Conference: 27 – 28 September, 2019 (Spazju Kreattiv)

Deadline: 15th March 2019
Please send proposals to: [email protected]
Website: http://vv12.org

VideoVortex, an artistic network that deals with the aesthetics and politics of online video, will gather again, this time in Malta, for a two days’ conference in late September.  In this call, 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 get in contact with us. If you have any specific questions, you can also address them directly to Geert Lovink ([email protected]).

We are looking for contributions about:

1) Online video cultures on social media/mobile platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, smartphone aesthetics, YouTube and YouTube integration, comments, its recommendation economy, thumbnails, etc.)

2) Realtime video streaming & its platforms (Twitter’s Periscope, Facebook Live, Twitch, etc. – their aesthetics, the performance of streaming, their modes of spectatorship, etc.)

3) Surveillance Cinema

4) Activism, migration, and online video

5) Automated and algorithmic filmmaking (AI), bots – their effects, their implications

6) Drone aesthetics (military, Wiki Loves Monuments)

7) Digital preservation of online video (archives / curating)

8) The phenomenology of YouTube as a cultural archive

9) Use of online video in the established film industry (interface cinema, data-driven filmmaking, etc.)

10) Algorithmic radicalisation

11) Synthetic intimacies (ASMR, ‘I will play _____ with you’ services, etc.)

12) Deepfakes

13) VR, embodiment, pornography

Program committee
Andreas Treske (Department of Communication and Design, Bilkent University, Ankara)
Toni Sant, Justin Galea, Daniel Azzopardi (Spazju Kreattiv, Malta)
Matthew Galea & Adnan Hadzi (Department of Digital Arts, University of Malta)
Barbara Dubbeldam & Geert Lovink (Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam)

Background of VideoVortex
VideoVortex is a network of video makers, geeks, activists, artists and researchers that are concerned with the politics and aesthetics of online video. The initiative was established in 2007 by the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam. Video technology has radically altered the way in which we produce, consume and circulate images, influencing the aesthetics and possibilities of moving image cultures, as well as yielding a rich body of scholarship across various disciplines.

Given its ease of access and use, the 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 implicate the urgent need to engage with practices of archiving and curation, modes of collaboration & political mobilisation, as well as fresh comprehensions of the subject-spectator, actors & networks constituted by contemporary video and digital cultures.

Previous Events:

videovortex #1: Brussels, Belgium, October 2007
videovortex #2: Amsterdam, the Netherlands, January 2008
videovortex #3: Ankara, Turkey, October 2008
videovortex #4: Split, Croatia, October 2009
videovortex #5: Brussels, Belgium, November 2009
videovortex #6: Amsterdam, the Netherlands, March 2011
videovortex #7: Yogyakarta, Indonesia, July 2011
videovortex #8: Zagreb, Croatia, May 2012
videovortex #9: Lüneburg, Germany, February 2013
videovortex #10: Istanbul, Turkey, September 2014
videovortex #11: Kochi, India, February 2017