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Daniel Cockburn and all the mistakes to make.
At the Impakt headquarters students, professional filmmakers and enthusiasts gathered for a workshop by filmmaker and video artist Daniel Cockburn. Having his first feature You Are Here successfully screened at the Impakt festival this year and being praised as a rare literary talent I was curious to learn script writing from Toronto’s best new video artist.
Blog: Workshop François Chastanet: Lettering in Public Space
De workshop en de presentatie van François Chastanet op zaterdag 12 november waren een groot succes. Vincent de Boer van het ontwerpers blog Vormplatvorm was erbij en schreef er deze blog over: “Afgelopen zaterdag organiseerde het Impakt Festival samen met Hoax een workshop met François Chastanet. Een typografie-baas uit Frankrijk die jullie waarschijnlijk wel kennen, [...]
Blog: Mercedes Bunz Interview by Nicola Bozzi pt. 2
Our interview with London-based journalist and academic Mercedes Bunz continues with the second and last part. Here we ask her more about the way the Internet is shaping the future of journalism. I think your take on the technological turn of journalism is very interesting: feeds, automatic articles, all of these technologies might change what [...]
Live blog: Panorama Event Night #4 – Bestiality
Op de zondagavond komt het Impakt publiek nog één keer samen voor de laatste Panorama Event Night #4: Bestiality. De avond wordt geopend door de animatiefilm Mac n Cheese van Tom Hankins, Roy Nieterau, Gijs van Kooten en Guido Puijk. Het afstudeerproject bestaat uit een korte achtervolgings scene die vrij snel meer dan een miljoen [...]
Live blog: The Right to Database
Op zondag staat The Right to Database, op het programma in theater Kikker. Deze middag is samengesteld in samenwerking met Stichting Kunst en Openbare Ruimte. Na een korte introductie door Annet Dekker, geeft moderator Bernhard Rieder, assistent-professor New Media aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam, het startschot met een crash-cursus database algoritmes. Meteen is duidelijk dat [...]
Live blog: Daniel Cockburn #2: You are Here
Voel jij je wel eens verdwaald? Volgens filmmaker Daniel Cockburn voelt iedereen zich wel eens verdwaald, fysiek of mentaal. En daar draait zijn eerste lange film You Are Here (2008) om. Je kunt je verdwaald voelen in een onbekend gebouw, maar je kunt je ook, zoals bij the Archivist (een centraal karakter in de film, [...]
Live Blog: YouTube Battle
After a week rich in musical and visual events, this year’s edition of Impakt appropriately culminated in a fired up YouTube Battle. Filmmakers and members of the audience alike engaged in a tight-paced competition, taking their best shots at surprising us with the most hidden gems of the popular video cauldron. Some of the clips [...]
Videoblog: Banned Videos
Check out the videoblog of Remko Dekker. Enjoy the highlights of Dagan Cohen’s Banned Videos last saturday.
Live blog: conferentie Getting Rough with Media
Het symposium Getting Rough with Media, samengesteld door Stephen Kovats (transmediale 2008-2011, McLuhan in Europe 2011), vult de zaterdagmiddag van Impakt. Gecentreerd rondom hacktivism, openheid en protest wordt de dag, door respondent Chris van der Heijden, samengevat als een zoektocht naar een nieuwe maatschappij. Naar mijns inziens ging het echter niet specifiek om de zoektocht [...]
News: Impakt in De Volkskrant
We were happy to see a great report by Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant last monday morning. It describes what the festival was all about really well.
Live blog: Contemporary by Elodie Pong
I’ve just seen Contemporary, a movie by Swiss artist Elodie Pong screened at ‘t Hoogt theater. The movie is a fragmented portrait of our time, narrated through discussions with a group of people, mostly friends of the artist’s. The protagonists, most of whom are either actors, artists, or students, share personal anecdotes and views about [...]
Live blog: Chokepoint
Internet is een complex netwerk en de mannen van het Chokepoint project zijn bezig met het in kaart brengen van internet. Zo willen ze de zwakke punten zichtbaar maken en alternatieven bedenken. Dit bleek echter geen makkelijke opgave. Internet binnen Nederland is nog wel vrij helder, maar zodra je internet in landen als Syrië in [...]
