I am happy to announce Amalgamate, an exhibition of videos made by students in my course on “The Video Essay” (Fall 2019). Works range from analytical to experimental, with activist impulses and cinephilic sensitivities sprinkled throughout. The show runs from January 10-31, 2020 in the Gunn Foyer, McMurtry Building, at Stanford.
Video (in Spanish) of my talk, “Discorrelation and Post-Perceptual Image,” from September 12, 2019 at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá is now online.
Minutes before the talk, I was whisked away to give two separate interviews — one for an article that is now online, and one for a local television station (!), which I have not yet seen…
I am happy to report that my deformative, EEG-driven interactive video project, The Algorithmic Nickelodeon, which was screened last month at the ACUD-Kino in Berlin, has been selected for screening at the Besides the Screen Festival taking place in Vitória and São Paulo, Brazil this September. My understanding is that it will be among the works shown in Vitória from September 9-12.
On July 3, 2019, I delivered a talk related to my forthcoming book, Discorrelated Images, at Leuphana Universität’s Institute of Advanced Study on Media Cultures of Computer Simulation (MECS), during my fellowship in Lüneburg. The video is now online, and can be viewed here (or the direct link to YouTube).
Thanks to Florian Hoof for the kind invitation, and for everyone at MECS and the Center for Digital Cultures for hosting me this summer!
Recently, I posted my my video, “The Algorithmic Nickelodeon,” which I presented on June 21 at the ACUD-Kino in Berlin, in the context of a symposium on “Videographic Criticism: Aesthetics and Methods of the Video Essay” organized by Kathleen Loock.
Now the videos of the two roundtable discussions with Allison de Fren, Kathleen Loock, Chloé Galibert-Laîné, and Kevin B. Lee (moderated by Julia Leyda), and with Liz Greene, David Verdeure, and myself (and moderated by Evelyn Kreutzer) are online, here.
Thanks again to Kathleen Loock for organizing and to the ACUD-Kino for hosting this event!
Yesterday was the first event on my trip to Germany and Switzerland: the symposium Videographic Criticism: Aesthetics and Methods of the Video Essay, organized by Kathleen Loock, and with talks/screenings from her, Allison de Fren, Chloé Galibert-Laîné and Kevin B. Lee, Liz Greene, David Verdeure, and myself.
Above, you will find my video contribution, “The Algorithmic Nickelodeon,” which builds on work started at the Duke S-1: Speculative Sensation Lab during my time there as a postdoc. The video is offered as proof-of-concept for an experimental approach to videographic theory–using video not (only) as a vehicle for theoretical expression but as a more radically transductive medium of media-theoretical exploration and transformation.
Next Friday, June 21, 2019, I am excited to present “The Algorithmic Nickelodeon,” a literally mind-bending EEG-powered videographic experiment, in the context of the symposium on “Videographic Criticism: Aesthetics and Methods of the Video Essay.”
The symposium, organized by Kathleen Loock, will take place at the ACUD-Kino in Berlin, and will bring together lots of leading practitioners of videographic scholarship to screen their work and discuss questions of aesthetics, methods, and theory.
The event is free and open to the public, so come by if you’re in the neighborhood!
Recently, I wondered whether it was time to leave social media and reboot the blog as a space of active thinking and sharing. The jury is still out on whether that is feasible and even desirable. But I would like to use this space to post more than just upcoming talks and publications. In that spirit, I’d like to point out Yvette Granata’s 360-degree video CLONE (2017), which you can see above (but which is better viewed on a smartphone through the YouTube app, and even better with Google Cardboard or similar contraption).
On her website, Granata describes the video thus:
CLONE (HD Video, 2017) is a 360 video essay and a para-sexual design fiction. It narrates a future time after global climate collapse and mass pollution have made sexual reproduction no longer viable. Both sexual reproduction and the networked technology of the 21st century have all melted from the humidity produced by runaway greenhouse gasses. In this speculative future, a Xenofeminist world government has re-purposed the data farms of former tech companies for Mono-auto-sexual cloning clinics — the artificial wombs for the hot asexuality of the future.
I have recently been writing about this remarkable video against the background of big-budget movies about artificial women, including Her (2013), Ex Machina (2014), and Blade Runner 2049 (2017). Those movies, all of which happen to be directed by white men, are interesting meditations on, or parables of, artificial creation in an age of computer-generated imagery. But Granata’s weird video, drawing inspiration from the Xenofeminist Manifesto, goes farther than any of those movies in raising questions about the interface between gender, capital, climate change, and moving-image media.
Here is a brief snippet of what I’ve been writing:
In the week of March 25 – 29, 2019, I will be giving several talks and workshops in Norway — first at the Deapartment of Art And Media Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, and then at the Department of Nordic and Media Studies at the University of Agder in Kristiansand.
First, in Trondheim, on March 26 and 27, I will be participating on two workshops on videographic pedagogy and scholarship with Kathleen Loock.
Then, on March 28, also in Trondheim, I’ll be presenting work from my book project Discorrelated Images.
Finally, on March 29, in Kristiansand, I’ll be giving a talk on contemporary horror, also under the perspective of discorrelation.
Thanks to Julia Leyda for inviting me to Trondheim, and to Ahmet Gürata for the invitation to Kristiansand!
On Wednesday, February 27 (5-7pm in the Board Room of the Stanford Humanities Center), the Digital Aesthetics Workshop will be hosting Kevin B. Lee for an event titled “Dreams and Terrors of Desktop Documentary”:
Desktop documentary is a form that both presents and critically reflects on the world as experienced through computer screens and online interfaces. Treating the desktop as a medium for non-fiction storytelling proposes a unique set of epistemological dilemmas, affective dimensions and aesthetic discoveries. These factors inform Bottled Songs, a collaborative investigation by Kevin B. Lee and Chloé Galibert-Laîné of online terrorist media. Screening excerpts from the project, Lee will elaborate on the desktop documentary approach and its applications in exploring the underlying networks — both human and technological — informing online terrorism.
Kevin B. Lee is a US-born filmmaker and critic. He has produced over 360 video essays exploring film and media. His award-winning film Transformers: The Premake played in several festivals and was named one of the best documentaries of 2014 by Sight & Sound. He was Artist in Residence of the Harun Farocki Institut in Berlin. He is now Professor of Crossmedia Publishing at the Merz Akademie, Stuttgart. In 2018 he and Chloé Galibert-Laîné were grantees of the Sundance Institute Art of Nonfiction Fund and artists-in-residence of the European Media Art Platform (EMAP).