Still from Mass Ornament (2009)

As the final event of  the sixth Video Vortex, YouTube lovers, video artists, and enthusiasts of all types were invited to enjoy an evening screening and discussion with media artist Natalie Bookchin. The screening was held in SMART Project Space Amsterdam, hard to find but a great location.

On Tuesday March 15th, the program started at 19:30 with Bart Rutten (Stedelijk Museum) introducing artist Natalie Bookchin. While Bookchin was  one of the speakers of the Video Vortex conference,  this evening was set up to give her the opportunity to discuss  and show the audience more of her work, and  engage in an intimate and lively discussion with Rutten and the audience. Bookchin showed us three of her works: Trip (2008), Mass Ornament (2009), and the pieces of her Testament series (2009), with great audience response. She even showed one of her newest work-in-progress chapter of  the  Testament series, Now he’s out in public and everyone can see, asking us the audience for feedback, and their response to her work.

Want to know what the response was?

All  discussion, questions, answers and comments have been noted in a detailed report. It’s a great read that covers in detail the conversation that took place between Natalie, Bart and the audience that evening. The full report will be posted to the blog in a few days! Check back soon!

By Stijnie Thuijs

Koen Leurs - 'Vernacular Spectacles? Dutch-Moroccan Youth on Youtube'. Photo by Anne Helmond.

After praising the wonderful lunch that was sure to revitalize the Video Vortex audience, Koen Leurs introduces his topic: the YouTube use of Dutch-Moroccan youth, born in the Netherlands but with natively Moroccan parents. Leurs explains how the right-wing politics in Holland are casting a shadow of negativity on the former immigrants and how the media present us with a black and white image. Anti-immigration, islamophobia, ‘Kopvoddentaks’ and street terrorists have become widely known and supported terms.

Koen shows us a video, a news report about the short film “Kop of Munt” , which shares a thought as to what would happen if all Moroccans would leave Holland. It’s meant sarcastically, but the media has picked it up as a heavy subject and made a fuss.

All this negative media attention causes presumptions about Dutch-Moroccan youth. But it is interesting to see them as they really are and perhaps how they handle all the bad news. Leurs wanted to find out how they constitute their identity through YouTube.

Koen Leurs – Video Vortex

Being a PhD student in Gender Studies at the Media and Culture Studies Department at Utrecht University, Leurs executed surveys (1500+) and in-depth interviews (43) with the subjects (Dutch-Moroccan youth between the age of 12 and 18), as well as an analysis of the digital material. He found that the DM youth use YouTube more often than Dutch youth and that it’s more woven into their everyday life. He also found that there are three ways of consumption for the DM youth. First, the nostalgic, ‘vernacular spectacles’. It is nostalgic longing for a home that no longer exists or has ever existed (Boym 2001). YouTube is their home in a sense, as the youngsters are ‘watching movies about where we come from’. The clips are symbolic anchors, a symbolic travel to a real, and at the same time magical place. Second is the consumption of differential music, ‘video’s of affinity’, such as those of Ali B and Yes-R. Third there is the knowledge brokering, which stands for a more broad and globally oriented consumption. Important to note here, is that this assumption parallels with the three types of orientation for migrated youth that Hepp, Bozdag and Suna found: origin-oriented, ethno-oriented and world-oriented.

What’s most important is that the Dutch-Moroccan youth doesn’t fit into boxes. They constitute their own identity, for a portion through the use of YouTube and other media, and combine practices and the best of three worlds (past home, present home and global culture). Above all, they watch clips that do not correspond with the negative mainstream opinion at all. Yes, they are positioned in a situation of in-betweenness, but the Dutch-Moroccan youth in Holland knows its way around the web and consumes what it likes best, not willing to apply to the negative public sphere.

Sam Gregory - 'Remix Video, Aggregated Video and Human Rights Activism'. Photo by Anne Helmond.

Sam Gregory, program director at WITNESS presented his thoughts on using online video as a political tool at Video Vortex #6 in Amsterdam yesterday.

Gregory began with presenting an image – a frame grab from the footage shot almost exactly 20 years ago, of the Rodney King beating by the Los Angeles Police Department. This footage, not only generated massive media attention and debate in the USA, but was the seed for WITNESS – to support the use of video in Human Rights advocacy to change policies, behaviours, laws and practices.

Video activism and video advocacy was the main focus of Gregory’s presentation.

