Split, 07.07.2011

We would like to invite you and your students to participate in the Video Vortex summer school Vis, 2011. This is the first year that school is being organized as part of the international Video Vortex network. The aim of the project is to establish a European summer school and future joint study programs in the fields of film, media arts, performance and cultural theory.

As a bit of background, the island of Vis and the town of Komiza have a very particular location within both the Croatian geographical and historical context and within the wider Mediterranean cultural-historical environment. Vis and Komiza have witnessed prehistoric times, the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome, the Renaissance, the 19th century struggles of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy and England for the domination of the Adriatic, the wave of emigration from the island to America at the beginning of the 20th century, a free territory with Tito’s cave of 1944, and they have become an internationally renowned contemporary tourist destination. All the while, Vis and Komiza have been both the periphery and the center of Mediterranean and Croatian culture. Despite having a small number of inhabitants, a small surface area and being geographically isolated, Komiza is an urbanized place featuring a pronounced linguistic, cultural, economic and social identity. Based on these traits of Komiza and Vis, it is possible to develop a new symbolic value. The constant simultaneity of local and global can be found in new media practices as they establish new simultaneities (inside/outside, aesthetic/ethic, body/virtual…), and a paradigm of the net-work and/or the archipelago annuls the dichotomy between center and periphery. Summer school will rely on the already articulated inter-island cultural practices which have been, in this part of the Adriatic, developed by local cultural activists under the name of Moj otoče (My Island). The marine area surrounding Vis is many times greater than the area of the island and thus the sea (as a space which both isolates and at the same time connects, as a mythical place, as an economic resource and as a point of disappearing on one side and a life-sustaining medium on the other) can be seen as a parallel space of media research.

We will have the following teachers from six respected universities at this first Video Vortex summer school which will happen on the island of Vis in the town of Komiza between the 22nd and the 31st of August, 2011.

Sarah Kesenne – Sint Lucas Art Academy of Gent, Belgium

Kobe Vermeere – Sint Lucas Art Academy of Gent, Belgium

Merry Krell – Sussex University of Brighton, School of Media, Film and Music, UK

Adrian Goycoolea – Sussex University of Brighton, School of Media, Film and Music, UK

Peter Purg – University of Nova Gorica, School of Arts, Slovenia

Davor Svaic – University of Zagreb, Academy of Dramatic Arts, Croatia

Dalibor Martinis – University of Rijeka, Academy of Aplied Arts, Croatia

Sandra Sterle – University of Split, Academy of Arts, Croatia

Dan Oki – University of Split, Academy of Arts,  Croatia

Dinko Bozanic – University of Split, Academy of Arts, Croatia

Brian Willems – University of Split, Faculty of Philosophy, Croatia

Besides university teachers we will have also two other teaching participants:

Srećko Horvat – theoretician

Vjeran Šalamon – music composer and sound designer

We expect to have 2-4 students from each university. All together, around 20 students and 10 teachers are expected. The invited teachers should select some of their students to participate in the workshop. Structure of the workshop is that students work in couple of groups. For example, one group will be working in the field as a mobile film-media crew and another group will be assembling and editing materials and/or putting it online. Other groups or individuals can develop their own work methods or they can work exclusively with online moving image. There will also be a small film set and the production of a couple of scenes for a feature film will be taking place. We will have underwater cameras and motion capture control, lighting and sound equipment. For students who want to work on themes related to the island of Vis, here are a couple of possible themes:

- The Island of Vis and its Marine Area – Tradition

- My Island

- Global/Local – History

- Tito’s Cave – Vis 1944

Each day there will be a conceptual round table centered on planning the next day of production. Each evening we will also have one presentation or lecture by one of the teachers.

At the end of the workshop we will have presentations in the local cinema and on about 10 plasma televisions placed around the town of Komiza.

We will cover accommodation, breakfast and dinner for you as a teacher. The accommodation is in a two-star hotel, but on such a remote island it counts for four stars in the summer. The name of the hotel is called Bisevo, in the town of Komiza, the island of Vis. Please check it out on the web.

For students we have discount rates at the hotel. They have to pay 200 kunas per day, which includes accommodation, breakfast and dinner. It is, with taxes, around 30 Euros per day. The idea is to have workshops for 10 days and 9 nights. So for each student it comes to around 270 Euros, or 2,800.00 kunas.

In order to have a balance between students and teachers, the teachers do not get a teaching fee but have their accommodation and food covered, while the students do not pay a workshop fee but they have to pay for a discounted accommodation. Both students and teachers have to ask their respected Universities to pay for their travel expenses.

Besides the actual workshop, we will discuss plans for future joint study programs on the European level. Next year we expect more institutions to join us: the Academy of Fine Arts Budapest – Hungary, the Institute of Network Cultures from Amsterdam – the Netherlands and the Academy of Fine Arts from Bruinschweig – Germany, and other interested parties. A new edition of the Video Vortex conference will take place at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb in may 2012. It will be a next meeting point for further development of the projects.

Sincerely yours,

Professors Dan Oki and Dalibor Martinis

Video Vortex 4 includes contributions by: Perry Bard, Natalie Bookchin, Maarten Brinkerink, Vito Campanelli, David Clark, Dagan Cohen, Cym and the Aethernauts, Alejandro Duque, Albert Figurt, Stefan Heidenreich, Jasmina Kallay, Sarah Késsene, Lev Manovich, Dalibor Martinis, Gabriel Menotti, Ana Peraica, Valentina Rao, Shelly Silver, Jan Simons, Amir Soltani, Antanas Stancius, Evelin Stermitz, David Teh, Vera Tollmann, Andreas Treske, Saša Vojković, Nenad Vukušić Sebastijan, Linda Wallace, Paul Wiersbinski, Kuros Yalpani, Emile Zile

Organized by the Department of Film and Video at the Academy of Arts University of Split and Platforma 9.81, in collaboration with the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam.

