibaba, I never knew I was so obsessed with
- The Viewing Party by Elaine W. Ho and Lucio itored, mapped out, simulated for predictive heavy industry, commando knives, and sili-
The Viewing Party considers various per- analysis, and objectified as data. But not con skin until I met you. I began to compul-
spectives of ‘viewing’ as precipices of action. everything becomes processed. Connections sively craft virtual scuptures of these objects,
Between observation, the experience of me- cohere as information through the displace- littering beta-mode VR terrains with totems
diated reality and the reverberations of rela- ment of partial connections moving faster of my heavily informed self. When does the
tion, what is to be done? As one of the first than our ability to interpret them, eventually perfect ouroboros of user-generated feed-
texts by Lenin, “What is To Be Done?” turned coalescing as an opaque enclosure framing back reach a breaking point? I feel adulter-
out to be less of a call for collective mobiliza- ideological screens that pass as “transpar- ated – I have dirty likes under my fingernails
tion, more of a threshold between misunder- ency”. IPRR is a performance piece revolv- and I can’t see a palm tree without mentally
standing and the laying bare of insecurities. ing around a cluster of recordings, media transformin it into a design-ready jpg. I’m in-
There is a flux of things amidst our attend- and hyperlinks, put together for speculative viting you to a VR potlatch party, an excessive
ance to the viewing party, and sometimes, purposes. Performers browsing in New York, demonstration, and energy ritual of purifica-
things just happen. Kuala Lumpur, and Shanghai become linked tion, a creation intended only for symbolic
when each successive user accesses informa- destruction. In our current sense of artefac-
- Her Sovereign Body by Josue Chavez tion deemed illegal in the next country in the tual overabundance and asynchronous ab-
On 2013, DESA, a Honduran-owned and sequence. This game of round robin played sorption, any work could be experienced,
foreign-funded company, started building a across three nation states illustrates a trian- right now, as if it had already performed a
dam project on the sacred land of the Lenca gular prison in which the median between full-life cycle – emerging to digital and sus-
49 information regimes comes to be posited as pect margins, onward to corporate and aca 50
Artists' Talks
 Ayisha Abraham celebrated, especially by the experi-
Deteriorating Memories: Scav- mental filmmakers, across the globe.
enging for Home Movies in an In such a climate, partly moved by
my own bias for the digital image,
East Bangalore
and, partly driven by an axiom that
Neighbourhood “the preoccupations and possibil-
ities of the digital image are to be
It is now almost 15 years since I began sought elsewhere, and not merely as
to collect home movies, 8mm and a replacement for the film-image”, I
Super 8mm celluloid film from an era devised a set of experimental juxta-
of amateur film making. These frag- positions of disparate elements of
ments of films span from the 1930s both “film” and “digital” images, titled
till the early 1980s and have been “Noise Reduction”. With these, I had
rearranged into short found footage hoped to attain digital moving-im-
films that are both experimental, i.e. ages that flawlessly simulate the ma-
without obvious narrative, and bio pic teriality of the film-image, and, as a
style documentary. In my talk, I will consequence, “solve”, at least for me,
chronicle this journey, discuss why some of the key questions of the Film
amateur films have something to offer vs. Digital debate.
us, and illustrate with a few short clips,
some of the films I have made, as part Of course, contrary to my own expec- Ayisha Abraham
of my artistic practice. tations, and in a sense true to their
experimental mode of production,
the resulting images suggested many
new directions and posited several
Rahee Punyashloka new discursive possibilities regarding
What Does the Digital Image image ontology, materiality, digital
See?: Noise Reductions, Onto- indexes, and the peculiarly ungrasp-
able character of video “noise”.
logical Deductions etc.
By highlighting and analyzing some
I started working with the “camer- of the key issues regarding the afore-
aless” digital image-making at a time mentioned topics through three of
when a global unrest regarding im- the Noise Reduction films which I
age-making itself was proliferating. have made till date, i.e. Noise Re-
The Digital vs. Film debate was at full duction I: The Big Combo, Noise
flow with prophetic claims of abso- Reduction II: Chinatown, and Noise
lute overhaul in the very ontology of Reduction III: Z (Film), I would try
the image occurring from both sides. to explore and explicate upon an
It was a time when the Kodak factory approximate “ontology of the dig-
was yet to restart its (then newly ‘ob- ital image”. With this exploration,
solete’) production of film reel, and we would also try to hypothesize a
the nostalgia for the “pure materiality few points regarding the essential
the celluloid image had begun to be question of contemporary times: Rahee Punyashloka
53 “What is the future of The Image?” 54
 Nadov Assar Michelle Williams a body’ her voice is fuelled with per-
sonal and political charge. During the
‘Poly-Body Visions’ Gamaker recital, an image of the Himalayas ap-
House of Women (2016, 14’) pears within a masked out rectangle –
a digital invocation of the mountains
In this artist talk, I will introduce my A plurality of points of view, all pos-
In 1946, auditions were held for the of Black Narcissus. The mountains sig-
thoughts on fragmented, distributed, sessed of and affected by moving,
character of the silent dancing girl nal the digital medium of the modern
polyphonic, and most of all embod- slipping, thinking, feeling, identified
Kanchi in Black Narcissus, the up- age into which Kanchi will enter, step-
ied seeing, as put into practice in my bodies. The bodies I’ll present are
coming film by venerated British di- ping from the medium of film into the
recent projects: Strip / Musrara, Fu- sometimes human, at other times me-
rectors Michael Powell and Emeric sequel to House of Women: The Fruit
ture Absentees, and the mixed reality chanical; sometimes choreographi-
Pressburger. In a nationwide search is There to be Eaten (Williams Gamak-
piece Titchener’s Cage (installation cally synchronized, at other times
close to 1000 hopefuls applied, with er, 2017).
on display during VV XI). While spec- individually driven; sometimes con-
tacular cinema has nearly perfected crete and approachable in real time, over 200 girls tested and interviewed.
The coveted role finally went to sev- In The Fruit is There to be Eaten, Kr-
the focused visual spectacle, and vir- at other times only ghostly shells of
enteen-year-old Jean Simmons, who ishna Istha, who ‘won’ the role of
tual reality tempts with promises of themselves. There are several com-
had recently won worldwide acclaim Kanchi in House of Women, will act as
understanding other people, places, mon themes to the projects I’ll dis-
for her performance as Estella in Da- interlocutor to question the romantic
and experiences, simply by assuming cuss: Decentralization of the image: a
vid Lean’s Great Expectations. To fulfil and political decisions troubling a re-
a different audiovisual point of view, preference of a plural, mobile point of
the role, the white English actress had cast Sister Clodagh (Charlotte Gallagh-
I would like to offer an alternative view; acknowledgement of difference
to wear dark Panstick make-up and a er, originally played by Deborah Kerr).
view, one that mediates and filters in bodies and perspectives; and par-
jewel in her nose to become the “ex- This politically more assertive Kanchi’s
the cinematic, abstracted audiovisual ticipatory media-making, site-speci-
otic temptress” of Rumer Godden’s modern presence offers alternative
experience through the body. Or rath- ficity, immersion through production.
novel of the same name. insights in order to break with the
er, through a multiplicity of bodies:
often doom-laden fate of Powell and
In late 2014, I recast the role, audition- Pressburger’s female protagonists, all
ing only Indian ex-pat or first-genera- of whom seem destined to fall.
tion British Asian women and non-bi-
nary individuals living in London. Shot Artist’s Statement (further context)
on 16mm film, the four candidates, My introduction to the films of British
Jasdeep Kandola, Arunima Rajku- directors Powell & Pressburger began
mar, Tina Mander and Krishna Istha, as a teenager. Cooped up on rainy
had to introduce themselves to an Saturday afternoons in a semi-de-
anonymous reader (voiced by Kelly tached in Brent, watching matinees
Hunter) and recite a personalised al- on BBC2, for me the erotically charged
phabet including references to the Black Narcissus (1947) based on Rum-
history of photography and gender er Godden’s 1939 novel of the same
politics. They were also asked to read name stood out from the emotional-
lines from a script while both seated ly stiff British films of the 1940s. Lush
and standing in order to experience Technicolor and the sweltering trop-
the somewhat unnatural and staged ics permeated cold suburbia, offering
conditions of the audition. Unlike in melodrama and the exquisite pain of
the original role, for House of Women unrequited love: everything a teenage
the re-cast Kanchi of the 21st Centu- girl thrives on.
ry speaks, and instead of being ‘just
Nadav Assor Working with the phrase ‘our moun-
55 tains are painted on glass’, I have 56
 made a series of works that aim to I am deeply interested in this tension
foreground the precarious nature of between construction and illusion,
Powell’s reference to Walter Percy and in the gaps in representation and
Day’s large-scale landscape Matte the spaces opened up by the “fiction
paintings of the Himalayas. Powell machine” of the 1940s British studio
said: Our mountains were painted on system, which presented a very con-
glass. We decided to do the whole trolled colonial vision of the British
thing in the studio and that’s the way Raj and its people, often replacing
we managed to maintain colour con- Indian actors with British actors. And
trol to the very end. Sometimes in a just as those auditioning for House
film its theme or its colour are more of Women feel the glare of the studio
important than the plot. As such, the lights, the space of the audition and
British Studio System, like its Ameri- the violence of the camera’s gaze are
can counterpart, looked to the colo- brought into question, while the film
nies to offer audiences exotic contexts plays with the inherent voyeurism of
in which to frame their dramas. But the director – and by inference the
more often than not did so within the viewer – in watching young hopefuls
comfort of constructed sets at, among competing for a role.
others, Elstree, Shepperton and Pine-
wood.