“With the ever-increasing availability of tools to create, share everyday video; witnessing and documentation of Human Rights violation is becoming increasingly commonplace, across amateurs to professionals”.

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Arjon Dunnewind - 'Impakt Channel: Content with Context'. Photo by Anne Helmond.

Being the festival, artistic and general director of Impakt, Arjon Dunnewind is in charge of a database of art related content for which he has to decide the most appropriate way of uploading to the web. An important factor to take into account, he explains, is that the audience on the web has different expectations than ‘offline audience’. Online archives are the next phase and make us rethink how we structure the art collection, connect both the online and offline audience  and exploit the merits of the online environment to use them in the best possible way.

How to involve an audience?
According to Dunnewind this can be done by providing the viewers quality instead of quantity. This means no comment space below the art content. Arjon would rather have a platform without any comments than low quality comments and spam on his channel. Moderation and hierarchy are keywords for the Impakt Channel, only inviting experts to give their opinion and opening little by little. Arjon wouldn’t mind never to open it for ordinary users though – as it can degrade the quality.

Legal issues
A struggle for Dunnewind are the legal issues. Foremost, who is responsible for the content and the legal issues is not always clear. While being online for supposedly 20 years, only since 5 years has there been options for artists as to in which degree their work is allowed to be published. There is no standard agreement with the artists (all permission has to be confirmed in direct contact with the artist) and more importantly: the artists themselves haven’t always cleared the legal issues of the materials used in their pieces. On the sunny side of the legal issues is that the organization is relatively small, so they don’t receive a lot of complaints. Also there is not much historical material in the database and the legal methods Impakt uses now actually bond the artist and the organization really well. Which results in allowing to put the work online.

The Impakt Channel : Give context to content. Or: how to make a difference
To differentiate yourself from video websites such as YouTube – which offer little to no context -  could be done in various ways. To Arjon, a way is to do that is to offer unique content. Also building a unique platform with alternate possibilities and limitations is a manner. Furthermore, connecting the online channel with the offline events, art projects and festivals, including bonus material for example, are adequate ways to create context. As are the display of background information, articles, introductions and comments by invited experts, interviews and curatorial texts from the original programs.

All that said, Arjon concludes with his wish for the online Impakt environment. ‘We want the Impakt Channel to become a new platform’, he says. A platform that creates exhibitions online, a flexible, dynamic, autonomous space on which can be experimented.

Rachel Somers Miles and Geert Lovink addressing the authors and audience during the launch of the second Video Vortex reader. Photo by Anne Helmond.

On Saturday, the 12th of March 2011, a few minutes before six, the second Video Vortex reader was being presented to the audience of the sixth edition of the Video Vortex conference. Editors Geert Lovink and Rachel Somers Miles invited the contributors to the second volume, who were present en masse, to celebrate the launch of the book on stage.

Rachel Somers Miles. Photo by Anne Helmond.

Rachel Somers Miles and Video Vortex Reader II Contributors. Photo by Anne Helmond.

Rachel Somers Miles, Video Vortex Reader II Contributors and Geert Lovink. Photo by Anne Helmond.

Video Vortex Reader II contributors. Photo by Anne Helmond.

Annelies Termeer - 'Instant Cinema: Sharing the Screen'. Photo by Anne Helmond.

Annelies Termeer was the third speaker during the lecture themed It’s Not a Dead Collection, It’s a Dynamic Database. She is ad interim head of digital presentation at the EYE Film Institute, formerly known as the Film Museum. The project she is affliated with is called InstantCinema. The goal of the website is to facilitate filmmakers with a platform that affords them to easily upload their films and connect with likeminded people. An important part of the target audience exists of experimental filmmakers, who now have a platform that has the ability to unite the separate spheres of the online communities, the art world and the film world.

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Sandra Fauconnier – 'Mediating Video Art Online'. Photo by Anne Helmond.

Sandra Fauconnier, working as an archiver for the Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk), delivered a speech about video art distribution during the overarching theme It’s Not a Dead Collection, It’s a Dynamic Database. The NIMk curates and distributes works of art online through its website, which contains a searchable catalogue. The archive contains objects ranging from the seventies to contemporary works by established as well as upcoming Dutch and foreign artists. Fauconnier spoke about the ways in which the shift from the pre-digital to the digital era has faced the NIMk with challenges to how it was archiving its works.

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Joanne Richardson - 'Making Video Politically'. Photo by Anne Helmond.

