Video Vortex XII: art, archive, algorithms, activism
Video Vortex, an artistic network concerned with the aesthetics and politics of online video, gathered again in Malta for a two-day conference in late 2019. We were in particularly focussing on bringing new research, theory and critiques of online video– in addition to questions around its integration with social media – to Malta.
Given its ease of access and use, video has historically been aligned with media activism and collaborative work. Now, however, with video’s prevalence across social media and the web, its dominance of the internet of things, the role of the camera in both the maintenance and breaking down of networks, in addition to the increasing capacity of digital video to simulate that which has not occurred – we require novel theories and research. That is new practices of archiving and curation, modes of collaboration and political mobilisation, as well as fresh comprehensions of the subject-spectator, actors and networks constituted by contemporary video and digital cultures. Further reading:
– VV12 exhibition booklet
– VV12 review
– Telling the Bigger Video Story
– (Media) Art of Vulnerability and Care
– Restaging For the Time Being
– No Country for Old Tweets
– Dictatorship 4.0: The Algerian Open-air Prison
Screenings
Video Vortex Screenings
Presentations
Video Vortex Presentations
Exhibition
Video Vortex Exhibition
Contributors
Video Vortex XII contributors
Video Vortex reader #3
What is online video today, fifteen years into its exponential growth?
What started with amateur work of YouTube prosumers has spread to virtually all communication apps: an explosion in the culture of mobile sound and vision. Now, in the age of the smart phone, video accompanies, informs, moves, and distracts us. Are you addicted yet?
Look into that tiny camera, talk, move the phone, show us around — prove to others that you exist! Founded in 2007, Video Vortex is a lively network of artists, activists, coders, curators, critics, and researchers linked by the exchange of ideas, materials, and discussions both online and offline. Video Vortex has produced two anthologies, a website, a mailing list, 12 international conferences, several art exhibitions, and more to come as the internet and video continue to merge and miniaturize. The first Video Vortex reader came out in 2008, followed by a second in 2011. This third anthology covers the turbulent period from Video Vortex #7 (2013) in Yogyakarta, across the meetings that followed in Zagreb, Lüneburg, Istanbul, Kochi, and finally Malta in 2019, where the foundations for this publication where laid before its production began in the midst of the corona crisis. The contributions herein respond to a broad range of emerging and urgent topics, from bias in YouTube’s algorithms, to the use of video in messaging, image theory, the rise of deepfakes, a reconsideration of the history of video art, a reflection on the continuing role and influence of music video, indy servers, synthetic intimacies, love and sadness, artist videos, online video theory in the age of platform capitalism, video as online activism, and the rise of streaming. Click, browse, swipe, like, share, save, and enjoy!
Contributors: Annie Abrahams, Ina Blom, Natalie Bookchin, Pablo deSoto, Ben Grosser, Adnan Hadzi, Judit Kis, Patricia G. Lange, Hang Li, Patrick Lichty, Geert Lovink, Gabriel Menotti, Sabine Niederer, Dan Oki, Aras Ozgun, Daniel Pinheiro, Rahee Punyashloka, Oliver Lenore Schultz, Peter Snowdon, Andreas Treske, Colette Tron, Jack Wilson, Dino Ge Zhang. Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam 2020
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