Hotel 18, Fort Kochi

Michelle Williams Gamaker
57 58
Conference Papers
 The video and the crowd: publics and postpublics
Ravi Sundaram

A growing plurality of populations in the expose of a police atrocity or

Asia, Africa and Latin America have political secrets, a leaked intimate
now got regular access to mobile de- video. The transformation of public
vices. In India the bulk of Internet ac- speech and expression in contem-
cess is now mediated through mobile porary data infrastructures in the
networks. Unsurprisingly, this has South open up questions of col-
produced great challenges for post- lectivity in ways unimagined but a
Plenaries

colonial design, now confronted by decade ago. In this presentation I

media-enabled populations previously look at volatile incidents involving
seen mostly as social political actors. street crowds broadcasting in real
Today, mobile media objects move in time through mobile applications
and out of infrastructures; and attach like Whatsapp. The blurring of street
themselves to shifting platforms of po- crowds and online agglomerations,
litical-aesthetic action while disrupting private chat networks and public
older partitions of postcolonial govern- expression raise all kind of ques-
ance. As in the rest of the world, media tions – for media theory as well as
periodically overflow from one channel the performance of postcolonial
to another leading to unanticipated sovereignty.
consequences:

61 62
 The Autobiography of Video. A Technocentric Approach to
Early Video Art
Ina Blom
From Selfie to Mask Design, On the Politics and Aesthetics of
the Online Self
Geert Lovink In this lecture I will discuss the ways in
which the technical arrangements of
analog video opened onto new forms of
social memory and hence also new so-
The mass selfie cult and the need to cial ontologies. Here, I trace the agency
protect one’s privacy through filters, of a technological object that (among
crypto apps and masks are two sides other things) deployed artistic and aes-
of the same coin. Both have a simi- thetic formats and contexts as a way of
lar tech aesthetics and depend on exploring of its own temporalizing af-
the same centralized infrastructure fordances. While such an approach may
that platform capitalism provides us. be associated with an anthropological
What are current strategies towards tradition preoccupied with the biogra-
our own vulnerable online identity? phy of objects, my approach suggests a
significant twist in this narrative: video
now appears as an autobiographical
inscription revolving around its specific
forms of memory.