Video artist Joanne Richardson (GER) was invited to give a presentation in the session called “Online Video as a Political Tool”, beginning her talk with a critical look at the terms ‘online’, ‘political’ and ‘tool’. As Marx had wrote in the Economic Transcript, a social revolution will “not get to the next stage” when the state is used as means to overthrow the state. Here’s the opposition between Heideger (using the available tools) and Nietzsche (somehow doing something completely different) becomes relevant in considering the subjectivity of activism and the traps of deconstruction, a few of the central topics in Richardson’s work.

As Richardson was a participant in the Romanian ‘indie media’, the question of “what is it that makes our media other than other media?” started bothering her. Even more, the online tools that had been made available had proven to be largely a celebration of openness and accessibility itself. Making video users into producers would clearly not have brought new models of producing, “what makes video activism different other than putting it into the hands of the users?” To come back to Marx’ point: don’t these approaches by the masses still follow the same ways of production as with ‘other propaganda’?

After stumbling upon a film of Jean-Luc Godard that displayed a political struggle, for Richardson this was the shift from “[political] content to the mode of production.” Following from this shift of production were different strategies to depict political agendas. The first one, that of image reference, is about the relationship that truth claims. By questioning the image and the reference political film-making would act as a ‘counter-documentary’.

Another aspect, that of form and content occurs when “the form is made of elements that don’t fit, [consequently] it asks the audience to take its part and create meaning.” Richardson here mentions the a montage method in which footage from different political events are mixed together and suggest a collective social struggle while in fact the ideological contexts were hardly comparable.

In “2 or 3 Things About Activism“, Richardson deconstructs the effects of montage. In the former work, she uses different kinds of fragments which gradually fall apart and thus create a distance between the viewer and the objectivity of the image. Overall, Richardson stresses the importance of this ‘critical distance’, as the viewers “should not create identification but [...] make them think for themselves and reconsider the relation to the image.”

Ferdiansyah Thajib - 'A Chronicle of Video Activism and Online Distribution in Post-New Order Indonesia'. Photo by Anne Helmond.

On the second day of Video Vortex at the Trouw in Amsterstam, Nuraini Juliastuti and Ferdiansyah Thajib explored how video activist in Indonesia, appropriate a variety of distribution strategies. They began with a brief historical overview giving brief a historical overview of video activism in Indonesia. They continued with a mapping of video activism, the prospects and barriers and a brief exploration beyond activism.

At the early stage between 1970 and 1990s it began with an entrance through videocassettes. As explained in Juliastuti and Thajibmain’s book Video Chronic, the New Order saw the potential dangers of the cassettes and took measures to contain and control video practices. Nevertheless, film in Indonesia experienced several boosts, in the late 1980s the production and consumption was increased by the advent of private television stations, between 1991 and 1994 video production rose with fifty percent and in 1995 there was a rise in video piracy which extended the consumption beyond the economic class. This historical overview that they presented and is further explored in the book ‘Video chronic: video activism and video distribution in Indonesia’ shows that video practices in Indonesia are an interplay between production, distribution and consumption. They went on to show that at the end of Suharto’s New Order in 1998 a burgeoning of alternative media such as zines, mailing list and discussion platforms can be seen. These can be seen as alternative media outlets that form channels for discussion that could circumvent repression. According to Juliastuti and Thajib  two main ways of media participation can be observed in Indonesia. First there is the empowerment of marginalized communities. Secondly, media participation can be seen as a reaction to the more general exclusions created by capitalist media.

Nuraini Juliastuti - 'A Chronicle of Video Activism and Online Distribution in Post-New Order Indonesia'. Photo by Anne Helmond.

Thajib and Juliastuti went on to explore the intersecting trajectories of video activist, consisting of grassroots-, tactical- and experimental video activism. Grassroots video activist work with specific communities. Online they highlight the ceremonial aspect of being together, they also need video to connect with other events that are going on nationally and globally. Tactical video activist are those who are flexible in the methods of distribution. They use online distribution actively and feel that the mainstream media are not the appropriate channel or means to attain their goals. Tactical activists also use specific sites for their videos, for instance Indymedia. Experimental video activist explore the potentials of video and do more than expire change and intervene. They see online and offline as another way to experiment, connect and as a means of developing themselves.

