Report: Organized Video Riot
PixelLab, under the direction of Gorki Glaser-Müller, organized a Video Riot at Världskulturmuseet during Gothenburg’s Kulturnatta (Culture Night). For someone outside Sweden this might not sound that huge, but actually it is. Getting visuals and VJing accepted in the finer cultural rooms has been extremely difficult over here. The people responsible for cultural events has shown to be very conservative, I would say almost afraid to let us in. So this first Video Riot was a very big step.
The night at Världskulturmuseet was split into four different audio-visual performances. First out was Gorki himself, with a special project, material from one movie, played from seven DVDs. Second up was Midori Hirano together with the American VJ Jeffers Egan. After that Daniel Troberg performed under his alias Erase.
The video riot was the final act. Enough video artists arrived to get use of all projectors. As usual, we had to do all the rigging our self, but for this kind of event I can accept it. There was a big gap of silence between the third and final act, because the DJ’s were late and didn’t know how to get audio out of their CD players, this I can’t accept. [update] I just got the information that there could have been some technical issues with Världskulturmuseets mixer, so I will hate a little less. [/update] People assumed the night was over and started leaving the place. But finally we got some audio. The act lasted for about 1,5 h. A perfect duration for something like this.
VJ’s for the night:
Pia Engman
Morrsken
Startsladd
Madelene Bergman
Hosea Waore
Mio Lee Rapp
Snailpainter
Joel Dittrich
Gorki Glaser-Müller
All together this was a really fun event. When the night was over, Gorki told us about his future hopes. He thinks that events like this can open the eyes of the conservative people sitting on positions that make these big cultural events happen. Next time he wants to see even more people showing up. People bringing their own projectors, shooting video all over the place. A real Video Riot. And I think he’s right. Among the people, considering themselves to be the most open minded persons in the world, we find the most conservative and boring schmucks on earth.
I managed to record very few clips during the night. I present them here in one of the worst movies I ever made.
[vimeo width=”445″ height=”250″]http://www.vimeo.com/15512102[/vimeo]
Snailpainter who also took part of the video riot sent me this video today
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/15601090[/vimeo]
//Andreas, The Angry VJ
external links: Gorki Glaser-Müller
Great and fast report, my friend! Sad that I couldn’t join, I was too busy getting older.
I’m wondering if anyone did any effort to match each others images or if everybody where just concentrated on their own thing? Or would matching work against the whole concept of a video riot? I’m comparing it to video jams where there often are fewer screens but the artists still have little time to match or contradict the other artist’s images because they are too busy with their own compositions.
Andreas: Thanks for the report and video!
Mikael: We did this under the label Fusion, so my idea was actually to take it just the other way, since a “real” fusion would not have been possible. I went strictly black/white and pitched everything up to get way to fast motion. (Yes, thats a style I really enjoy!)
It was good being part of this!
So why was it called fusion again?
In connection with Kulturnatta Världskulturmuseet opened a new exhibition called “Kimono Fusion”. I think that, with the short time in hand, Gorki choosed to make it simple and say that the theme for the night was “Fusion”. We in Startsladd went for the Japanese theme. After a trip to japan a couple of years ago we had some material to use, and with some digging at archive.org we managed to get a new set created on just two days.
Take a look at the site for Kimono Fuision, they have some really good looking things there.
http://tinyurl.com/24mwv3j