<VideoTheoryII> Shiny things so bright

Andreas Treske

Online video has become the driving embeds these personal gestures
force on the web. From a static line the and creates through video a sphere
web evolved to a dynamic audiovisual or living cell, expanding our physical
network, constantly creating and op- space endlessly. The Web through
erating temporal objects. The moving video advances to an actor in our
image online is the most significant and environment, an ecological system
spreading form of personal media on and a live-like being that relates
the Internet. The recording, editing, dis- to us, and exists with us. This talk
tributing and mixing of personal means aims to engage in structural and
of expressions pushes a wide range of aesthetic questions of online-vid-
technologies and applications for the eo cultures and video on the web.
web and devices. Web space is devel- It will be a certain mode of slic-
oping as video space with distinct aes- ing and opening up questions
thetics. . A multitude of actors, a world for becoming involved with for a
of possibilities, an evolving industry new theory of the moving image
Ina Blom pushes towards a personal cinema and parented through online video.
the personal gesture. The web space
63 64
 Underbelly of a City: The toing and froing between amateur
and art-house films
Madhuja Mukherjee

Synopsis: “Some day in near future in manifold ways, resulting in an up-

everyone will be a filmmaker” surge of films, videos, photographs,
-Anonymous. sound byte and a range of other
kinds of data. As stated by filmmaker
The ‘video’ turn, following the intro- Samira Makhmalbaf (in 2000) digi-
duction of Sony’s ‘Portapak’ in 1965, tal tools support circulation of both
Paper Presentations

triggered intriguing and incredible technologies and images across

possibilities. In fact, by 1968 exhibi- marginal territories.
tions of video-art took place across
Latin-America, USA, Europe (particu- The crux of the discussion, therefore,
larly in Germany and UK), in Japan and is the contemporary digital context,
elsewhere. Thus, while artistic exper- that has rendered the flow of imag-
iments with the moving-image was es forceful, and networks between
not unprecedented, especially when artists pertinent. I will largely discuss
Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel, Maya videos/ digital films, which have
Deren, Stan Brakhage and others had become available to us through
already explored formal elements of the TENT (Kolkata) Little Cinema In-
moving-images, along with the mate- ternational Festival (for experimen-
riality of celluloid; nevertheless, the ar- tal films and media-art). Through
rival of video seemed to destabilize the a series of clippings (of at least an
medium itself, and alter certain primary hour), I wish to deliberate upon the
perceptions regarding framing, tonali- manner in which the video-film has
ty, depth, clarity, and sanctity of the im- become a smouldering and liminal
age and sound as well as prototypes of site, which lies somewhere between
plot, narrative and logic. ‘Video’ notably the white cube and classrooms.
blurred the lines between genres, ‘high’ Moreover, one argues that, with the
art and ‘mass’ aesthetics, amateur and massive circulation of digital tools
professional projects, the political and a new persona named ‘amateur’/
personal. More recently, with the mass untrained/ professional elsewhere
proliferation of digital technology in In- ‘type’ filmmaker has emerged on the
dia during early 1990s our relationship scene, in tandem with the explosion
with the image has been reinvented. of small and numerous film festivals
As far as the filmic image (and sound) across the country. While the digital
is concerned, precision, sharpness, and platform has encouraged cinephiles
brightness have been enhanced; more- to circulate European art house
over, with the mass availability of digital films and Asian genre flicks etc., the
camera and easily downloadable edit ‘tools’ one contends, have produced
software and other artistic tools, en- a rather promiscuous figure, partly
gagements with images have changed poet and partly artist perhaps, who
65 66
 comes forward as a ‘filmmaker’. This peculiarities of the city, and func- Software and its Structuring of Interactive Documentary
presentation thus, tackles the specific tions as a personal and independ-
category of ‘amateur’ films, which have ent ‘gaze’ that is looking back at
Fabiola Hanna
been produced primarily from Kolkata. the metropolis. By looking into
Despite the problems of framing these the formal explorations of these
Without software, idocs would not exist, The project, which would reside
films within certain presumptions re- short and feature-length films,
yet no critical evaluation of how software online as well as in booths in public
garding knowledge of the craft, these this presentation underscores the
influences these documentaries exists! spaces across Lebanon, invites peo-
videos/ films are distinguishable from ‘toing and froing’ between art and
The fields of i-docs, media studies, soft- ple to listen to an automated mon-
‘home videos’. Therefore, I examine amateur, via which the city un-
ware studies and computer science have tage of oral histories and to then
the ways in which some travel to well- derbelly becomes partly visible. d
largely ignored the very medium that share their own stories and mem-
known International festivals, while oth- in manifold ways, resulting in an
constitutes these projects. In this paper, ories. Each newly contributed story
ers pass-around on the fringes. Predom- upsurge of films, videos, photo-
I argue that the claims attached to idocs, is instantly added to the archive,
inantly a masculine ‘hobby’ of sorts, and graphs, sound byte and a range
whether about participation, agency, au- analyzed using new developments
in most cases made by college pass of other kinds of data. As stated
thorship, cocreation, democracy, are ulti- in computational corpus-based lin-
outs, such ‘amateur’ artistic ventures, by filmmaker Samira Makhmalbaf
mately curtailed if the medium, namely guistics, automatic story generation,
nevertheless, often excavates a range (in 2000) digital tools support cir-
the software that houses and makes an and social computing and tagged
culation of both technologies and
idoc, is not addressed. Using my current with its transcript which enables the
images across marginal territories.
in-progress work, We Are History, an idoc interface to incorporate newly added
about the modern history of Lebanon, as video interviews into the pool con-
a point of departure, I show that looking cerning the event discussed, there-
at the process of writing the software by changing the version of history
enables critical analysis of software’s in- previously compiled. The paper con-
fluence on the the idoc itself. In pursuit cludes that both scholars of media
of generating communal dialogue in the and media-based practitioners need
context of inability to have conversa- to pay attention to the critical effects
tions about our contested history in Leb- of software in shaping i-docs, main-
anon, I set out to build an Artificial Agent ly in the context of activist video.
that would sift through an oral history
video archive of testimonies of daily life
with the task of figuring out common
threads, sometimes confirming and
sometimes contesting each other, and
automatically editing many different
versions of possible histories. This auto-
matic montage machine addresses two
problems in the Lebanese context: first,
it circumvents the tiring accusation of
being biased since a machine is now the
moderator (presenting a multiplicity of
stories might be the closest one can get
to strategic objectivity) and second, it
opens up the possibility of conversation
by weaving various and often opposing
perspectives in order to start imagining
67 68
 Tactical VR: Representing the Intermission in Indian Cinema YouTube Sleaze: Viral Mutations of Item Numbers
Karl Mendonca Silpa Mukherjee

