Call for Lectures/Theory Presentations VideoVortex XII, Malta Conference: September 27-28, 2019 Please submit to: submissions@vv12.org

Deadline for lectures/theory contributions: March 15, 2019.

Please also look at our website where you can read the general call: http://vv12.org

VideoVortex, an artistic network concerned with the aesthetics and politics of online video, will gather again in Malta for a two-day conference in late September 2019. 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 (geert@xs4all.nl).

We are looking for contributions about:

1) Online video cultures on social media/mobile platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, smart phone 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 affects, their implications

6) Drone aesthetics (military, Wiki Loves Monuments)

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

8) The phenomenology of YouTube as 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.)

14) Deepfakes

15) 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 (NL). 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, 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 maintinence and breaking down of networks, in addition to the increasing capacity of digital video to simulate that which has not occured – 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.

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