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July 2007, Week 4

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Subject:
From:
Dale Hudson <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Fri, 27 Jul 2007 11:56:33 -0400
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Radically reconfigured for the 21st century in 2006, the Finger Lakes
Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) is a multimedia festival that explores
the theme of sustainability and the environment within a large global
conversation that embraces a range of political, economic, social, and
aesthetic issues, including labour, war, health, disease, intellectual
property, software, remix culture, economics, archives, HIV/AIDS, women¹s
rights, and human rights.

ŒUbuntu¹, the online digital media exhibition for FLEFF 2008, takes its name
from Bantu-language African philosophies that foreground interconnectedness
and interdependence through expressions such as Œa person is a person
through persons¹ and ŒI am because we are¹. The exhibition applies this
conception of intersubjectivity to explore understandings of
environmentalism‹ways that it affects us collectively, suggesting that
online digital media can affect awareness and positive change.

The curators of ŒUbuntu¹ are looking for submissions of online digital/new
media art and video that explore issues related to the four Œcontent
streams¹ of this year¹s festival: camouflage, counterpoint, games, and
gastronomica. (See details below.) We are particularly interested in
collaborative work, interactive work, multiscreen or multichannel work, and
work that underscore the aesthetics of the political and the politicisation
of the aesthetic. Submissions from artists living and working in the global
South are of particular interest. Selected works will be exhibited and
archived on the festival¹s official web site.

ŒUbuntu¹ aims to deploy potentially progressive aspects of globalization,
such as digital technologies and internet communication, as a means to
prompt critical dialogues on the often repressive aspects of globalization,
including the rapidly accelerating disparity among populations in terms of
wealth, power, and access to basic human rights. ŒUbuntu¹ aims to
demonstrate that environmentalism is not just about nature, but about our
collective existence.
 
 
1.            Camouflage
 
Sometimes mistakenly conceived as ³blending in,² camouflage achieves its
objectives by disrupting visual fields and fragmenting their boundaries.
Ironically, through its disruptions, camouflage fosters mediation,
connectivity, integration, and engagement, blurring boundaries between
bodies, species, environments, and cultures. Military camouflage, now
digitally designed, is offered in dozens of styles, each tailored to the
needs of a specific regional conflict. In streets, galleries, and fashion
houses, camouflage is accessorized as accoutrement of critique and
resistance.
 
2.            Counterpoint
 
Different melodic lines heard simultaneously identify counterpoint.
Counterpoint matches horizontal lines into vertical harmonies, creating
dimension. Counterpoint germinates polyphony. Discords produce tension.
Dissonance resolves into consonance. Inventions, fugues, and canons
exemplify counterpoint with their rhythms, modulations, episodes. Contours
and climaxes shape counterpoint. Counterpoint also spells argument‹pushing
against the dominant, the assumed, the accepted. A contrapuntal position
releases us to see, hear and invent fresh meanings and radical structures.
 
3.            Games
 
Games are sports. Games are conceptual environments. Games spin dialectics
between competition and collectivity, interaction and immersion. The
ludology/narratology wars pit process against story. Games fuel fun and
flow. Games conjure liminal zones. Bounded by space and time, game players
torque rules and components. Through movement and climax, games create
imaginary and real places exempt from quotidian routines. Whether in words,
wars, boards, cards, courts, virtualities, fields, ecologies, computers, or
minds, games mobilize abstract strategies and risk.
 
4.            Gastronomica

Constituted by chemical compounds‹sugars, proteins, carbohydrates, salts,
and fats‹food is the essence of environmental tangibility and provides the
material foundations of life. Food spawns all things gastronomic, the
refinements and complexities of cuisine, with attendant implications for
taste, nutrition, family, community, and identity. Gastronomica connotes
multiple divisions of labour, sweeping political economies, ravaging
famines, heterogeneous ethnicities, hidden histories, complex systems of
production, vast regimes of regulation, daunting genetic manipulations,
mountains of cookbooks, and billions in advertising.
 
 
FLEFF 2008 will take place from 31 March to 06 April 2008 in Ithaca (New
York), USA; ŒUbuntu¹ will go live on the web on 31 March 2008. Visit
www.ithaca.edu/fleff/exhibitions.html#undisclosed
<http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff/exhibitions.html#undisclosed>  for a
description of last year¹s exhibit, ŒUndisclosed Recipients¹, and
www.ithaca.edu/fleff/selected_works.html
<http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff/selected_works.html>  for links to curated
work.

Please send submissions, with links and a brief bio, to *BOTH* Dale Hudson
(Amherst College) <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> > *AND*
Sharon Lin Tay (Middlesex University) <[log in to unmask]
<mailto:[log in to unmask]> > no later than 01 November 2007. Only work that
can be exhibited online can be considered for this exhibit. Media artists
working in offline formats, should submit work to FLEFF under other calls.

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