While the intermission has long been as a domestic courier company (sim- Item numbers are special song and Internet virality (though far more
phased out from cinemas in most parts ilar to FedEx) with a franchise based dance sequences in popular Bombay complicated than physical rush
of the world, the “samosa break” (as it business model that exponentially cinema which foreground the body as a to the theatres, as the desire here
is referred to in Bombay vernacular), is increased their presence across In- vibrant and sexualized force. They initial- spreads like a contagion from one
very much a routine experience for film dia. This paper will discuss the use of ly derived their attraction of cinematic network to another cutting across
audiences in India. For those unfamiliar Virtual Reality (VR) to represent the sleaze and deliberate use of trash aes- geo boundaries) marked by its ve-
with the concept, the mechanics are contiguous but hidden spaces of thetics from the B movie but gradually locity of circulation and feedback
quite simple: about halfway through the intermission spanning the pro- made their way into big budget A circuit finds its precedent in hype over
a film the house lights turn on and in- duction, distribution and exhibition films. The contemporary media conver- sensational content in older media.
terstitial advertising is displayed on the of the advertising forms displayed gence has enabled the item numbers The velocity at which an orphan
cinema screen for 10-15 minutes while on the screen. While touching on to have multiple screen lives. This is video file often manages to create a
patrons stretch their legs and visit the some of the challenges of work- curiously enmeshed with the glamour virtual agglomeration of temporary
concession stand. Apart from Lalitha Go- ing with a medium in its inchoate associated with a high-end lifestyle and online crowd via YouTube’s tech-
palan’s Cinema of Interruptions (2009), stages, the paper will focus on the a different kind of stardom. In this paper no-mediatic and pseudo anonymity
the intermission itself is an entirely un- development of an aesthetics of I engage with the expanded sphere of driven economy of views, likes and
der-theorized subject of critical inquiry critical representation. Borrowing what is designated as YouTube and so- comments, shares its features with
in South Asian Cinema Studies. Further, from the ethos of structural film- cial media through the worlds of B grade an earlier rumour economy based
in contrast to the significant body of making, I propose a set of tactical female performers who are particular- on information bleeding out of
work on Indian cinema that has focused heuristics for VR to undermine the ly prone to viral mutation on the web. one media into another. Using the
on the textuality of film, there has been affordance of immediacy and work Through online ethnography of ephem- YouTube interface of a “viral item
scarce theoretical attention paid to the towards Barthes’ notion of a text eral female celebrity cults via the case of number”, `Babydoll’ (Ragini MMS 2,
material aspects of film production and as “that which does not compute.” contemporary starlets who attempt to Bhushan Patel, 2014) and its corol-
distribution. This lacuna points to an make it big by getting entangled in con- lary “suggested viewing” of leaked
opportunity for theoretical work, but troversies over obscenities. The knowl- videos, morphed content, MMS
also raises a significant challenge of con- edge of film material being censored scandals of Sunny Leone I wish to
necting the broader logistical workings then locates its YouTube video in a lim- point out the combined play of viral
of distribution with the regimes of sig- inal zone, where the restricted content web based mutation, the algorith-
nification signaled by media forms. As a defers the desire for the provocative ma- mic anxiety underlying YouTube’s
working context, my praxis “follows the terial ad infinitum while replacing it with designation of “official” versus “un-
action” out of the cinema hall and pres- a constant affective curiosity about the official/user” uploads and thus the
ent a case study of Blaze Advertising, a ―censored (YouTube often acts as the extensions of the video (rather than
70-year old network in India that held a archive of deleted/blurred footage from the original video) being the drive
monopoly on the distribution of cinema censored films). To account for the af- of the interface. It heightens the fris-
intermission advertising between the fectivities associated with low resolution son of sexual excitement and shock
1960’s and the 1980’s. The story takes and to chart a contemporary archaeolo- carried out as part of online traffic.
an unexpected turn, when in 1986, Blaze gy of viral videos we need to trace it back A relation emerges here between
Advertising’s monopoly was disrupted to the phenomenon of print journalism virality, as relayed through the node
by the Government of India. Rather than highlighting the censorious elements of the spectator-user (toucher, in
continue to compete in cinema advertis- in film advertisements to create a surge the haptic sense), and new orders
ing, Blaze repurposed their network in spectator desire for the censored. or flows of sexuality. I use the term
69 70
 spectator-user here to challenge notions
of classical cinematic apparatus, a rather
contingent identity for the technolog-
ically enabled body of the user of new Mapping Cultural Histories of Asian Ethnic Enclaves in the
media who affectively consumes images Global City
of the star body made accessible by the Kristy Kang
YouTube video allowing conversion of
the object of fascination into one that is This project looks at how ethnic com- including global/local relations, ethnic
proximate, touchable, morphable. munities are changing in cities. How and urban studies, this work uses new
is migration and movement changing media and mapping to create greater
our experience of cities and its peoples awareness of our built environment and
today? How is our sense of identity and the peoples who populate it. It examines
place affected as a result? What kind of and visualizes the sociocultural networks
interfaces could be designed to commu- shaping immigrant communities and
nicate with the spaces we move through how local neighborhoods negotiate a
and what kind of overlooked stories sense of place within one global city.
could be uncovered in our everyday
spaces? The Seoul of Los Angeles: Con-
tested Identities and Transnationalism in
Immigrant Space (http://www.seoulofla.
com) is an online cultural history and
platform for community storytelling on
The DIY Filmmaker in the Digital Age the multi-ethnic identity and develop-
Akriti Rastogi ment of Koreatown in Los Angeles.

Currently, Los Angeles has the largest

population of Koreans in the United
States living outside of Korea. Nick-
named the “L.A. district of Seoul City”,
The paper will track the journey of DIY most visitors understand Koreatown as
filmmakers in the Indian context har- an extension of Seoul. But, what most
nessing the potential of ICTs in collation people may not know is that the ma-
with other factors like broadband con- jority of inhabitants who comprise its
nectivity and data mining suited to the residential and working class population
interests of a dilettante filmmaker. Using are not Korean, but Latino. The everyday
case studies of amateur and profession- space of this community is inhabited
al filmmakers, the key provocations will by a mix of immigrants coming from
highlight the “dissolution of dichotomy” Mexico, Central and South America, and
between the two headers and further, other parts of Asia including Bangladesh.
the implication on the cinema creat- These networks of nationalisms con-
ed, distributed and funded thus, using verge in the urban space of Koreatown.
the online platforms solely. The idea of This contests predominant conceptions
democratization of filmmaking will be of ethnic enclaves in Los Angeles being
complicated using nuances from varied understood as homogenous and makes
categories of filmmakers utilizing pro- us re-imagine what we think we under-
sumer devices. stand about them–they are increasingly
becoming polycentric in complex ways.
Combining design, documentary and is-
sues in contemporary media studies

71 72
Participants' Bios
 Ahmet Gurata teaches at the Department of
Communication and Design, Bilkent University. He holds
a PhD from the London Consortium, which examined re-
makes and cross-cultural reception in Turkish cinema. He
has published research on the history of Turkish cinema,
reception, remakes and documentary in anthologies and
journals. His current research includes projects on digital
database, comparative and digital film studies. He also
works as a programmer for the Festival on Wheels and af-
filiated with Docedge: Asian Forum for Documentary.

