On a rainy morning in Amsterdam (that demanded lots of coffee!), the Video Vortex - Responses to YouTube Conference was kicked off at Club 11. I will be blogging on the conference for movingweb, but I was also there because I have been involved with the project through my work at the Netherlands Media Art Institute where we made an exhibition with the same title and related topics. Well, the program of the conference is quite extensive, and I was very disappointed by some of the presentations today (that seemed unprepared, unfocused, had nothing new to say…a total contrast with the first Video Vortex conference in Brussels!). So I will focus on the gems of today’s presentations!

The conference started with a presentation by Tom Sherman, a video artist, writer and professor in the Department of Transmedia at Syracuse University in NY. He gave a more general introduction to video art, explaining the constant death and revival of the genre that have come forth (also) through technological evolution. The analogue has changed to the digital, the linear to the non-linear, distribution and exhibition were transformed through the method of file sharing. Sherman sees video (art) not as a product, but a process: It’s about the taping, re-taping, experimenting, deleting, not the finished thing. He also described the development of the genre as very much dependent on the cultural sector such as galleries, musea, and funds. In fact video art had it’s ‘hey day’ between 1972 - 1978, and then again in the early 1990s when video art was embraced by musea in the form of installations. The upcoming of the internet again has changed the way video art is perceived. It stays an art form difficult to sell and also (even more important) difficult to conserve. Video art has been de-professionalized over the decades and is now often seen only in its relation to traditional visual art forms. Its ongoing “life support systems” are educational and art institutions concerned with video art, the limited funds available, collectors, as well as genres such as the music video clip. Sherman describes vernacular video as “the people’s video” made possible through file sharing. Vernacular video is thus characterized through being short (becoming shorter and shorter), the use of canned music, voiceovers replacing writing, vidually dynamic but semantically crude forms, the proliferation of video tourism and road films, as well as the use of standard paint programs and filters. The vernacular puts the content first, makes it more important than the form. As Sherman explains, video art was traditionally a response to television, and now that the web replaces TV, it will become an answer to the web. And just toquickly mention it, I loved Sherman’s story about how he had once met Marshall McLuhan who had insulted him for being a video artist (quote: “…and I thought: wow, he really IS an asshole!”).

Florian Schneider, a filmmaker and initiator of the campaign Kein Mensch ist Illegal at dokumenta X in 1997, then explained his concept of ‘imaginary property’. His research has produced a series of texts, films and video installations researching the question “What does it mean to own an image?”. He claims that we do not live in a knowledge economy, but an “image economy”, constantly translating information into images. Platforms such as youtube where users hand over all their copyrights to a commercial corporation make us rethink the question of ownership. Schneider proposes a concept of ‘imaginary property’ in contrast to ‘intellectual property’. His concept can be read in two ways: property produced by imagination, or images as property. In this case, ‘imaginary’ does not mean unreal or fictional, it defines a situation beyond real and unreal, an impossibility of distinguishing between what is owned and what is not (and by whom). Yet, he says, this does not mean a form of indifference, but it makes us aware that copyright issues are not about the relation between us and the object of property, but between us and the other users and what they could do with the object. So sharing is not the problem at all, but multiplication is!

The next interesting talk was by Andreas Treske, a filmmaker, media artist, and teacher of courses in new media, video production, and visual communication design at Bilkent University in Ankara. In 2005 his feature length football documentary Takim Böyle Tutulur was actually screened in over 50 cinemas all over Turkey. Treske explained the differences in format between movies made for huge cinema screens, and those that now have to be produced for small mobile devices such as mobile phones or the ipod. The size of the screen influences the way we view an image, and the huge cinema screens of the past have aesthetically influenced the way we view film today. In a cinema room or in front of a huge television set, we get absorbed into the image and there is nothing to distract us. But when we are watching images on a small device, there are lots of things that surround us that distract our attention. So while cinema is ’shutting down the senses’ as Walter Benjamin wrote, the mobile video on a small screen is competing with all our senses. Therefore formats for portable devices have to follow a different design principle: The image has to be more intense, simplified, and this can only be reached through making them short, using close ups, lesser detail, strengthening of a reduced number of colors, and an emphasis on sound. Such formats could be done drawing inspiration from other art form that are essentially ’short’, such as the literary forms of haiku poetry, jokes, fables and aphorisms.

And now my favourite thing of today: Tal Sterngast’s video blog Karasek spricht for netzeitung.de! Tal Sterngast is a visual artist and freelance writer with Israelian roots, living and working in Berlin. And she is also the Berlin correspondent for Israelian art magazine Studio and has worked as a camera woman for several European documentary projects. In 2006, she started the weekly video colum Karasek Spricht for netzeitung.de, a series of little videos in which Manual Karasek, son of the famous German literature critic Hellmuth Karasek, gives the review of a new novel. The project ran for about a year and i nthe end had to stop due to a lack of funding and the limited availability of copyright-free footage to use - what a shame! Sterngast showed some of the videos, and explained how she addressed the projects, what she had to keep in mind while making video to be watched on the net, and what kind of footage she used (for example from public archives). It is really quite a nice project, especially because the camera really focuses on Karasek, the background is very plain, and the image of him is only interrupted by found footage that in some way relates to what he is talking about (for example a topic in the book he reviews). The movies had to be done very quickly, but the crude editing and sometimes ‘trashy’ look only increase the charm. And, of course, the fact that Manuel Karasek resembles his father to a degree almost a bit creepy - especially in the way he speaks and uses specific gestures!

Last but definitely not least, let me tell you more about tank.tv, an online gallery for video art and very interesting project indeed! Philine von Guretzky, who has been involved in the project since 2004 and has a background in media design, introduced tank.tv and the way they work. They describe themselves as a platform and archive of the contemporary moving image. The works online are either gathered by addressing the artists or through submission- basically anyone can submit their works to the site and hope for them to be shown there! The project has been widely acceptedover the last few years and they’re getting a lot of support and interest. Recently they have started showing their online shows in actual art institutions, such as Amsterdam’s Zuidas Videoscreen and the Tate Modern, and they have just released their first publication of works by UK based artists. They have also collaborated with the Dutch Park DDDD TV.

Well, that’s it from me and the conference for today….and hopefully tomorrow there will be an even richer outcome! Looking forward to the session about curating online video! Until then…cheerio and good night!