Live blog: WE-tube-o-theek
Een avond waarin de kracht van de hedendaagse beeldcultuur en vooral de rol van de zapcultuur centraal staat, kan niet beter beginnen dan met een reclame uit 1959. Revolutionair! Een afstandbediening met zeven functies voor je kleurentelevisie, meer heb je niet nodig zou je denken… Nu, meer dan vijftig jaar later is het begrip en [...]
Live Blog: Field Trip – Nachtelijk Buitenspelen
I’m not going to go into details because it’s not kinda legal, but just a few words on last night. Moustaches, (glowing) rabbits and Super Mario. We played last night. Wondered the streets and beautified it. But we weren’t the only ones, there where fellow spirits out to play who created a spider web out [...]
Live Blog: Panorama Event Night #2 – Let’s get Physical
‘Let’s get Physical’ – the physicality in a variety of performances and presentations. Here a round-up of events: Emil Trier/Torgny, a project that crosses documentary and music video. “The only Game,” is on kids from the rural area of Norway, obsessed with vintage Volvo’s. The cars from the axes of their social realm. It is [...]
Live blog: Hidden Riddims 2: Footwork Freak Out
Na een paar dagen stilzitten tijdens filmvertoningen, workshops en lezingen is het tijd om het lichaam weer eens te laten werken. Tijd voor een feestje! Impakt haalt de opkomende Chicago Footwork muziek naar Utrecht om de voetjes van de vloer te krijgen. Een stijltje waar we in Nederland nog niet echt kennis mee hebben gemaakt: [...]
Live blog: Panorama Event Night #1: Amazing Discoveries
Het publiek komt tijdens Panorama Event Night #1 te weten welke verrassende ontdekkingen vijf kunstenaars de afgelopen tijd hebben gedaan. In de grote zaal van Theater de Kikker staan klapstoelen en –tafels klaar om gebruikt te worden door zowel het publiek als de kunstenaars. Deze intieme opstelling geeft gelijk een knus gevoel met een laagdrempelig [...]
Live Blog: Hidden Riddims #1 – Sacral Ceremonies
Uit de boxen komen ceremoniële klanken die je in een hogere staat van bewustzijn proberen te brengen. In Theater Kikker vond op donderdag avond het eerste deel van Hidden Riddims plaats, genaamd ‘Sacral Ceremonies’. Het muziekprogramma staat in het teken van spirituele muziek waarmee men op zoek is naar het goddelijke, het bovennatuurlijke. Deze transcedente [...]
Live Blog: Panorama Screening #2 – Cooking up the Big Bang
Mijmeren over de menselijke conditie, het destructieve, de duisternis, het tragische, de dynamiek van dienstbaarheid en liefde. Hoogtepunt Babel (2010), door Hendrick Dusollier en Forgotten Column (2010), door Xiaohu Zhou. Ik had in aanloop naar het festival Babel al getipt als een must-see en ik ben nog niet op deze mening teruggekomen. Dit werk vertelt [...]
Live Blog: Field Trip – Hosted by a Public Domain
The field trip through the maze of the public domain with an expanding group of people. Linda Hilfling had invited a bunch of people to present or give a workshop at some ‘public’ locations throughout Utrecht on the subject of the public domain. From the hectic Utrecht Central/Hoog Catharijne, to a corner in the library, [...]
Festival update: Foundland replaces Sami Ben Gharbia at the summit: Getting Rough with Media
One of the guests in the Impakt summit ‘Getting Rough with Media’, Sami Ben Gharbia, unfortunately couldn’t make it. But curator Steven Kovats found a very good replacement just in time: Foundland. Ghalia Elsrakbi and Lauren Alexander from Foundland will concentrate on their strategy and raison d’etre vis a vis creating essentially fictitious projects such [...]
Live Blog: Openingsavond Impakt Festival
Vlak na de opening van de tentoonstelling Free State in de Academiegalerie afgelopen woensdag organiseerde Impakt een speciale openingsavond in Theater Kikker. Aan aanloop geen gebrek. De grote zaal van het theater zat letterlijk tot de nok gevuld met volk. Daar werd een mooi overzicht van het complete festival gepresenteerd in talkshow format, gehost door [...]
