ovni 2003 observatory archives program

OVNI 2003 - The Observatory Archives
From the 27th to the 31st of May, 2003
CCCB. Free Admission.

OVNI 2003 - The Observatory Archives

Program of screenings:
Screenings of material recently added to the archives, structured around different themes.
Opening night, May 27th : Special program, at 9 pm.
From the 28th to the 31st of May : Parallel screenings in the Auditorium and the Hall, from 6pm to midnight.

Presentations:
Guest artists and a collective are invited to talk about their works.
Autonomedia Ed. (USA), Negativland (USA), and Steve Reinke (Canada)

Babylon Archives:
A compilation DVD of contemporary media archaeology. The darkest side of the Empire.
Promotionals from military, pharma, digital, industries and its governnamental links.

Access to the Observatory Archives:
Free access to the entire Observatory Archives collection. From midday to 11pm in the Hall.

OVNI IS AN INDEPENDENT VIDEOMAKERS AND PROGRAMMERS COLLECTIVE

The Observatory Archives ( www.desorg.org)
The Observatory Archives are structured around particular themes and have a clear purpose: to encourage a critique of contemporary culture, using different strategies of the language that best represents it, such as video art, independent documentary, and mass media archaeology,…
The Archives cover a huge range of works that are very different from one another, but share a commitment to freedom of expression and reflect on our individual and collective fears and pleasures. Together, they offer a multifaceted view, thousands of tiny eyes that probe and explore our world and announce other possible worlds. It is a discourse that above all values heterogeneity, plurality, contradiction and subjectivity, an antidote to the cloning and repetition of corporate mass media.
Given that the call for entries organised by OVNI every 18 months is theme-based, the works selected over the years offer a reading, a kind of record of some of the dreams and nightmares of our times. We have seen the range of issues and preoccupations become more focused over time, from works with very diverse themes in OVNI 1993 to 1996 (when the main interest seemed to be in extending and exploring the video medium, regaining the formal and specially the thematic freedom of its early years), to progressively narrow down to increasingly specific themes: identity versus media (1997-1998), community (2001), globalisation (2002).
In the 10 years since it began, OVNI has acquired more than 700 documents and works for the Observatory Archives. Their theme-based and intentional nature, and the independent nature of the works acquired, make the Observatory Archives a unique audiovisual project.

OVNI 2003 Screenings- Program
The screenings for this edition will be based on a selection from the 150 audiovisual documents that have been added to the Observatory Archives over the last 18 months.
Together, this material reflects the most serious issues of our time, using different media and languages such as video art, independent documentary, media archaeology….to reflect the process of Globalisation and the Resistance it generates, and conflicts such as Palestine, Argentina, September 11th, etc. The difference is that these issues, which we are used to seeing in the news headlines, loose their relationship to news when they are taken out of context and approached through different formal means and points of view, in a constant exchange between the micro to the macro; from microworlds and subjective experience to collective and social visions.
The program of screenings in this edition is based on a dialogue between two interconnected archives; on one hand, the works created by individuals or collectives that form the nucleus of the Observatory Archives, and on the other, the contemporary media archaeology material that makes up the Babylon Archives (see Babylon Archives section).


Presentations
In this edition, for the first time, OVNI has invited collectives and individual artists to talk about their work.

Autonomedia Ed. NYC.
New York-based Autonomedia are one of the most lucid publishers of books on radical media, politics and the arts. They have published more than 300 titles that have influenced and given voice to a generation of authors, thinkers and social collectives, and established a dialogue between seemingly unconnected critical voices. www.autonomedia.org
Their publications include:
Temporary Autonomous Zones, by Hakim Bey; Digital Resistance and Electronic Civil Disobedience, by Critical Art Ensemble; Hacktivism, by the Electronic Disturbance Theatre; Pirate Utopias and European Renegades, by Peter Lamborn Wilson.

