video vortex xi 23-25 Feburary 2017 Kochi video vortex xi VVXI Organising Team conTENTS 1 Video Vortex: a Brief History Geert Lovink 2 Video Vortex XI Rashmi Sawhney 5 VideoTheory Andreas Treske Programme Director: Rashmi Sawhney 12 Video Installations Programming Committee: Andreas Treske 20 Video Screening Programmes Ahmet Gurata Rashmi Sawhney 36 Workshops Exhibition Curatorial Team: Aishwarya Viswanathan 42 Invited Video Curations Keerthi K. Shastri Neha Kasana Shruti Rao 52 Artists’ Talks Soubhagya Pai Syeda Zainab Akbar 60 Conference Papers Catalogue Design: Neha Kasana 74 Participants’ Bios Aishwarya Viswanathan Syeda Zainab Akbar Keerthi K. Shastri Production Head: Meena Vari Production Team: Lubna Hamza Sreenadh K. Jyothinadh Nimisha Singhal Video Vortex: a Brief History Volcanic Residues: Video Vortex XI by Geert Lovink by Rashmi Sawhney Welcome to VideoVortex, a network on the VideoVortex is critical research, it’s exper- The conference is seen as a meeting point, exist across different spaces – unlikely spac- politics and aesthetics of online video. It is imental visual art, screenings and installa- the coming together of people with a shared es, sometimes – while attempting to enable the oldest and most successful living net- tions;, it is websites, channels, social media purpose. The vortex is the high point of the conversations across silos, that exist on their work of artists, designers, activists and geeks, rumors and snaps. Join the movement! conference, a culmination of sorts. VV XI has own, yet are acutely aware of the presence of founded by the Institute of Network Cultures been a journey with many culminations, others; similar sometimes, often different. in Amsterdam (NL) late 2006 when YouTube Geert Lovink many beginnings, but no ends, and the vor- had just started. The story of online video founder of the Institute of Network Cultures tex that assembled in Kochi this February, Fragments, Inserts, Displacements: had been a long one in the making with first was more like a volcanic mountain with the i. The insertion into the VV network and an experiments going back many years earli- Website: lava spilling out in all directions -- trickling announcement that the next vortex was like- er. The world was waiting patiently for the http://networkcultures.org/videovortex/ down, hardening, taking shape, then set- ly to be held in India made for an untimely technology, and bandwidth, to develop, and Two VideoVortex readers, free to download: tling into another solid formation – than a event. The previous edition of VV was meant then, with the invention of the embedded Mailinglist: dormant one, whose peaks lie in waiting to to have been held in London, but could not video, it unfolded quickly. http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/vide- be scaled. be materialized due to a lack of funds. Since ovortex_listcultures.org ------------------------- its inception, VV has been mostly confined to Online video is not merely the remediation On the 13th of March 2016, I reached Anka- Europe, barring on the one occasion when of the old content of film, television and vid- VideoVortex #1: ra where I was going to live for two months, it was held in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Geert eo onto a next platform. Our question from Brussels, Belgium, October 2007 on a teaching fellowship at the University Lovink, the founder of the Institute of Net- the start was what happens to the status of VideoVortex #2: of Bilkent. The Chair of the Dept. of Com- work Cultures, has worked closely with Sarai, the moving image when we start looking at Amsterdam, The Netherlands, January 2008 munications, Ahmet Gurata picked me up having edited several of the Sarai Readers, yet a database, the question Lev Manovich first VideoVortex #3: from the airport, took me to my lodging at India had not been a vortex so far. Locating raised in this 2001 text The Language of New Ankara, Turkey, October 2008 G-07/219 on the Bilkent campus, made me VV XI in Kochi/South Asia, opened up a whole Media. What is database cinema? What does VideoVortex #4: trudge up and down the hilly campus -- a range of questions about region in the con- it mean that we can comment and quote Split, Croatia, October 2009 task my impoverished lungs dealt with with text of ubiquitous digital technologies. Does videos on our smart phones? What are the VideoVortex #5: great difficulty -- before we headed out to the internet of things erase region or does it cultural implications of a visual culture that Brussels, Belgium, November 2009 Kizilay to get dinner. While we were tend- get inscribed more strongly? Can one think of records video anywhere, all the time? If film VideoVortex #6: ing to a bottle of wine at the Sakal bar, a region outside of the notion of representa- was defined by montage, and television by Amsterdam, The Netherlands, March 2011 