Live Blog: Jailbreak #1 Het geloof in het potentieel van de technologie
Het eerste programma van Jailbreak van Florian Wüst bestaat uit een serie films die duidelijk laat zien hoe we de afgelopen 100 jaar hebben geloofd in het potentieel van de technologie. Een serie films uit 1939 tot en met 2010 toont de omgang met nieuwe ontwikkelingen. De eerste drie films zijn een lofzang op [...]
Live Blog: Panorama #1: Rediscovering The Cinematic
Het opnieuw ontdekken van cinema, ik en de andere bezoekers in Theater ’t Hoogt mogen onze ogen de kost laten geven tijdens de zes korte films waarin filmmakers cinema exploreren. Een experiment met cinematografische illusies, voer voor filmfreaks. Dat ‘voer voor filmfreaks’ staat als slotzin bij de introductietekst over dit programma. Voorafgaand aan Rediscovering The [...]
Live Blog: Free State Opening
Het Impakt Festival opent met een strakke, scherpe expositie als warming up voor de rest van de week. In de Academiegalerie zijn een vijftal projecten verzameld die met een eigen insteek het thema op de horens nemen. Tot de meest fascinerende projecten behoort Watching the revolution through a hole in the wall van het Foundland [...]
Blog: Impakt Highlights – Studio Smack and the DEUS Screening Program
Chilling outdoors and watching cool videos are pretty amazing things by themselves, but if you combine them the result is an augmented urban experience you don’t wanna miss, if only for a quick break in between other events. During the festival, Impakt will once again team up with DROPSTUFF.nl to bring its DEUS presentations to [...]
News: Impakt Festival on Drawing Daily
What an honor! Cartoonist Steven Kraan devoted a post on his Drawing Daily Facebook page to the Impakt Festival. Because we are all big Drawing Daily fans here, we recommend you to visit his Facebook page and receive his funny comics every day.
Blog: Impakt Highlights – The Right to Database Debate
Nowadays the data out there is simply too much to handle, the content so rich that merely to filter it and organize it is a creative act in itself. But for every action taken on a vast amount of information there needs to be a back-end layer underneath: the database. Impakt Online, in collaboration with [...]
Blog: Impakt Highlights – Choke Point Project Workshop
Impakt is not only art, music, and screenings. Among the festival events that you should definitely check out, in fact, is the Choke Point Project workshop: your chance to actually bring something home (read: skills) and claim the right to know in person. According to WikiPedia, a “chokepoint” is “a geographical feature on land such [...]
Blog: Dansen zoals ze in Chicago doen bij Footwork Freakout
Vrijdag 4 november vindt er een unieke clubavond plaats tijdens het Impakt Festival. We zullen gaan dansen op de clicks, breaks en samples van Chicago Footwork pioniers DJ Rashad & DJ Spinn en de op juke geïnspireerde Nederlandse producers Krampfhaft en Astroposer. Chicago Footwork is een gloednieuw dance genre uit Chicago, dat in Europa nog [...]
Blog: “When I hear the word ‘curator,’ I reach for my pistol”: An Interview with Data Machinery Curator Stefan Majakowski
The films in the Data Machinery programme “undermine” the “sacred belief” in the visibility of reality. This is interesting given the fact that the films are documentaries, a form so often treated as a direct portal into reality. How do these films trouble this traditional conception of documentaries as pictures of truth? In that sense [...]
Blog: Impakt Highlights – Impakt Online. A Few Flashback of Past Editions
In case you don’t know, Impakt Online is a series of Internet art projects that the festival commissions to some of the most talented new media artists around every year. We’ll have more info about this year’s edition really soon, but for the time being we’d like to share some of the old stuff with [...]
Blog: From “Test Tube” to YouTube
Welcome back to the eighties in a mirage of VHS quality. In Test Tube we see an experience of the artist in the era of the mass media, a happening of bright colours in test tubes. The gritty VHS quality has managed to survive the forces of disintegration. In a cross between a laboratory and a [...]