Aishwarya Viswanathan is a writer and visual artist.

She recieved her Bachelors in Visual Arts (Painting) in 2016
and is currently pursuing her Masters in Aesthetics and
Visual Cultures at Srishti School of Art, Design and Tech-
noglogy Bangalore. Her areas of interest include, art theo-
ry, philosophy and the aesthetics of digital visual culture.

Akriti Rastogi is a part-time media practitioner and full-

time film studies research scholar at the School of Arts
and Aesthetics, JNU, New Delhi. She is currently working
towards her doctoral thesis proposal.

75 76
 Anandana Kapur is an award-winning filmmaker and Anna Beata Baranska specializes in Painting, Video and
communications designer working extensively towards Photography. Since 2006, she has worked as a graduate
integrating film and social change initiatives. As a student instructor in the Department of Traditional and
researcher and film scholar, she has written on Experimental Graphic art, and then as a teaching assis-
gender, culture and cinema. Anandana’s cur- tant. In her works, she touches political, cultural and an-
rent work is on interactive cinema and the city thropological problems
of Delhi. She is the co-founder of CINEMAD India.

Anne Roquigny is a French independent media art cu-

rator specialized in hybrid digital projects related to net-
works, the internet, sound and visual arts. Since the be-
Andreas Treske is an author and filmmaker living in ginning of the Internet she has been curating events to
Turkey. He graduated from the University of Television promote internet artists and to exhibit their online art in
and Film, Munich, where he also taught film and video the physical space. Anne Roquigny’s Webjays innovative
post- 15 production. He teaches in the Department of public displays, performances, exhibitions, workshops,
Communication and Design at Bilkent University, An- conferences and publications have been presented at re-
kara, visual communication and media production, incl. nowned International venues, festivals and museums.
new media. He is a member of the Video Vortex network
and corresponding member of CILECT, the world associ-
ation of film schools.
Arya S.Putra lives and works in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
He studied painting at Sanggar Ligar Sari ‘64 Bandung.
His creative work began by exploring many mediums:
two-dimensional, three-dimensional, objects, installation
Anjana Kothamachu graduated from The Academy of and video.
Fine Arts and Crafts, Rachana Sansad, India with a ma-
jor in sculpture. Prior to this, she studied animation and
has a degree in psychology. She has participated in sev-
eral residency programs including The Last Ship, Mum-
bai; Stiftung Futur Foundation, Switzerland; Sandarbh
International Artists Association’s residency and Khoj. Ayisha Abraham lives and works in Bangalore, as an in-
She received the Inlaks Fine Art Award 2013. In 2014, stallation artist and short filmmaker. She studied painting
she installed a large-scale outdoor sculpture at the In- in India and the United States, before becoming an exper-
dia Art Fair. She was part of the Creative India Public Art imental filmmaker and installation artist. She works at the
Intensive and the Changwon Sculpture Biennale, Korea. Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, as a visual
She has been part if the ISCP residency program in New arts consultant and is a member of the BAR1 (Bengaluru
York in 2015 and the Pro Helvetia studio program in Zu- Artists Residency). Her work has been shown at numerous
rich,Switzerland 2016. international exhibitions and festivals.

77 78
 Chiara Passa is a media artist. She holds an M.F.A. in Duncan Poulton was born in 1993, Birmingham, UK.
Fine Arts from Academy of Rome and a Masters in New He lives and works in Birmingham, UK. Duncan Poulton’s
Audio-Visual Mediums at the Faculty of Modern Litera- practice could be seen as an expanded form of collage
ture. Her artwork combines different media such as: in- primarily realized through digital video. He observes,
ternet-art projects, animations and interactive video-in- deconstructs and reconfigures online content in order
stallations. Her work includes digital art in public space as to produce works which form new associations between
site-specific artworks and video-mapping that analyzes images and their authors’ original context of production.
changes in ‘liquid space’ through a variety of techniques, He is interested in the knowing misapplication of estab-
technologies and devices - often constructed thru aug- lished techniques and formal strategies, the productive
mented reality and virtual reality technologies. She also misinterpretation of existing cultural content. His recent
designs video-sculptures and objects developing also works have centered on an investigation into 3D model-
art-applications and widgets for mobile platforms. ling and computer-generated imagery. His works center
around specific sub-genres of content and aim to com-
ment upon the nature of appropriation in the digital age,
particularly the practice, history and meaning of copying
Christin Bolewski is a digital media artist and filmmaker in a simulated world. Though each work is discrete and
from Germany. She studied at the Academy of Media Arts self-contained within its own internal logic, they all share
Cologne, Germany. She exhibits regularly at international a concern with mythology and art history and maintain
media art and film festivals and has taught media art and a reflexive relationship to their medium. Going forward
design in Universities in Europe and America. Duncan is interested in the conflict between the increas-
ingly virtual world we live in and the human condition
with its inescapable emotions, neuroses and traditions.

