VideoVortex, an artistic network concerned with the aesthetics and politics of online video, will gather again in Malta for a conference in late September 2019. In this edition we are in particularly focussed on bringing new research, theory and critiques of online video – in addition to questions around its integration with social media – to Malta. If you are a graduate student or researcher/critic that is engaged with the theoretical challenges of contemporary (moving) image cultures, please join us for the conference.
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 to say that rapidly changing technological formats underscore the urgent need to engage with 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.
Restaging For The Time Being: Hang Li and Caroline Rosello
Restaging For The Time Being is the restatged documentation of a curated digital programme, For the Time Being (May 2019). Originally, For the Time Being was an experimental programme
of photo-performance, conceived as a response to the everyday presence of social media. The project used Snapchat, an app devised to share intimate, disappearing images, as a central protagonist. In May, 2019, the project invited Agil Abdullayev, Feng Mengbo, Max Grau and Tamara Kametani and artist collective Agorama to reflect on the role of image sharing networks in their personal lives. In addition to the art programme, selected writers were invited to contribute texts that extend the themes of art production, memory and social media. The writings of Media theorist Katharina Niemeyer, curator Prayas Abhinav, digital curator and scholar Katrina Sluis,
the winner of the teen-writing competition: Monica Okello and our artists can be accessed on www.forthetimebeing.co.uk. In Video Vortex, the documentation, website and writings of For
the Time Being will be shown to host discussions around the approaches, value and problems of curation, documentation and re-staging in the networked culture.
Curators: Hang Li and Caroline Rosello.
Artists: Agil Abdullayev, Agorama, Max Grau, Tamara Kametani and Feng Mengbo.
Curators of For the Time Being (London), May 2019: Rachel Chiodo, Sitara Chowfla, Hang Li, Esther Moerdler, Carlos Pinto and Caroline Rosello.
Final-Video-Vortex-Program.pdf (networkcultures.org)
Video Vortex | Caroline Roselló: Restaging For the Time Being (networkcultures.org)