Blog: Zapping through reality
‘I searched the room looking for a prop, a weapon.’ A man has a strange encounter on a film set, a meeting one of them will not survive. The man in question is Alfred Hitchcock. And the man sitting opposite him also is. This short story of Tom McCarthy, based on a work by Jorge [...]
Blog: Interview with Mercedes Bunz (part 1)
London-based journalist and academic Mercedes Bunz gave an interesting talk in Utrecht last week. She talked about the way the Internet is changing several aspects of society – from education to journalism – and how this affects the public. We spoke with her and asked her a few questions about it, which you can read [...]
Blog: Between Art and Cinema with “Babel”
Following the paths of two peasants taking on the big adventure of Shanghai, from a simple rural life to the carnivalesque spectacle of an urban reality. A change of scenery from the mountains to a sky-scraper in the making. Hendrick Dusollier’s Babel is a fairy-tale that inhabits the space between art and cinema, using pictures, film [...]
Blog: Talking Jailbreaking with Curator Florian Wüst
Interview with Jailbreaking Curator Florian Wüst Florian Wüst is a Berlin based artist and independent film curator who works on issues concerning the history of post-war Germany and modern technical progress. For this year’s Impakt Festival, he curated the Jailbreaking programme, which combines historical and contemporary works of video art, experimental and corporate film. Jailbreaking [...]
Blog: Videogramme einer Revolution
In 1989 there was revolution in the air: from the crumbling wall in Berlin and acts of civil resistance throughout the Eastern bloc right down to protest in Tiananmen Square. Although this last act didn’t manage to affect any real and durable change in China, it did produce iconic images of civil disobedience which inspired [...]
Blog: Ethical Hacking, The Art of Hacking, The Right to Know
There is nothing that represents “the right to know” as well as the hacking movement. In the purest meaning of the term – beyond the conventional media suspicion – a hacker is somebody who critically looks into things, figures out their structure, is able to modify them and actively take part in a knowledge creation process.
BLOG: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Shortly after his first new studio release in 15 years: ”I’m New Here”, the poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron past away last May.Yet he shall always remain best known for his 1970 work “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. During the upcoming festival, on November 5th, Stuart Baker will screen his 1988 film in which [...]
Blog: Hans Richter from modernist film to post-modern music video
Dadaist, filmmaker, self-appointed historian of the Avant-garde, and friend of Marcel Duchamp and Peggy Guggenheim, Hans Richter was an artist whose influence has extended far beyond his lifetime. As art historian Hal Foster once remarked, “One stands to learn less about Richter from modernism than one does about modernism from Richter; that is, ironically enough, [...]
Blog: Topography of (Self)Exclusion: the Controversiality of Geo-tagging
A few months ago, the news that Apple was tracking its users was all over the Internet. The company was indeed gathering location-related information on iPhones and geo-tagging all photos taken with the device by default, but after being sued they eventually released a patch that at least encrypts the file containing the controversial data. The incident [...]
Blog: ‘Right to Know’ Highlights 10/10-16/10
Until now I have written blogs featuring a news item that has caught my eye in the past couple of days. However, in the last week there have been so many that I can hardly choose and will have to share them all. It all started with a comment made back in 2003 by one [...]
Blog: Wikileaks in 3 minutes
In the Right to Know blogs I have discussed a couple of news phenomena that all find their origin in the revelations made by Wikileaks. During the festival the course that secrecy and transparency has taken in recent years will be discussed during one of the talks. Where are the actual boundaries of transparency? And [...]
Blog: Robot Journalism
More than a year ago I wrote an article for Masters of Media about automated blogs, a funny-sounding yet seriously irritating phenomenon of modern day Internet. Apparently there are some companies out there that promise, for a relatively cheap price, to get you a blog without the hassle of actually producing any content yourself. You’d think the [...]
Blog: Banned Books Week
As you might have seen while wandering through the new Impakt website and exploring the program for the upcoming festival, there is going to be attention to Banned Videos. Last week – from September 24th until October 1st – was Banned Books Week . A theme week aimed at celebrating all the books that have ever [...]