Cristina Cochior is a researcher and designer working

in the Netherlands. With an interest in automation prac- Elena Knox is a media and performance artist. Currently
tices, disruption of the interface and peer to machine a research fellow in Intermedia Art and Science at Wase-
knowledge production, her practice consists of research da University, Tokyo, she works with the Creative Robot-
investigations into knowledge sharing and bureaucratic ics Lab at Australia’s National Institute for Experimental
systems. Having recently graduated from the Piet Zwart Arts, and co-directs production house Lull Studios. Her
Institute in Rotterdam, she is currently examining ecolo- PhD won the 2015 Dean’s Award at UNSW Australia Art &
gies of algorithmic workers on digital platforms. Design, and her experimental electro-cabarets and music
projects are nominated for multiple awards, most recently
the Australian Art Music Awards. Knox’s media artworks
Cong Yao intends to explore the existing modes of gen- have been presented in premiere venues in New York,
der, sexuality and identity politics, which replace struggles Cologne, Berlin, Athens, Hong Kong, Plovdiv, Frankfurt,
with tranquility. Through restructuring self-perception Milan, Aberystwyth, London, Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne
and retranslating human feelings, he creates immersive and Cairo.
works with hazy, poetic and sharp aesthetics by diverse
media such as moving image, physical theatre and instal-
lation in constant attempts and explorations.

79 80
 Elia Vargas is an Oakland based artist and curator. He Florine Mougel is a visual artist based in France. She stud-
works in video, sound, projection, and situational expe- ied Cinema in Paris and Fine Art at the School of Art and
riences that explore information embodiment. He has Design of Marseille where she develops her research on
collaborated with a wide range of artists and musicians the poetic of networks and technologies. She composes
including Bjork and Vincent Moon. He performs and ex- with situations, people, empty rhetorics, smudged words
hibits work locally and internationally. Vargas is co-found- and feelings.
er and co-curator of the Living Room Light Exchange, a
monthly salon on new media art and digital culture; half
of improvisational modular synthesis duo system ritual; Geert Lovink is a Dutch media theorist, internet critic and
board member of Mediate Art Group, organizer of the author of Dark Fiber (2002), Zero Comments (2007), Net-
Soundwave Biennial; and a PhD student in Film and Digi- works Without a Cause (2012) and Social Media Abyss
tal Media at UC Santa Cruz. (2016). He is the founder of the Institute of Network Cul-
tures. His centre recently organized conferences, publi-
cations and research networks such as Video Vortex (the
politics and aesthetics of online video), Unlike Us (alter-
Emma Charles is a London-based artist. Working with natives in social media), Critical Point of View (Wikipedia),
photography and moving image, her practice explores Society of the Query (the culture of search), MoneyLab
the way contemporary value systems of time, produc- (internet-based revenue models in the arts) and a project
tivity and labour are altered through technological pro- on the future of art criticism.
gress. Recently Emma has situated her research towards
the materiality of the Internet, going beneath the urban
veneer to uncover the hidden infrastructures within our Giovanni Salice is an Italian artist/musician working in
technologically driven modern life. Emma holds a MA in the field of sonic-media. He holds a degree in classical
Photography from Royal College of Art. She has exhibited oboe. After this education, he studied electronic music
and screened at Jerwood Visual Arts, London; Serpentine and visual arts and, through the years, he increased his in-
Galleries, London; ZKM, Karlsruhe; HKW, Berlin; Jeu de terest into film and installative art. He is currently working
Paume, Paris, LUX and ICA, London and is the recipient of on microscopic sounds, Artificial Intelligence and field-re-
a 2016 Arts Council England award, ZKM commission and cording.
has been published in ‘Reset Modernity!’ edited by Bruno
Latour (MIT Press).
Ina Blom is a professor at the Institute of Philosophy,
Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo
Fabiola Hanna is a new media artist & software designer. and visiting professor at the University of Chicago. Her
She is a PhD candidate in Film and Digital Media at UC most recent books are The Autobiography of Video. The
Santa Cruz where she also holds an MFA in Digital Arts & Life and Times of a Memory Technology, New York: 2016
New Media. Her research lies in software and media stud- and On the Style Site. Art, Sociality and Media Culture.
ies, archives, memory & postcolonialism, and new media New 16 York: 2007 (2009). She has recently coedited the
art activism. volume Memory in Motion. Archives, Technologly and the
Social (2017), and is also a contributor to Artforum, Texte
zur Kunst, Afterall and Parkett.

81 82
 Jillian Mayer is a visual performance artist and filmmaker Katharina Poggendorf-Kakar, born in 1967 in Germa-
based in Florida. Mayer’s video works and performances ny, was exposed to art from early childhood. She studied
have been displayed at galleries and museums interna- Comparative Religion, Anthropology and Indian Art
tionally and film festivals such as SXSW and Sundance. History at the Free University, Berlin, where she took her
She was recently featured in Art Papers and in ArtNews Ph.D. in 2001. In her artworks she plays with different
discussing identity, Internet and her artistic practices and materials to create new visual bodies that address the
influences.Mayer is the front woman for #PostModem, a changing global landscape of identities. By engaging
performance collaborative that makes meta-pop music with themes that matter to her, she likes to probe what
based in art/web theory. Their original songs will be used is underneath the surface of cultural beliefs and our con-
in a feature-length musical film that Mayer is writing, di- tradicting patterns of behavior, to unblock thoughts and
recting and producing in collaboration with Lucas Leyva. open up questions. Probing boundaries is part of that pro-
The satirical film takes place in the future and tackles dig- cess of engaging with her inner self. In many ways, her
ital identity and net neutrality. The film extends to soft- body of work emerges from her academic base in anthro-
ware apps, poetry, installations and Internet experiences. pology and she perceives her art as a confluence of her
life- and work choices of the past 20 years. Many of her
installations include copper and wax as well as materials
from her immediate environment. Since 2003 Katharina
works and lives with her husband, Sudhir Kakar, in a vil-
lage in South India.
Julian Sscodato Sstudied Composition and Electronic Mu-
sic in Venice. He completed a Master’s Degree in Sound
Art at the University of Barcelona. As an author and speak-
er, Scordato has presented results related to interactive
performance systems and generative art in the context
Katya Yakubov is a Uzbekistan-born filmmaker living in
Richmond, VA. She graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of
of conferences and seminars. His award-winning elec-
the Arts and co-founded The Picture Show, a microcinema
troacoustic and audiovisual works have been performed/
in Brooklyn, with partner Daniel Hess. Her short films have
exhibited internationally in over 100 festivals and institu-
screened at Anthology Film Archives, Alchemy Film Fes-
tions.
tival, Milwaukee Underground, and various other festival

Karl Mendonca’s work as an artist and researcher ex-

plores the intersection of postcolonial studies and media
studies. He is currently a PhD Candidate at the depart- Keerthi K. Shastri has worked in the fields of advertis-
ment of Film & Digital Media at the University of California, ing, creative writing and film after finishing a Bachelor’s in
Santa Cruz. Communication, Psychology and English literature. Visual
media, digital culture and somatic research are her areas
of interest. Keerthi is currently persuing a Masters in Dig-
ital Humanities at Srishti Institute of Art, Technology and
Design, Bangalore.

