Philip Brophy
Screenic: Politicised Writings on Being Screened
290 pages, softcover, 110 × 180 mm
Edition of 700
ISBN 978-1-7635372-1-7
http://www.discipline.net.au

Discipline is pleased to announce its latest title, Screenic: Politicised Writings on Being Screened—an anthology of Philip Brophy’s writing on art over the last twenty-five years. The focus of the selection is on art that involves screens: projected as film in museums, digitised for installations in galleries, curated as documents within exhibitions, presented as outdoor illuminations on buildings, utilised for the production of VR and AI-generated content, and even wall murals derived from televisual screens. The driver for the writing of these articles is an interest in media literacy within fine art contexts. Together, the articles reinforce the view that ongoing changes taking place in the mediascape over the last two decades create challenges for artists, producers, curators, viewers, and critics—sometimes resulting in a rejuvenation of how media art can be imagined and presented, other times evidencing an anaemic grasp of the contemporary mediascape that whorls outside the white cube.

Screenic has been designed by James Vinciguerra and Duncan Blachford, and printed in Narrm/Melbourne by Documents on Call. It features a preface by Helen Hughes, an introduction by Emile Zile, and has been edited by Olga Bennett.

4500 lumens
Emile Zile

Continuing with his ongoing interest in light as a carrier of information, be it the projected image, shadow play or expanded cinema performance, Emile Zile presents a new performance in the Gothic and Medieval galleries of NGV International for Triennial EXTRA. Referencing the scientific measurement of light and the once-new technology of the candle as a participant in the development of the Western artistic tradition, his new performance takes place in a subdued, dark environment surrounded by five hundred year old devotional wood carvings.

Emile Zile is an artist, filmmaker and performer. Utilising a darkly comical re-use of media broadcasts, communication protocols and online platforms, his work reflects a distributed humanity, a yearning for transcendence and the limits of language. Emile Zile is a PhD candidate at Digital Ethnography Research Centre RMIT and is profiled in ‘Australiana to Zeitgeist: an A to Z of Australian Contemporary Art’ 2017 Thames & Hudson and ‘Companion to Mobile Media Art’ 2020 Routledge.

Jan 29, Feb 3, 6, 8, 10, 12
8:00 – 8:20pm
Gallery 13 Level 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXvRn8zpJDc

1. Laibach – Predictions of Fire 1996

In the early 80’s, an industrial rock band named Laibach emerged out of the Yugoslav republic of Slovenia. Incorporating what many took to be fascist imagery in their performances, they shocked this small Balkan republic and, after signing a recording contract with London’s prestigious Mute Records label, went on to shock the rest of the world as well. Laibach was soon joined by a painting group, IRWIN, and theater group, Red Pilot, at the helm of one of the most ambitious and cutting-edge arts collectives in the world. Modeled after a socialist state bureaucracy, and calling themselves Neue Slowenische Kunst (New Slovenian Arts, or NSK), these three groups became the titular heads of a micro-state within the independent republic of Slovenia. NSK recently began issuing its own passports and opened embassies and consulates in Moscow, Berlin, Ghent, Florence, and in the US.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziivUUKHf-I

2. Aleksandra Domanovic – Turbo Sculpture 2010

Turbo Sculpture is questioning the emergence of a new kind of public art in ex-Yougoslav republics. The title of the video is a reference to Turbofolk, a popular style of music from the Balkans that freely samples traditional and contemporary sources. A sculpture of Bruce Lee, or of Rocky are politically neutral and common cultural references for the different communities that were at war for over a decade in the 1990s. While the war time Turbo Culture was mostly associated with exaggerated nationalism, almost pornographic kitsch and crime glorification, the post war Turbo boldly contrasts nationalist xenophobia while retaining its stylistic identity.

https://vimeo.com/17523698

3. BBC4 – Nicolae Ceausescu, The King of Communism 2003

Nicolae Ceausescu created a unique personality cult in the 1970s and 1980s, transforming communist Romania into one of the strangest regimes Europe has ever seen. Newspapers had to mention his name 40 times on every page, factory workers spent months rehearsing dance routines dressed as soldiers and gymnasts for huge shows at which thousands of citizens were lined up to form the words Nicolae Ceausescu with their bodies. When the Romanian economy and living standards plummeted in the 1980s, the line between theatre and life blurred completely. Ceausescu went on working visits to the countryside where he inspected displays of meat and fruit made out of polystyrene, and closer to home began work on what would have been the largest palace in the world. At the final parade in 1989, workers walked past their leader to the sound of taped chants and applause.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5gVsYNGycc