Despite the rise of the video activism there are still technical barriers to be overcome. The limited bandwidth, particularly outside urban centers, the high-cost of getting access to the Internet and the increasing size of video files are difficulties to be overcome. Not only are there technical barriers but also the public perception is a barrier as well. The moral panic among the aggressor community; fears of being exposed to pornographic materials are mentioned as reason for not installing internet facilities in villages. There is also a digital divide which is not so much about getting access to the tools but is more about how can the tools be used. Media literacy is more an issue than who has access to the Internet, which became evident during the panel discussion after the presentation. Furthermore, the video producers are also concerned with how the material is going to be used and don’t really see the use for putting it online. Most of the producers care more about watching and making the video’s in conjunction with the community and they are not sure how it is going to be perceived and watched online.

The last part of the presentation went beyond video activism. The ubiquity of mainstream video-sharing services opens an area where the non-activist video can be pushed to the public and old media are using more amateur content. Additionally, the police are increasingly using the video’s as evidence, for instance a video of violence on Java, and to identify the actors involved in the events. The question then remains what the activist can do with the videos. Ferdiansyah Thajib concludes the presentation by stating the audience must do more than just view and take action, and that the video’s must emphasize the social change content that already exists offline, this to ensure that the audience is more receptive to these video’s.

The research into video activism in Indonesia has been published as a book (pdf), which can be found on the following website.
http://engagemedia.org/videochronic-english

About the author: Ryanne Turenhout is a master student of New Media and Digital Culture at Utrecht University.

Andrew Lowenthal - 'The Public, the Private and Media Autonomy'. Photo by Anne Helmond.

On the second day of Video Vortex at the Trouw in Amsterdam Andrew Lowenthal addresses the issues of how to use and distribute video politically and how do you do that independently and autonomously.

Andrew Lowenthal began by giving an overview of what EngageMedia has been doing over the past six years. They came out of the indymedia movement and are concerned with social and environmental issues in Asia pacific. At that time that they got started the tools needed for video distribution were not widely available. Media activist intervention was needed if the tools were going to be there. They’ve developed an online video sharing platform and their work revolves around how to use the tools that are out there for political and social impact. The literacy, skills building and generating ideas on how to effectively use the tools that are available.

This presentation raises some important issues and reflects on the need for Indymedia movements for online video activism. One of the issues raised is that not only the number of hits matters but also who is watching matters. If your video gets 200 hits on Youtube and also 200 hits on for instance Engagemedia, who is watching is going to be very different. It is great if people watch the video on Youtube but getting the engagement that you need is a different question. Another issue that Lowenthal addressed is, how do you as social movement compete with other movements? This, for Lowenthal, remains an open question. He went on to discussing several projects that Engagemedia have been doing.

Lowenthal briefly touches upon web 2.0 and the decline of media activism. The contradictions that can be seen are now too difficult to ignore. Now with the advent of wikileaks and companies like Amazon and Paypal distancing themselves and pulling the plug, it is increasingly becoming apparent how much we depend on these kind of companies and how much we have under-emphasize the independent infrastructure that we need. Especially, according to Andrew Lowenthal, as social movements keep growing and conflict with the interest of these companies.

He further discusses the question of how do you distribute video politically. Open technologies and licenses are part of it but also important is how do you build new geographies across borders. Lowenthal sees video and the Internet as drawing new political spaces, that don’t actually have to conform to the traditional political terrain that we are often governed by. Shifting the political terrain is what they are trying to do. He goes on to discuss what is so special about video which is in his mind, the overcoming of otherness. Otherness, according to Lowenthal, often proceeds violence. In order to exclude someone, you have to ‘other’ them. With video you can overcome the otherness and build relationships between people and issues that are quite similar. EngageMedia is interested in drawing together the commonalities between the various issues. People often contextualize the issues just within the nation-state that they exist in even though these processes are beyond (or at least partially) the control of any one institution. The question than remains how do you build these cross-border and cross-cultural collaborations? Lowenthal believes that there is a huge amount of potential in the tools that are available, for instance universal subtitles project.

Lowenthal concludes with some interesting remarks. EngageMedia is interested in creating independent autonomous structures but also in creating spaces within the corporate spaces that have emerged, or the culture within them. He went on to say that people go to all sorts of lengths to get the content they want, upload it and find it. If they want the content, they will find it. Lowenthal concluded with the remark that the infrastructure is very important, but if you don’t have content that speaks to the aspiration and the needs of the people you can’t hit the mark.

About the author: Ryanne Turenhout is a master student of New Media and Digital Culture at Utrecht University.