Search

Artistic media seem to be in a permanent condition of mutation and transformation. Contemporary artists often investigate the limits and possibilities of the media they use and experiment with the crossing, upgrading and mutilation of media. Others explicitly explore the unknown intermedial space between existing media, searching for the hybrid beings that occupy these in-betweens. This publication explores the theme of mutating and adapting media in its relation with theatre and performance.

Since the rise of analytic philosophy, a virtual Berlin wall seems to be inserted with respect to continental philosophy. If we take into account the difference between both traditions concerning the respective subject-matters, the pivotal goals, the modes of inquiry and scholarship, the semantic idioms, the methodological approaches, the ongoing discussions, the conferences and publications etc., it is hardly an overstatement to say that both traditions evolve insulated and have a conflicting relation. From a meta-philosophical stance, the common and prima facie reply to this split is the encouragement of merging inclinations. I argue for another strategy. Based on a discussion of the intrinsic differences and their importance, I'm inclined to conclude that unification coincides with a loss of authenticity, blurring the critical potential of both traditions. Hence, we are better of endorsing agonistic pluralism between analytic philosophy and contemporary continental philosophy. The plurality of points of view render several opportunities for productive critiques and fruitful cross-overs between both traditions. Alas, the susceptibility for these innovations is vastly counteracted due to a widespread attitude of antipathy, ignorance and occasional vulgarisation

About the book: Video Vortex Reader II is the Institute of Network Cultures' second collection of texts that critically explore the rapidly changing landscape of online video and its use. With the success of YouTube ('2 billion views per day') and the rise of other online video sharing platforms, the moving image has become expansively more popular on the Web, significantly contributing to the culture and ecology of the internet and our everyday lives. In response, the Video Vortex project continues to examine critical issues that are emerging around the production and distribution of online video content. Following the success of the mailing list, the website and first Video Vortex Reader in 2008, recent Video Vortex conferences in Ankara (October 2008), Split (May 2009) and Brussels (November 2009) have sparked a number of new insights, debates and conversations regarding the politics, aesthetics, and artistic possibilities of online video. Through contributions from scholars, artists, activists and many more, Video Vortex Reader II asks what is occurring within and beyond the bounds of Google's YouTube? How are the possibilities of online video, from the accessibility of reusable content to the internet as a distribution channel, being distinctly shaped by the increasing diversity of users taking part in creating and sharing moving images over the web?

Can retro media make us relive the virtual from digital media? Fol- lowing McLuhan's thesis that the proper characteristics of a medium are revealed through remediation, it could well be that retro media re-enacting digital media can make explicit what the concept 'virtual' entails. Two recent works analyzed in this article take as their starting point antique theatrical techniques (the ballet pulley, the panorama) to evoke optical illusions, not to stage another illusion but for other purposes. Both works, which have no actual connection with cyberspace, include non-narrative interplay with antiquated technological instal- lations that generate a challenging experience for the contemporary spectator in a digital era. The performance-installation I / II / III / IIII by the Belgian theatre director and ?ne artist Kris Verdonck stages a repetition in time in which the viewer gets trapped. By reviving virtual features into real ones and presenting them in replay-mode, the viewer discovers how a varia- tion of sameness can evoke signi?cant di?erences, or how identity arises due to a repetition in time. The installation Location (6) of the Belgian ?ne artist Hans Op de Beeck displays an all-round view in a real but generic space that induces the spectator's performative power - like an avatar, able to dwell in the virtuality of personal imagination.

nvt

info:eu-repo/semantics/published

nvt

Can retro media make us relive the virtual from digital media? Following McLuhan's thesis that the proper characteristics of a medium are revealed through remediation, it could well be that retro media re-enacting digital media can make explicit what the concept 'virtual' entails. Two recent works analyzed in this article take as their starting point antique theatrical techniques (the ballet pulley, the panorama) to evoke optical illusions, not to stage another illusion but for other purposes. Both works, which have no actual connection with cyberspace, include non-narrative interplay with antiquated technological installations that generate a challenging experience for the contemporary spectator in a digital era. The performance-installation I / II / III / IIII by the Belgian theatre director and ?ne artist Kris Verdonck stages a repetition in time in which the viewer gets trapped. By reviving virtual features into real ones and presenting them in replay-mode, the viewer discovers how a variation of sameness can evoke signi?cant di"erences, or how identity arises due to a repetition in time. !e installation Location (6) of the Belgian ?ne artist Hans Op de Beeck displays an all-round view in a real but generic space that induces the spectator's performative power - like an avatar, able to dwell in the virtuality of personal imagination

nvt

Contemporary artists use all sorts of artistic strategies in order to generate a creative demarche, e.g., deconstruction, alienation, contextual displacements or antinomian juxtaposition. This presentation aims to make explicit a different kind of strategy in which the common approach of an artistic medium is used as a background to do something completely different. In such cases of so-called medial inversion, artists take the leading tendency in a genre as a stepping stone and radically work against it, for instance by returning to an outmoded mode of production. By way of illustration, an analysis of two different cases is given. The theatre performance 'Springville' (2009) of the Belgian performance artist Miet Warlop puts the many-sided image of catastrophe on stage. Instead of developing a dramatic play supported by different technical media, Warlop skips text, uses simple living props as characters, and returns to the lively and cheerful slapstick of the silent film age. The precariousness of this live event, which probes a peculiar suspension due to the possible failure of the different acts, brings in a special political dimension that underscores the vulnerability of our contemporary culture. The documentary art film 'Not Waving, But Drowning' (2009) from the Belgian director Elias Grootaers brings a film portrait of Indian refugees intercepted by the Belgian coast police during their journey to London. Although the documentary art genre of the last decade is heavily experimenting with exhibitionistic testimonies and performative approaches, Grootaers inverts this tendency. In contrast, he chooses a subtle and poetical aesthetics within a classical, observative stance. Due to this atypical positioning, the power and authenticity of the film is maximized.

nvt

x

x

x

x

x

x

nvt

x

A general practical tendency of contemporary analytical metaphysics goes as follows. Research focuses on certain largely isolated topics e.g. the nature of properties, (mental) causation, actions, perception, colours, qualia, the self etc. In such a discussion, different possible ontological positions are traced and mapped in function of the capability to individuate and define the subject-matter. A wide range of methodological instruments is used in order to support or either criticise them. Such instruments are conceptual analysis, generalisations based on paradigmatic examples, a strategy of counter examples, intuitive constructs, scientific findings and thought experiments. At the same time, several criteria of legitimacy are considered in order to evaluate and defend ontological positions. Common criteria are thriftiness, simplicity, robustness, compatibility with sciences, completeness and plausibility. Judging on the number of publications, analytical metaphysics is clearly a booming business. But does the level of the debate follow this positive slope? A focal point in analytical metaphysics is a strong emphasis on methodology. However, a diversity of methodological tools is circulating which often leads to sheer methodological chaos. This diversity is not in se a problem. Rather, the problem is that there is no consensus on which methods are (contextually) appropriate. Metaphysicians often criticize their opponents on methodological grounds. But while doing so, they often only discuss those criteria which are in their own advantage, using different standards depending on the topic at hand.

x

nvt

x

x

nvt

nvt

x

x

nvt

x

x

nvt