VIDEO VORTEX 4 IN SPLIT,
SCHEDULE 21 – 23 May 2009

///DAY ZERO: THURSDAY 21 MAY 2009

17:00 Screenings 1
Location: Kinoteka Zlatna Vrata
Trip – Natalie Bookchin (63 min.)
Q&A – Natalie Bookchin (Los Angeles), (20 min.)

19:00 Opening evening
Location: Multimedia Cultural Center
19:00 Word of Welcome by Geert Lovink, Miranda Veljačić and Dan Oki
19:10 Introduction speech by Lev Manovich (San Diego)
20:00 Exhibition opening with food/buffet
21:00 Emile Zile – Post-It Kino Performance
21: 45 Nenad Vukušić Sebastijan – VJ Performance

///DAY ONE: FRIDAY 22 MAY

Video Vortex Conference
Location: Multimedia Cultural Center

9:45 – 11:30 Tele-Image Research Strategies (Moderator Sabine Niederer)
- Andreas Treske (Ankara)
- Nathalie Bookchin (Los Angeles)
- Dalibor Martinis (Zagreb)
Discussion

COFFEE

11:45 – 13:45 The Database (Moderator Tomislav Medak)
- Maarten Brinkerink (Amsterdam)
- Kuros Yalpani (Munich)
- Albert Figurt (Rome)
- Alejandro Duque (Zurich)
Discussion

LUNCH

14:30 – 16:30 Video Art meets Web Aesthetics (Moderator Leila Topić)
- Vera Tollmann (Berlin)
- Vito Campanelli (Napoli)
- Sarah Késsene (Gent)
- Linda Wallace (Sydney/Amsterdam)
Discussion

BREAK

17:30 – 18:45 Screenings 2
Location: Kinoteka Zlatna Vrata
Shelly Silver – In complete world (53 min.)
Q&A – Shelly Silver (New York), (20 min.)

19:00 CONFERENCE DINNER

21:00 – 22:30 SCREENING 3 (presented by Dagan Cohen)
Location: Kinoteka Zlatna Vrata
Upload Cinema, http://www.uploadcinema.nl, March 2009 Edition ‘Engineering the Body,’ (90 min.).

///DAY TWO: SATURDAY 23 MAY 2009
(First bus to the Conference: 8:45, Second bus to the Conference: 9:00)

Video Vortex Conference
Location: Multimedia Cultural Center

09:45 – 11:45 Online Video Theories (Moderator Geert Lovink)
- Jan Simons (Amsterdam)
- Gabriel Menotti (London)
- Amir Soltani (Manchester)
- Stefan Heidenreich (Berlin)
Discussion

COFFEE

12:00 – 14:00 Online Video Narratives (Moderator Brian Willems)
- Jasmina Kallay (Dublin)
- David Clark (Halifax)
- Valentina Rao (Pisa)
- Paul Wiersbinski (Frankfurt)
Discussion

LUNCH

14:45 – 16:45 Politics of the Moving Image (Moderator Petar Milat)
- Saša Vojković (Zagreb)
- David Teh (Bangkok)
- Ana Peraica (Split)
- Antanas Stancius (Vilnius)
Discussion

COFFEE

17:00 – 18:30 Social Cinema (Moderator Dan Oki)
- Perry Bard (New York)
- Evelin Stermitz (Villach/Ljubljana)
- Dagan Cohen (Amsterdam)
Discussion

19:00 PERFORMANCE
Location: Multimedia Cultural Center
- ‘Cym and the Aethernauts’ (Walkersdorf / All over the world) (performance 30 min.)

20:00 CONFERENCE DINNER

22:00 CONFERENCE PARTY
Location: KOCKA CLUB

We invite contributions for the following themes:

Telepresence and Web Aesthetics
Video meets Web aesthetics: how is the phenomenon of ‘telepresence’ incorporated in various art forms, such as music, theater, visual arts, literature and cinema? What are underlying aesthetics and what are the specific interface contexts?

Social Cinema
Has cinema found its way onto the Web? Did it change the essential features of cinema? What are the new possibilities of collaborative production? Does the future of film museums and cinematheques lie in online cinematic databases?

Architecture and Moving Image
Online video offers an immense database of moving images, which could be displayed in urban public space. What are the existing cinematographic visions of the future of the moving image in public space? (In films such as Blade Runner, Minority Report, Children of Men, etc.) Which visions can be directly implemented, and which will remain film scenography?

Video Sharing
What are the standards and alternatives for sharing, licensing and hosting moving images on the Web? This theme explores issues around the distribution, licensing, collaborative production, and video hosting.

Technology and politics of the moving image
What is the future of visual browsers? How does moving image production relate to cultural, technological and political dominance? Open standards and codex politics. Surveillance issues.

Literature and video online narrative
Narrative strategies on the Web. From screenplay writing with hypertext, the broadcasted self and narrative avatars to collective narrative processes leading to Web literature, tag based video narrativity, public journalism and performative real-time literature.

Please send in a 500-word abstract and a short bio to Dan Oki (danoki [at] xs4all.nl) before February 5, 2009.

During the Video Vortex in Split we will present five cinema events:
1) upload cinema 2) mobile phone cinema 3) social cinema 4) cinematic data base 5) performative cinema

///
Please check out the Video Vortex reader: Geert Lovink and Sabine Niederer (eds.), Video Vortex Reader: Responses to YouTube, Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures,
2008. ISBN: 978-90-78146-05-6.
Available as a pdf here.