Babel Fiche is a crowd-sourced film that collects and remixes amateur video footage. During 2011 we are gathering and selecting contemporary clips which describe everyday life around the Earth. These movie fragments will be printed on colour microfiche – a photographic medium capable of lasting 500 years and simply requiring light and a lens to expand its contents. This analogue throwback might even outlast our current reliance on fragile digital storage.

Babel Fiche is an imaginary media for future anthropologists. It asks which behaviours, objects, traditions and conflicts we want to communicate to a future world. Today’s human cultures, physique and technology will inevitably develop out of all recognition. So how might a future species translate our current times? Continue reading

[Image: Jean Cocteau, "The Blood of a Poet (Le sang d'un poète)," 1930. 35 mm black-and-white film, with sound, 50 min. Film still by Sacha Masour.*] Chaos and Classicism: Performance, Digital Workshop, and Film Screening :: October 9 and 10, 2010 :: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue (at 89th Street), New York City.

In conjunction with the opening of the exhibition Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918–1936, the Guggenheim Museum is pleased to present the following suite of related programs.

Premiere Performance: Coup de Foudre, Based on The Blood of a Poet by Jean Cocteau — Paul Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky, Ballet Noir, and Melvin van Peebles :: October 9; 8:00 pm + October 10; 6:00 pm: Continue reading

The 5th Annual Artists’ Television Access Film & Video Festival celebrates original, independent and underground film & video with screenings, installations and workshops :: October 19-23, 2010 :: San Francisco, CA. Continue reading

The Image in Question: War - Media - Art — Film screening and conversation with Harun Farocki, Antje Ehmann :: September 16, 2010; 6:30 - 8:30 pm :: Slought Foundation, 4017 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA :: Free (Reservation not required)

How can the wars of the present and the experience of war be adequately represented? How can military imagery be re-appropriated? How can it be countered? What are different sorts of images capable of? These questions provide the framework for Farocki’s and Ehmann’s presentation, which will address their recent research and exhibition of the same name, on display at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University from October to December 2010. Continue reading

MMC LUKA presents Cinemaniac 2010: The InVisible MAFAF — Curated by Branka Bencic :: July 18 - August 6, 2010 :: Gallery Anex and Gallery Luka (MMC LUKA), Istarska 30, 52100 Pula, Croatia.

Cinemaniac - established in 2002 as the support programme at the Pula Film Festival in order to present innovative events in art and cinema, thus creating a new social space to introduce recent achievements in the fields of experimental video and filmmaking, and multimedia installations. Within such practices, contemporary art reveals itself as both a kind of parallel history and a signpost to possible futures for avantgarde and experimental filmmaking – as well as a space where the depths of possibility are plumbed, borders argued, and the language of film image – and, crucially, new cinema forms – investigated. Continue reading

Lighthouse launches a Monthly Talks Programme with Semiconductor :: July 1, 2010; 7:00 pm :: Lighthouse, 28 Kensington St, Brighton BN1 4AJ, UK.

Talks will be held on the first Thursday of each month, and will feature key national and international figures within moving image and digital art. We are thrilled that the inaugural monthly talk will be given by filmmakers, Semiconductor. Semiconductor are Brighton-based artists and filmmakers, Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt.

For over a decade Semiconductor have worked with video, sound and digital animation to explore our relationship to scientific knowledge. Following their residency at NASA’s Space Sciences Laboratory in California, Semiconductor created a remarkable body of work, including the films Magnetic Movie (2007) and Brilliant Noise (2006) which confirmed their reputation as one of the most influential contemporary artist-groups working with moving image. Continue reading

[Image: Sectional view of the New York Public Library from Scientific American (1911)] Triple Canopy presents Sender, Carrier, Receiver — A series of conversations, screenings, readings, performances, and provocations :: June 28 – July 29, 2010 :: Paris: Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, June 28 + The Public School, Bétonsalon, June 29 :: Sarajevo: Duplex Gallery, July 18 :: Berlin: Program, July 8–29 + Appartement, July 16.

PARIS, June 28–29, Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers :: The Weight of Air: As part of Walking Theory Platform’s Illegal Cinema series, Triple Canopy editor Alexander Provan will present a screening of censored and marginalized works from the ’60s and ’70s that blur the lines between filmmakers and radicals, action and representation, propaganda and art. A discussion will follow, examining contemporary right-wing movements and their own modes of self-representation. Continue reading

Screening of Struggle in Jerash: A film by Eileen Simpson and Ben White :: June 30, 2010; 7:00 - 9:30 pm :: Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF) :: 10 Hussein Hassab Street, Flat 6, Azarita, Alexandria, Egypt.

As the first Jordanian audio-visual works begin to fall into the public domain, a constellation of interests are translating, drafting and revising copyrights laws, trade agreements and licences to control the flow of culture and build new markets. Against the backdrop of these emerging intellectual property markets, in 2008 artists Eileen Simpson and Ben White embarked on a period of research in Amman, Jordan – speaking to lawyers, copyright activists, software developers, artists, musicians, journalists, curators, filmmakers and critics – in an attempt to seek out the common cultural resources of Jordan’s public domain. Continue reading

Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid :: November 25 - December 4, 2010 :: Centre Pompidou, Paris :: 2011 ::Madrid and Berlin :: Film. Video. Multimedia Call for Entries — Deadline: July 10, 2010.

The Rencontres Internationales offers more than a simple presentation of the works. It introduces an intercultural forum gathering various guests from all over the world - artists and filmmakers, institutions and emerging organizations - to testify to their reflections and their experiences, but also to artistic and cultural contexts that are often undergoing deep changes.

The Rencontres Internationales reflects specificities and convergences of artistic practices between new cinema and contemporary art, explores emerging media art practices and their critical purposes, and makes possible a necessary time when points of view meet and are exchanged. Continue reading

A new commission for BRASS: Durham International Festival 2010 (Produced by Forma): The Miners’ Hymns — A film by Bill Morrison with live musical score by Jóhann Jóhannsson :: July 15-16, 2010; 9:30 - 10:30 pm :: Durham Cathedral, Durham, UK.

The Miners’ Hymns is an homage in film and music to the coal mining history of North East England, for which Forma initiated a first time collaboration between renowned American filmmaker Bill Morrison and acclaimed Icelandic musician and composer Jóhann Jóhannsson.

Collaged from footage excavated from the BFI National Archives and local archives by Morrison, the film is a powerful and poignant evocation of a recent past that is widely forgotten. Continue reading