Lectures: Jim Fleming, Lewanne Jones, Eric Goldhagen [see programation]

Negativland

Through their musical and media experiments since the early eighties, Negativland have been exploring the limits between intellectual property and market tyranny, fair and illegitimate use of information, and especially the right to deconstruct and reinterpret fragments of the media we are all constantly bombarded with. www.negativland.com
Lecture: Mark Hosler [see programation]

Steve Reinke
In the late 90s, Canadian artist Steve Reinke embarked on a project that consisted of making 100 separate videos. The result is a portrait of places, confessions and characters, media monsters and also ruins, forming a complex map of distant lands that are just around the corner. 100 Videos is a kind of web in which everything is mixed together, from the personal to mass media usurpation. In OVNI 2003, Seve Reinke will present and talk about the 100 Videos and his subsequent projects.


The Babylon Archives
The Babylon Archives. A contemporary media archaeology project that collects and compiles material from the dark side of our civilisation. Promotionals from corporative, militar, pharma and digital industries. Many of these audiovisual documents were not produced to last, but rather to fulfil specific functions at a particular time: training, publicity, etc…this is why, when they are taken out of the context of their time or intended use, their meaning is revealed with surprising clarity even to those used to the constant publicity aimed at consumers. The result is a disturbing catalogue of intentions, aims and the means used to achieve them.



The Observatory Archives. Public access.
Free public access to all of the works in the Observatory Archives collection. Hall, from midday to 11pm

700 audiovisual documents: video art, independent documentary, media archaeology,…
300 hours: on DVD, with Spanish subtitles

Works from: Germany, Algeria, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Croatia, Chile, China, USA., Egypt, Spain, Finland, France, Holland, Italy, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Mexico, Palestine, Portugal, Qatar, United Kingdom, Serbia, Syria, Sweden, Switzerland, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen.

Thematic areas: Anti-Globalisation, Media Attack, Media Archaeology, Media Criticism and Deconstruction, Migration and Borders, Work and Ideology, Sci-Fi Visions, Community and communities, Tourism and Highjacked Territories, Deculturalisation, Islam, Visions of the Other, Rituals and Trance, Dream Archive, Experiences of Death, the Dark Night of the Soul, Inner Experience, September 11, Palestine, Argentina Burns, Guerrilla, etc.




OVNI 2003 Observatory Archives. Program.

Programming by The Observatory Archives, with the special collaboration of Jayce Salloum.

Acknowledgments: Serene Huelelih (The Arab education Forum - The Qalb el Umur Films Project), Anas Alaili, Abdelmajid Seddati y Abdelmajid El Jihad (Festival Art Video Casablanca), Nuria Enguita, Xavi Hurtado, Gloria Marti, Vani Brusadin (Dina), Dee Dee Halleck, Keith Sanborn.

Tuesday 27 May

9pm
Opening night special program. (Screenings: 70 minutes)




Wednesday 28 May

6pm
LOST IN BABYLON

Mohammed Soueid. Nightfall, 68', 2000, Lebanon
In 1975, a group of young Lebanese men were affiliated with the Palestinian Resistance Organization "Fateh". Some of them sacrificed their life in the course of the Civil War. Now that the war has gone, a bunch of those fighters are considered survivors, but they keep themselves alive by nursing their souls with alcohols, poetry and laughter.


7.05pm
ARGENTINA
Various activist documentaries reporting on and responding to an extreme situation. The 'legal' sacking of a country.

Venteveovideo. La Bisagra de la Historia, 19', 2002. Argentina.
Writing our history of History.

Ak- Kraak/ Grupo Alavio. Bloqueo al Polo Petroquimico Dock Sur, 12', 2002. Argentina.
South Petrochemical Complex blockade.

Gabriela Golder. Vacas, 4'30'', 2002. Argentina.
March 25th, 2002. About 400 people from the Las Flores neighbourhood slaughter live cows moments after they are thrown onto the road when the truck transporting them overturns.

7.35 pm
Claudia Aravena Abu-Ghosh, 11 de Septiembre, 5