Video Vortex #9
Re:assemblies of Video
28 Feb. – 2 March 2013
Lüneburg, Germany
Centre for Digital Cultures
Leuphana University

The conference asks how can we analyze and compare assemblages of online video? 
Besides speakers, performances and workshops we already announced - among them Beth
Coleman and Nishant Shah - we would like to introduce to you a further set of
speakers and topics: 

Joshua Neves, Gabriel Menotti and Filippo Spreafico find different ways to organize
filters and frameworks for glimpses of online video. Neves pleads for adopting new
thinking for each video assembly, a multiplicity of video theories. The method of
Menotti to access the videosphere is through curation. Even more hands-on is
Spreafico’s video montage, which simultaneously shows his „local“ and „personal“
view on information.

Along the activism-journalism-civic media axis, Sascha Simons scrutinizes the
phenomenon of amateur video witnesses along lines of  circulation, credibility, and
mobilization. Margarita Tsomou takes the protests on Syntagma Square in Athens in
2011 as her familiar example to explore the visual affectivity of bodies and social
spaces in a performance lecture.
Besides covering movements of majorities inserting itself in existing social
structures, video can be seen as a literal social beast reflecting the dark side of
amateur video production. Nelli Kambouri and Pavlos Hatzopoulos look at the
blistering video propaganda of the Greek fascist party Golden Dawn.

At this critical stage, contested video networks have to deal with attempts to
subsume cultural production and consumption under brand and corporate authorities.
Coders and developers of VLC, FFmpeg, Pan.do.ra and P2P Next gather at Video Vortex
to exchange concepts and strategies to keep video formats, codecs and archives
available to the commons.

Video as part of the learning sphere is likewise contested: MOOC(s) are rising as a
new promise for democratizing education or just as effective market reach. Hybrid
Publishing Lab and guests from Coventry University will discuss critically how
videos get re-embedded and re-annotated in teaching platforms.

Financing of film, television and video projects reflects the logics of the new
assemblages. Media industry and users alike are expecting multiplatform-ready
narrative forms. Three case studies of the Moving Image Lab mirror these challenges
and will be discussed alongside Dystopia, an interactive web film, to reflect what
new terrains and demands are showing up in media production.

Andrew Clay translates the challenge of social media right within a format of
academic presentation. Surrounded by three video projectors and using the
interaction of participants, he will immerse a talk on social film into the format
social film. The social force of copresence and sharing in a state of crisis is what
interests Deborah Ligorio in her art project Survival Kits.

Certainly social video is about the mirroring of social visions. This February in
Cairo, the artists Kaya Behkalam and Azin Feizabadi together with curator Jens
Maier-Rothe conceived a performative lecture on the very notion of »projection«.
Jasmina Metwaly from Mosireen Collective – who organized Tahir Cinema, open air
projections of mobile video during the egyptian revolution –, will respond with her
insights and experiences in facilitating and screening political video.

How much citizen reporters rely on personal engagement, skills and persistence, is
shown by the film High Tech Low Life by Steve Maing, a cinematic portait of two
Chinese video bloggers.

Video Vortex #9 in general traces new digital video culture, its users, spectators
and producers by looking at criss-cross effects between neighboring domains, tracks
and turfs of video. The way users made digital culture a part of their real life is
illustrated in the ‚video meme’ "Digital Natives" by artist Renée Ridgway.

Participants: Beth Coleman, Seth Keen,  Edwin, Thomas Østbye, Andreas Treske,
Stephanie Hough, Martin Katić, Theresa Steffens, Arndt Potdevin, Robert M. Ochshorn,
Nan Haifen, Viola Sarnelli, Boris Traue, Achim Kredelbach , Dalida María Benfield,
Renée Ridgway, Gabriel S Moses, Nishant Shah, Margarita Tsomou, Sascha Simons, Nelli
Kambouri, Pavlos Hatzopoulos, Joshua Neves, Gabriel Menotti, Filippo Spreafico,
Caroline Heron, Jonathan Shaw, Jan Gerber, Sebastian Luetgert, Johan Pouwelse,
Sebastian Luetgert, Sascha Kluger, Jamie King,  Stefano Sabatini, Peter Snowdon ,
Miya Yoshida, Boaz Levin, Azin Feizabadi, Kaya Behkalam, Jens Maier-Rothe, Jasmina
Metwaly, Left Vision, Katja Grundmann, Graswurzel.tv , Björn Ahrend, Timo
Großpietsch, Vito Campanelli , Robert M. Ochshorn, Alejo Duque, Lucía Egaña Rojas,
Andrew Clay, Stefan Heidenreich, Deborah Ligorio,  Cornelia Sollfrank, among others

The full program can be found here on videovortex9.net

VV9 is organized by Leuphana University’s Moving Image Lab and Post-Media Lab. A
portion of VV9 also constitutes the first part of the ANALOG event series, sponsored
by the university’s Centre for Digital Cultures.

VV9 is funded through Innovation Incubator, a major EU project financed by the
European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the federal state of Lower Saxony.