83 84
 Kristy H.A. Kang is a media artist and scholar whose work
explores narratives of place and geographies of cultural Lohit Grover is a video editor/ filmmaker living in Bom-
memory. She is Assistant Professor at the School of Art, bay.
Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University
in Singapore and was previously Associate Director of the
Spatial Analysis Lab (SLAB) at the University of Southern
California Sol Price School of Public Policy in Los Angeles
where she collaborated with urban planners and policy
specialists on ways to visualize overlooked spaces and Michelle Williams Gamaker is a visual artist and film-
peoples. Her research interests combine urban and ethnic maker. Current projects include The Fruit is There to be
studies and digital media arts to visualize cultural histories Eaten, Brown Queertopia and the feature films The Impe-
of cities. Kang is a founding member of the Labyrinth Pro- rial and Violet Culbo, which feature ‘brown protagonists’
ject research initiative on interactive narrative and digital to address the historical sidelining of such characters. For
scholarship at USC where she has served as researcher, over 13 years, with Mieke Bal she completed several films
creative director, and designer on a range of interdiscipli- and installations exploring migratory aesthetics, mental
nary projects. health and gender ideology. Since 2009, with Julia Koune-
ski she has explored the psychotherapeutic work of Lygia
Clark. She completed her PhD in Fine Art at Goldsmiths,
Leyla Rodriguez is enrolled at HAW University Hamburg. University of London (2012), where she now works as a
Her interventions in the public space through temporary Lecturer in BA Fine Art.
textile installations, objects and videos have been exhib-
ited in numerous galleries and shown at film festivals
worldwide. She was born in Buenos Aires and currently
lives and works in Hamburg/ Germany. Mikio Saito is a Sapporo-based visual artist. Graduat-
ed from University of Waseda, Tokyo, Japan (2000) and
Städelschule, Frankfurt, Germany (2007) and holds Mas-
Madhuja Mukherjee studied Literature and Film at the ter of Fine Arts. He works mostly with video installation.
University level, and has professional training in music (Si- He combines hand-drawn animation, photographed
tar), and Fine Arts. She teaches in the Department of Film images and computer graphics, all in a highly individu-
Studies, Jadavpur University, Calcutta, India, since 2007. al way. Recent exhibitions include; 2016 “The Wind Will
She also works as artist, filmmaker and writer. Mukherjee’s Carry The Taste” Soulangh Artist Village, Tainan, Taiwan .
research areas involve subjects of film historiography, 2016 “Emerging Artists in Hokkaido” Hokkaido Museum of
archives, industrial forms, technological transformations, Modern Art, Sapporo, Japan
gender, and public cultures. She has published extensive-
ly in scholarly journals, has edited anthologies, and writ-
ten monograph on canon formation during the early pe-
Milan Zulic is an award winning multimedia artist from
riod. She has developed the alternative art platform TENT
Sombor in Serbia. He has presented his paintings, sculp-
(Calcutta); in 2014 TENT launched its first ‘Little Cinema
tures, photographs, videos and extended media in 31 solo
International Festival’ for experimental films and art.
exhibitions and more than 150 collectives in places liked
Zurich, Warsaw, Barcelona etc.

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 Mona Vatamanu & Florin Tudor work together since Rashmi Sawhney is a Bangalore-based academic,
2000 on various art works. They have exhibited their co-founder of the VisionMix network (https://visionmix.
works at various Biennales, art forums and International info) and the Programme Director of Video Vortex XI. She
exhibitions. They have also presented at many solo exhi- has curated public events in India and Europe, including
bitions. They are presenting their video Gagarin’s tree at film programmes, and most recently curated in jan 2017
Video vortex XI. with Lucia King and Amit Rai, Future Orbits as a collateral
of the Kochi-Muzeris biennieal. Her research explores the
production, circulation and exhibition of moving image
cultures at the intersections of cinema, visual arts, and
Nadav Assor employs a range of expanded media prac- digital media in the South Asian context and within the
tices to explore the unstable condition of the hyper me- film and visual culture realm, her work specifically trav-
diated body, the “new flesh”, constantly transformed by erses engagements with migration, gender, and science
technology, in its immediate social, political sensory, and fiction. Rashmi has been teaching, doing research, and
emotional environment. This is often done via lo-fi reen- publishing since 2002, and prior to joining Srishti, was
actments of appropriated military-industrial technolo- Associate Professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics,
gies, examining technological mediation as an essential Jawaharlal Nehru University and also briefly headed the
and transformative human condition. For more than 10 Arts Practice and Curatorship programmes at India Foun-
years, Assor has performed and exhibited internation- dation for the Arts. She heads the M.A. programme in Aes-
ally in festivals, music venues, museums and galleries in thetics and Visual Cultures at Srishti, the first of its kind in
North America, Israel, Europe and Asia. He is the recipient India, focusing on curation and art/film writing.
of multiple grants and awards in the US and Israel, and
currently serves as an Assistant Professor and an Associate
Director of the Center for Arts & Technology at Connecti-
cut College in the US. Ravi Sundaram is a Professor at the Centre for the Study
of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi. In 2000 he found-
ed the well-known Sarai programme at the CSDS along
Neha Kasana is a visual artist and designer. She holds a with Ravi Vasudevan and the Raqs Media Collective. Since
degree in Applied Arts from the College of Fine Arts, Delhi. then, Sarai grew to become one of India’s best-known
Her areas of interest are visual cultures and curation. She experimental and critical research sites on media, span-
is presently pursuing her masters in Aesthetics and Visual ning local and global sites. Sundaram is the author of Pi-
cultures from Srishti school of Art, Design and Technology rate Modernity: Media Urbanism in Delhi and No Limits:
and is currently experiementing with different material Media Studies from India. Sundaram has co-edited the
and mediums to enhance her own practice. Sarai Reader series, The Public Domain (2001), The Cities
of Everyday Life (2002), Shaping Technologies (2003), Cri-
sis Media(2004). Sundaram’s essays have been translat-
ed into various languages in India, Asia, and Europe. He
Rahee Punyashloka icand filmmaker based in New Del- is currently finishing his next book project, Events and
hi who processes analogue techniques in digital media Affections: post-public media circulation. Sundaram has
and is inspired by the work of Hollis Frampton and Pat been a visiting Professor at the universities of Princeton,
O’Neill. His works have been exhibited in several venues Johns Hopkins, Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Oxford.
across the world, such as Rotterdam, Tribeca (New York),
Jakarta, New Delhi etc.