Blog: A # On Occupying
Some time ago I wrote about the oncoming global protest event named #YesWeCamp starting September 17th. As a form of anti-austerity protest. And although it hasn’t really taken off in Amsterdam the activities in the US seem to thrive. In the narrative of mainstream media it moved from “childish-worthless-losers” to “something-important-is-happening-here,” as noted by Glenn Greenwald on Twitter. The [...]
Blog: Media Square at De Balie, Amsterdam. Tactical Media and the Revolution
As promised, last Friday we went to De Balie, Amsterdam, to attend the Media Squares Symposium. The conference analyzed several uses of specific media that have contributed to (or are inherent to) the recent political uproar around the world.
Blog: The Wikileaks Truck
And suddenly it appears, the so-called Wikileaks Truck, driving around the Capitol or in New York. He suddenly appears in the background of one of the many American morning shows. The driver of this truck is Clark Stoeckley who is part of the Anonymous theater art group . He calls himself, among other things, a Wiki-prankster, referring to [...]
Blog: Media Squares Symposium at De Balie
On Friday September 30th there will be a symposium on the different and new forms of protests and their corresponding media at De Balie in Amsterdam. This event will attempt to formulate a critical analysis of recent events on streets and squares around the world. From Syria to London, New York to Chile, Egypt to Tunisia. The discussions will [...]
Blog: The Right to the City: Urban Exploration
As promised, I am coming back from Den Haag with a report on Todaysart, a media art festival that animated several cultural venues in town and also injected some life in other normally depressing locations (starting with the otherwise dull Spuiplein, whose ugly buildings this time enclosed a vibrant meta-city, with spectacular light installations and [...]
Blog: The Rights of the Ones We Kill
One of the most popular tweet relating to the #yeswecamp and @OccupyWallStNYC was one that originated from Ara Rubya and reads “I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one.” In a week where the discussion regarding capital punishment is refueled by a disputed case in Georgia, which questions were raised if the [...]
Blog: Todaysart
The Netherlands are particularly rich in media art festivals and conferences, but the Den Haag-based Todaysart (September 23-24) seems especially interesting to us. Not only because, strictly speaking, this year it also stretches out to Brussels (September 29-30, October 1st), but mostly for its focus on the adventurous exploration of urban environments. We know Matrix City was [...]
Blog: The Challenges of Data Journalism : Interview with Jelle Kamsma from NU.nl
One thing we haven’t properly discussed yet, here at the Impakt blog, is data-driven journalism. If websites like WikiLeaks and open data initiatives all over the world are making information more and more available online, it doesn’t mean the regular reader or citizen can make sense of it. For this reason we need data journalists [...]
Blog: Future Daily
A special edition of the Metro – a free newspaper in The Netherlands – is coming out on September 30th, filled with articles made by its readers. It is a thought experiment on what the world will look like in 20 years. This Future Daily will pretend to come out on 30 September 2031, when the king [...]
Blog: Yes, We Camp
On the 17th of September you are all welcome to join some urban campers near different stock exchanges around the world. There are going to be campsites in Madrid, Tokyo, London, Amsterdam and New York. They follow suit of other “Yes, We Camp” actions that have taken place around the world in the aftermath of the financial crisis, such as the protests in [...]
Blog: Geofence
Flickr has upgraded their privacy settings via a new ‘Geofence’ in order to protect your geoprivacy. Other than either disclosing or hiding your location information, you can now create different circles with a variety of privacy settings. For example you could draw a circle around your house or current location and restrict this to the ´Family´ group. From this [...]
Blog: The Right to Art
So far we’ve been discussing the Right to Know in terms of information. There is usually some knowledge out there, some tools to extract it or filter it, and an eager public that is either being denied or empowered with it. Especially here in the Netherlands, though, another dimension of the right to knowledge maybe [...]
Blog: Al Jazeera
I love Al Jazeera. I use it all the time for finding news reports that are different from the mass repetition we find in Western news outlets. As Al Jazeera uses different sources than CNN or BBC would use you are exposed to a different array of news. Furthermore, it has a different focus and perspective, thus providing news [...]
