Before I move to the shortened list of the extracurricular activities,
there's one project that requires a special mention:
# Maagdenhuis2015 Arc.Hive
From February till May 2015 I was preoccupied with filming of the process known now as the Maagdenhuis Reappropriation. My primiary objectives were to provide materials for the Maagdenhuis' YouTube channel and to produce a small documentary. Yet, this plans changed due to the very nature of the social movement that grew around those events.
What rendered Maagdenhuis protests unique was a formation of the MULTITUDE from the crowd of people and parties involved. Multitude as opposed to people (folk, crowd) does not strive for RE-presentation, but want to PRESENT itself - without intermediaries. To explain this dynamic better, we might refer to one of the tools used during the public events at Maagdenhuis - so called human microphone or "mic check". Instead of using a microphone and amplifiers, the speaker asks the crowd to repeat every sentence of his/her speech after him/her. Not only it removes a clear distinction between the sender and addressees of the message, but also reflects a true strength of the crowd (and support for the message). It is a vivid application of the radically democratic changes proclaimed by the protesters, since it's based on actual presence and involvement, and therefore stimulates a direct responsibility over the politics and course of events.
We tried to this logic in our project, so it might stay true to the events depicted. Imposing a fixed narrative on a diverse, liminal process that took place in the Maagdenhuis, would challenge its very purpose. Therefore, we aim at providing multiple narratives of our own - organized accordingly to the unfolding timeline of events and around specific issues. Nevertheless, we're doing it as a part of the MULTITUDE established in Maagdenhuis (and we’d like to provide the same opportunity to all the viewers). Those narratives are supposed to serve just as a base for the interactive archive that would allow its users and participants of the Maagdenhuis Appropriation to create their own paths, stories and accounts of depicted events. Given that nowadays almost every person out of thousands who visited Spuiplein during the occupation had either smartphone, camera, laptop or audio recorder, we invite them to share their materials and impressions with us, general public and future users/scholars interested in the Maagdenhuis Archive.
Designed by: Janna Ullrich
To get Maagdenhuis Archive of the ground we needed expertise and involvment of various people with diverse experience. During the past few months we managed to organize a definite working group that includes:
# Molly Bower - Archivist. Participant of the UvA (Universiteit van Amsterdam) MA Course in Heritage Studies: Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image.
# Alexander Nieuwenhuis - Das Arts student, journalist and project manager.
# Tashina Blom - Cultural analyst from the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis.
# Nardi Lam - Programmer.
# Janna Ullrich - Designer, graduate of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie.
# Stanisław Liguziński - Coordination of video processing and editing along with conceptualization and execution of the archive's remixing feature.
After securing the support from the Amsterdam Stadsarchief and Amsterdam Centre for Cultural Heritage and Identity, we're currently filing an application to the Mondrian Fund.
Maagdenhuis2015 will present a Beta version of the website for testing, and give an overview of the ongoing work during the launch event on 19.05.2016 at De Ceuvel.
# Other extracurricular activities:
26/27.11.2015 - Participation in the masterclass by Catherine Grant: Researching the Audiovisual Audiovisually.
25.09.2015 - Guest lecturing on the topic of film analysis at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht.
23.07-02.08.2015 - Moderating Q&As during the International Film Festival New Horizons in Wrocław.
19.05.2015 - Participation in the Symposium: The Audio-Visual / Video Essay in Teaching & Research.
(University of East Anglia, UK)
2014-2016 - Publication of 3 peer-reviewed articles in academic journals.
(on video-essays, cinema culture of Amsterdam and films of Jerzy Hoffman)
# External Advisors/Consultants (not mentioned previously as collaborators within the project):
- Kornel Varga - Former graduate of the VfX department at the Filmacademie. Programmer and specialist in Unity (game-building environment I work with in the project). Kornel not only mentors me in matters connected to Unity development, but also collaborates with me on the execution of the workstation for the graduation.
- Robert M. Ochshorn - An artist and researcher developing media interfaces for extending humans’ perception and expressive capabilities (co-creator of Eyal Sivan's Montage Interdit) / one-time consultation regarding the basic premise of the project.
- Matt Zoller Seitz - Famous American film critic and video essayist / I interviewed him on the subject of performative aspects of the author's persona in video-essays.
