Video recordings

[Martha Rosler] Martha Rosler reads from her essay accompanying the re-emergence unchanged of her 1983 videotape A Simple Case for Torture, or How to Sleep at Night, accompanied by a screen saver of images on her computer.

[Vesna Kesic] In early 1991, when Croatia received the first international recognitions of its statehood, the euphoria was enormous. Such were the paradoxes of the situation. While the third of the country was yet to feel the war casualties, the state television launched a trashy song "Danke Deutschland" as a mark of gratitude to the first state that gave the recognition. The author researches how the phrase Danke Deutschland changed its meaning through the time, what does it mean today in different sets of memory.

[Volker Eick] The term ›terrorism‹ comes from the Latin word terrere, ›to frighten‹ via the French word terrorisme. The first use of the word ›terrorism‹ referred to state rule by terror. It was coined in the years after the French Revolution – the so-called Reign of Terror – and identified terror as an instrument of state power. Therefore, ›terrorism‹ became popular between 1793 and 1795 during the regime de la terreur.

[Hans Bernhard] Embeded Journalism vs. Self-organized Multitude of Observation. The current conflict situation in Kenya reflects once again a critical point in our retro-mass media society. The information from inside the country is not valid, the information going to the "world" is twisted to perversion through embedded journalism, dubious sources and combustion point monitoring.

[Suzana Milevska] Renaming Machine is a war concept that could be interpreted as a subtle but powerful strategy for erasing ethnic, cultural or gender identity without using any aggression or causing any direct material damage. It functions as a conceptual weapon of destruction, as a kind of wage war or a contest between the old and new identity layer.

[Andrea Kuluncic] Reconstruction will consist of screening of two videos: “A Reconstruction of an Unimportant Day in Our History” and “A Reconstruction of an Important Day in Our History”, by the artist. First video shows a day in a life of Josip Broz Tito during his stay in country side, in the castle. Castle is also known under the name of „Tito's Castle“. Tito as passionate hunter, often stayed in the Castle hunting wild animals, alone, with his wife Jovanka (who was as well passionate hunter) or with eminent foreign statesmen.

[Gini Mueller] Politics, Activism and not at least performative potentials meet in the term “Posse“ as conflictive spaces of emancipatory wars against border- and bio-regimes. In their well known analyses of “Empire“ Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt describe “Posse“ from the latin term as a verb of power, an activity, which refers to the political power and subjectivity of the multitude: Posse is what a mind and a body can do.

[Zelimir Zilnik] Screening of the inserts from Žilnik's movies: OLD TIMER (1988), TITO'S SECOND TIME AMONG THE SERBS (1994), EUROPE NEXT DOOR (2005) and WILD CAPITALISM (2008). Inserts are illustrating thesis how former Yugoslav political elite since the middle of the 1980s, after longterm conflict around Tito's inheritor and heritage, dismissed internationalism and self-management as axioms of the state's foundaments.

[Jovan Divjak] Remotely contributed concept by Jovan Divjak, former general in the Bosnian army during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. He was the highest ranking ethnic Serb in the army and one of its most educated and experienced officers. On April 8th, 1992, Divjak became Deputy Commander of BiH's Territorial Defense forces and a month later oversaw the defence of Sarajevo from a major JNA attack.

[Sebastian Meissner] Ghetto Ambient explores urban and rural environments frequently described as “non-places”.

[Jean Mathee] “Man tries to satisfy his need for aggresion at the expense of his neighbour, to exploit his work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to appropriate his goods, to humiliate him, to inflict suffering on him, to torture and kill him”. (Feud); To find the path of desire is to encounter on routethe bad character of the drives, settled at the heart of all subjects who have to recognise it. Who am I?

[Geert Lovink] The war in Iraq, from 2003 to the present, is the first war covered by bloggers. Salam Pax caused a stir by reporting online the last months of the Sadam Hussein regime and the US invasion. During the short summer of media freedom (2003-2004) Iraqi weblogs popped up in great numbers. Four years later we find ourselves in midst of a pool of 'digital despair'. Most bloggers have left the country and report from Damascus, Amman or London. Humor and irony have vanished. Some became news professionals, others turned silent.

[Erden Kosova] After a period of relative normalisation, the politics within the Republic of Turkey has been drifted again into serious conflict.

[Nebojsa Milikic] The guided tour through an art-collection assembled in the period between 1986/7-1996/7, which is the period of the outset and ongoing of wars in Yugoslavia. How social and political agendas were absorbed or radiated through the process of selection - as seen in the content and concept of works. Which ideological and class positioning of the collectioner could generate motives, guide decisions or get blended into todays appearance of the collection.