Blog: Iceland and Democracy 2.0
In 2007, before the infamous financial crackdown hit the the country’s economy almost overnight, Iceland was ranked 1st on the United Nations’ Human Development Index. Unemployment was at 1%, energy was mostly green, and the banks – deregulated at the dawn of the new millennium – were making people richer than ever. A year later, the same banks [...]
Blog: The Death App
Ever wondered how many murders and road fatalities have occurred in your neighborhood? Well there is an app for it . Its name is the death app. It features a map that shows you where the accident or murder has taken place. For now it can only be used in the UK, but you can follow the step laid out [...]
Blog: North Korean Cyber Warriors
Ever since seeing the VICE guide to North Korea in 2009, I’ve been fascinated by the notion of going to this country. It might sound strange wanting to visit a rogue state, completely shut-off from the world. A country that is desperately working to maintain their alternate reality. All marching towards the glory of one man. But this [...]
Blog: The Privacy Perils of Being on Facebook
Facebook appears to be an important part of our daily lives. When waiting for the tram or sitting alone in a café, you login and wander through status updates. You like a status of a friend you haven’t seen in 6 months, share an article or blog, upload a picture. The rare encounter with someone who is [...]
Blog: Impakt Tip: GOGBOT Festival 2011
GOGBOT 2011, DATA-PANIC/TRUE PLAY GOGBOT 2011 takes place from 8th –11th September with this year’s theme: DATA PANIC – YOU-TUBE-Poop – JAPANOIIID! GOGBOT is 4 days of art, music and technology in Enschede. From N-type to Nam-Shub from Enki, Doshy and a DJ set ofT. Raumschmiere. The Japanese electronic composer and media artist Ryoji Ikeda will perform [...]
Blog: Catch the Bad Guys
In the night from the 21st to the 22nd of August there was a break-in at Mediamatic in the Duintjer CS building on the Vijzelstraat in Amsterdam. And it is not the first time that this happened! Mediamatic has now put the images of these thieves online. This coincides with a current discussion in the Netherland regarding [...]
Blog: Protests, Activism, Riots and the Transparency of Information
In my last post about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange I wrote that transparency seems to be a staple requirement in many platforms for informational activism. But another key ingredient is a certain degree of security and protection of sensible data (e.g. user identities), which is kind of the opposite of “transparency.” While whistleblowers that submit secret material [...]
Blog: BART vs. Anonymous
I thought Bart was this loving cheeky character from the Simpsons but apparently it also stands for the Bay Area Rapid Transit, in San Francisco. On July 3rd a man who appeared to be drunk was shot and killed, on a BART platform, by the police. Footage later released by BART authorities showed that the man, Charles Hill, did [...]
Blog: Street Art in Egypt After the Revolution
I started my week with the news that the blogger Asmaa Mahfouz was taken into custody by the military government in Egypt last Sunday (August 14th, 2011) for being too critical. One of the voices of the revolution is now being perceived as a subversive element, as critical notions are being shushed out. The turn [...]
Blog: Riot Like an Egyptian
Today I read that UK Prime Minister Cameron comments about the possibility of Internet Censorship has received praise from China. Always good to know that China approves of your new policy initiatives to limit public access. Kinda funny that not so long ago the same Cameron stated that the Egyptian revolution which had presence on the [...]
Blog: WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks has been around since 2006, but only since 2010 has it been so tightly identified with the abruptly famous Julian Assange. A founder and main spokesperson of the organization, the old-school Australian Internet activist has become such a public figure that it was voted Person of the Year by TIME magazine’s readers – an [...]
Blog: Health Goes 2.0
When it comes to sharing personal information on the Internet, the first thing that comes to mind is the privacy issue. We’ve all frowned upon Facebook’s initial opt-out policies and many of us have shown half-hearted concert when discussing Google’s craving of personal data with our media-studying friends. But, along with the growing preoccupation about [...]
Blog: Anders Breivik and Open-Source Warfare
Hours after the devastating Oslo attack and the tragic Utøya massacre, of which Anders Behring Breivik still appears to be the sole architect, the press started posting screenshots of a Twitter account with the Christian fundamentalist’s name. It already had 1,164 followers and only one tweet, published on July 17: “One person with a belief is equal [...]