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 Ray Tat is a Malaysian curator and artist currently based Shruti Rao is currently pursuing her Masters in Knowl-
in Shanghai. He graduated with a Masters in Fine Arts edge Systems and Practices at the Srishti School of Art,
from Massey University, New Zealand. Prior to VIOLENT Design and Technology, Bangalore. She has worked as a
OPAQUE he curated a show in Malaysia called Circle Jerks, media professional for eight years in media ranging from
an exhibition revolving around artists as online conversa- feature films to digital content production. Her areas of re-
tionalists, and works generated from text messages cir- search interest include identifying the class, gender, caste
culating on the internet. Combining his backgrounds in and regional dimension of the labour market in the media
filmmaking, programming and media design, Ruben van industry, understanding the cultural economy of children
de Ven (NL) challenges alleged objective practices. He is in the television and advertising industry and tracing the
intrigued by the intersection of highly cognitive proce- evolution of new media and the resulting digital divide
dures and ambiguous experiences. He graduated at the between the urban and rural population.
Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam where he started his
investigation into computational quantification and cate-
gorisation of emotions. Recent works on this topic include
the algorithmic video work Choose How You Feel; You
Have Seven Options as well as the video-game-artwork
Emotion Hero.
Silpa Mukherjee is a Delhi based research scholar, cur-
rently enrolled in a PhD programme in Cinema Studies,
School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru 19 Uni-
versity. She has recently finished her MPhil dissertation ti-
Sharath Chandra Ram’s practice and research inter- tled `An Ecology of Sensations: The Item Number in Bom-
ests lie at the intersection of law, technology and society bay Cinema’. She has been a recipient of the Social Media
with a focus on Open Spectrum, Citizen Science and new Research Grant awarded by The Sarai Programme, Center
interfaces for Art-Science. As a licensed amateur radio for the Study of Developing Societies in 2015.
broadcaster (callsign: VU3HPA), he is actively interested
in communication policy research, extends his art-science
practice as a transmission artist and has installed his mul-
timedia work in several national and international venues.
He is currently Faculty at the Srishti Instiute of Art Design
and Technology at the Centre for Experimental Media Art Soubhagya Pai is currently a student pursuing her Post
and the Information Arts and Information Design Practic- graduation in Knowledge systems and Practices from
es (IAIDP) Program. Previously as a neuroscientist employ- Srishti Institute of Design, Bangalore. Her interests lie in
ing virtual reality to simulate experimental paradigms to anthropology and public history and . She is currently ex-
understand human cognition, he specialized in Artificial ploring how different kinds of media can facilitate and/
Intelligence and Virtual Environments at the University of or augment ethnographic research . She has worked with
Edinburgh, School of Informatics. different communities, Media houses, NGOs as well as
corporate organizations in the past during the course of
her undergraduate study and internships. Her academic
background includes, Journalism and communication
studies, community media and Humanities.

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 Vasco Diogo is an Experimental Director, Performer and
Stefan Rusu is an artist and curator currently based in Video Artist. He is an assistant professor of New Media and
Kyrgyzstan. In his curatorial practice he particularly focus- Cinema at The University of Beira Interior (Covilhã-Portu-
es on collaboration with remote regions and countries gal). He has a PhD in Communication Sciences from the
from Central Asia (Tajikistan) and Asia (Mongolia). Universidade Nova de Lisboa. He has a Degree in Sociol-
ogy and Master Degree in Social Sciences: aesthetics and
ideology in Portuguese Cinema. Vasco is a former actor
and co-creator at Projecto Teatral - Acarte/Maria Madale-
na Azeredo Perdigão Award, Fundação Calouste Gulben-
kian, 2003 .Since 2000 he has produced experimental
Syeda Zainab Akbar is currently pursuing a Masters in single channel videos, multimedia performances and
Digital Humanities at Srishti School of Art, Design and video installations shown at several galleries, exhibitions,
Technology. She is a self taught photographer and con- theatres and international festivals in Portugal, France,
tinues to explore varied types of photo editing. She has Germany, USA, Netherlands, Belgium, Serbia, Canada, Bra-
majored in psychology, sociology and english. She is cur- zil, India, Poland, Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Mex-
rently exploring user centered expereince, performative ico, Colombia, Israel and Cyprus.His other areas of work
digital platforms and cultural specificity in her research. include drawing, photography, poetry, electro-acoustic
music, mixed media.

Ujjwal Utkarsh is an independent filmmaker whose films Wilfried Acgricola de Cologne is a media artist, creator
of experimental films and videos and new media curator
have been showcased in various national and internation-
living and working in Cologne/Germany. He is the found-
al festivals. He was a member of the film faculty at Srishti
ing director of “The New Museum of Networked Art”
Institute of Arts, Design &amp; Technology, Bangalore,
(2000) and artvideoKOELN (2005) - the international plat-
and at State Institute of Film and Television, Rohtak for
form for art & moving images running also the Cologne-
the past few years. Through this period, he continued his
OFF International Festival Network. He realised a wide
work independently and has been experimenting with his
range of artistic and curatorial projects in collaboration
own practice dabbling in other forms like photography,
with festivals and cultural institutions all over the world.
sound and theatre.

Vasanthi Mariadass is a faculty at Srishti Institute of Zlatko Cosic is a video artist from Yugoslavia whose work
Art Design Technology. Her doctoral work on Jean-Luc spans from short films, video, and sound installations to
Godard was from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She theater projections and live audio-visual performances.
teaches and researches on experimental films and visual The themes of his work relate mostly to issues of identity,
essays through postmodern and poststructural frame- immigration, and the complexity of living in a new envi-
works. ronment, concentrating on the necessity to embrace cul-
tural differences and establish dialogue among people.

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