[Thomas Campbell] Over the last fifteen years, many parts of the former Soviet Union have been devastated by civil war and other disruptive armed conflicts. Despite this glaring fact, it has often been stated that the break-up of the Soviet Union was a remarkably "bloodless" affair.

[Peter Jahn], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 21:30 - 22:00
Der Krieg im Osten 1941-1945, der mehr als 30 Millionen Menschen das Leben kostete, sprengte alle Grenzen zwischen „erlaubtem“ Töten feindlicher Soldaten im Kampf und dem Mord an Gefangenen und Zivilisten. „Zig Millionen“ zivile Opfer sah schon die deutsche Planung vor, die folgende Kriegsrealität war der Planung adäquat. Unter den Faktoren, die einen derart enthemmten Krieg möglich machten, wird hier das deutsche Feindbild des slawischen Untermenschen thematisiert: Inhalt, Kontext, Funktion, Tradition.

[Khalo Matabane], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 21:00 - 21:30


.... to talk about a filmmaker taking a stance

[kuda.org], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 20:30 - 21:00
Safe Distance is video that was recorded during NATO air strikes against FR Yugoslavia. Videotape shows electronic cockpit of the US Air Force plane. There were 4 airplanes flying from NATO-base from Italy to destination in Yugoslavia. Mission objective was to bomb several targets in the area around city of Novi Sad. On the way back, after mission was completed, plane was shot. Tape (Sony Video 8) was found near crashed plane in Fruska Gora mountain in Srem region. It shows electronic cockpit with basic graphical interface and voice communication between pilots. Videotape is a regular document of flight used by command structures to analyze its efficiency and success after very mission. Tape presents these last moments before plain was crashed.

[Rimini Protokoll], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 20:00 - 20:30
The two Vietnam Veterans and Anti-War activists Darnell Stephen Summers and Dave Blalock with their definition of Resist...Refuse...Rebell

[Arianna Bove], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 19:30 - 20:00
From the Practice of Joy before Death (in Visions of Excess)

Heraclitean Meditation : “I myself am war”

“I imagine human movement and excitation, whose possibilities are limitless: this movement and excitation can only be appeased by war. I imagine the gift of an infinite suffering, of blood and open bodies, in the image of an ejaculation cutting down the one it jolts and abandoning him to an exhaustion charged with nausea. I imagine the earth projected in space, like a woman screaming, her head in flames.

[Stefan Heidenreich ], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 18:30 - 19:00
Eine kurze Ökonomie des Kriegs als Dienstleistung: Was wird beim Krieg verdient. Wer bietet den Service an. Zu welchem Preis. Wer kauft. Wer zahlt. Wie sieht der Markt aus.

[Armin Smailovic], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 18:00 - 18:30
During my military time in former yugoslavia i had to photograph more than 4500 soldiers for their military IDs. This happened 3 years before the war, which started 91. In the age of 19 and not enough politically grown to realize what i ve got in my hands, the negatives were just trash for me, after i printed 4 copies for each soldier. So all together something like 18000 prints in B/W. Then in 91 i went to the croatian war as a war photographer. During and especially after the war i had to think about all this young boys, i was taken a photographs of. What happend to them? Are they killed? Tortured? Or became killing machines? I cant tell...i only know that these images with the green shirt, fresh cut hair and a scary expression in their face are in my mind until today. These mug shots were my biggest project concerning war i have ever done.

[Avi Mograbi], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 17:00 - 17:30
My concept consists of 2 videotaped testimonies of ex-soldiers concerning their service experiences. The first one is a short testimony about the pleasure of controlling other people with the tips of you fingers. 3 minutes. The second testimony concerns the pleasure of doing what you are trained to do and how killing can be fun.

[Vanessa Joan Müller], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 17:30 - 18:00
„Shoplifters of the world, unite and take over“, sangen die Smiths 1986. Das destabilisierende Potenzial des kollektiven Ladendiebstahls scheint ungleich geringer gegenüber dem des Plünderns, und doch setzten bereits die Smiths auf das Aushebeln jener Tauschgesetzmäßigkeit „Geld gegen Ware“, auf denen der ökonomische Imperativ des Systems Kapitalismus nun einmal basiert. Die romantische Vorstellung des kollektiven Ladendiebstahls funktioniert jedoch nur in Friedenszeiten. Im Krieg wird geplündert, und das heißt die willkürlich Aneignung von Besitz, die der Logik des entfesselten Haben-Wollens folgt.

[Brian Massumi], Saturday, February 24th, 2007, 16:30 - 17:00