loud sound – the measure of an obnoxious tion and in terms of infrastructures and the live broadcasting, then what defines our VideoVortex #7: Diwali cracker – resounded. I jokingly said, “I forms? How does one think about vernacular age? Video cannot be reduced to the stat- Yogyakarta, Indonesia, July 2011 hope that’s not a bomb,” and seconds later aesthetics and can one imagine a different ic screen plus DVD experience. These days, VideoVortex #8: Ahmet’s phone was flooded with videos aesthetic of art and politics, whose roots ex- we swipe through the time line, ignore the Zagreb, Croatia, May 2012 and messages about the bomb blast near a tend across geographies, but stop spreading image and only listen to the sound track, VideoVortex #9: public park in Kizilay we had walked through out at some point, through and under the we witness our dearest friends and fami- Lüneburg, Germany, February 2013 merely ten minutes ago. The dramatic shock soil? Could we map region differently if we ly, live, through Skype or Facebook Live. A VideoVortex #10: of being in Erdogan’s Turkey manifested it- dug up the earth and laid bare the cables decade into the medium, we have not start- Istanbul, Turkey, September 2014 self in visceral ways that marked the rest of that carry our data, their beginnings and their ed to scratch the surface of what’s possible VideoVortex #11: my stay there. VV XI was in many ways, trig- ends? Or are we bound to continue to wear when we carry a 4K in our pocket. How are Kochi, India, February 2017 gered by that bomb blast. There were four the mask of identity – circumscribed by im- we going to curate and archive this massive more blasts reported in the two-month span agined notions of belonging? Because we’ve explosion of creativity? What’s the role of that I was there, and possibly others that spread ourselves thin, we belong a little bit ‘platform capitalism’ in all this, with only a went unreported. here, a little bit there, and mostly nowhere, handful of monopoly players dominating the unless we let the roots dig deeper than they global market? How do we make the most of How does one think of a vortex when our can spread. It depends, I suppose, on what mass interactivity? How can we increase vid- worlds as we know them are being shat- kind of tree we want to be. eo literacy? How do we develop a common tered, and scattered as shreds? What does a vocabulary, developed by young critics and vortex mean in a political climate that is divi- ii. From Spinoza to Hardt and Negri, the ‘in- theorists, of our everyday video life? What’s sive; that snubs out the possibilities of collec- sert’ has been a potent idea. VV XI inserted it- the latest in the development of the ‘web tives, of collaboration, of communities, of to- self into the space of the Kochi-Muzeris bien- 1 documentary’ genre? In short: what’s video getherness? How does one break down the nial, amidst much uncertainity. As a collateral 2 aesthetics today? walls of convention and allow elements to event, it occupied the space of a child that was born to a surrogate mother; tied by the -chives’. The work of carefully going through what constitutes an event itself, we decided campus of Srishti, the individual home/work umbilical chord, but not necessarily borne each artist’s videos (many sent us more than that the vortex needed to not be contained spaces of various people who were a regular out of love. Out of no deliberation, but due to one piece of work, some sent us about 20!) either spatially or durationally. In order to part of my skype night life for several weeks. pure necessity, we were told the main venue involved hundreds of hours of viewing time, mobilise this spread, the VV XI website vide- What we have put together in this publication for the conference, the Cabral yard, would be and coordination with my co-organisers, An- ovortex11.net was set up to provide a plat- is a catalogue of the different ideas, videos, unavailable merely a week before Vortex XI dreas Treske and Ahmet Gurata in Turkey. form for extended discussions, video talks performances, workshops, provocations, and was scheduled. This was due to the fact that While skype and other modes of online com- and interviews with artists who were not conversations that formed VV XI. It is not the the President of India, Mr Pranab Mukherjee, munication worked in the initial stages of the able to physically join us in Kochi, as well conventional conference or exhibition cata- was to speak at a conference being held at selection process, it was impossible to col- as to establish a repository that coexisted logue that accompanies (and indeed precedes) the Cabral yard on the 2nd of March, and laborate on the setting up of the exhibition, along with the Video Vortex blog estab- the ‘event’ in some ways, but is part of the ‘af- there were chances that the venue would given the geographical distance.