Join us for a conversation with founders of UKRAiNATV, moderated by Geert Lovink and Emile Zile.

https://www.acmi.net.au/whats-on/artfilm/ukrainatv/

UKRAiNATV is an experimental media project and Internet TV station that blends real and virtual worlds through live audiovisual bridges, streaming and global networks. Based in Krakow, Poland, it brings together artists, activists, musicians and media enthusiasts from Ukraine, Poland, Belarus and beyond – many of whom are refugees or nomadic creators unable to express themselves freely in their own countries. Founded in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, UKRAiNATV aims to create a space of solidarity and safety for marginalised communities.

Operating from #StreamArtStudio, the collective mixes new and used equipment to produce innovative, hybrid content, connecting people worldwide through transnational collaborations. Despite its instability, UKRAiNATV is a powerful hub that explores the intersection of art, politics, and media in times of conflict and change. It is one of the most experimental and resource-limited TV networks in the world, born out of a need for creative and humanitarian expression.

About Geert Lovink
Geert Lovink is a Dutch media theorist, internet critic and author of Sad by Design (2019) and Stuck on the Platform (2022) and Extinction Internet. He received his PhD from the University of Melbourne. In 2004 he founded the Institute of Network Cultures (www.networkcultures.org) at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA). In 2022 he was appointed Professor of Art and Network Cultures at the University of Amsterdam Art History Department. Since early 2022 he has been involved in support campaigns for Ukranian artists, in particular UkrainaTV, a streaming art studio/network, operating out of Krakow.

About Emile Zile
Emile Zile is an artist, filmmaker and performer. Using the overlooked remnants of network culture to create his performances, films and exhibitions, Emile engages with the boundaries of language to explore contemporary digital selfhood.

ACMI Gallery 5 – We Are As Gods
We Are as Gods explores the informal, spontaneous commentary that accompanies cooperative videogame streaming. Through a series of portraits of gamers in the act of live streaming, we hear dialogue that is simultaneously directed at the players themselves, at a remote audience, at a rival player of the game and at anonymous third parties. Using longform recording, stream of consciousness rants and animation, We Are As Gods seeks to find the human in the network, the flesh in the data packet.

Work commissioned through Gallery 5 will enter the ACMI collection.

Many thanks to Senior Curator Fiona Trigg for her focus and patience and Jini Maxwell, Isabella Hone-Saunders at Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Visual FX don Henry Lai-Pyne for being the best in the game, Web maestro Simon Lofler for the clickable NPC streaming interactivity, Flood Slicer for the green screen studio and all Mountain Dew drinkers out there preparing to raid.

Showing now online at ACMI; https://www.acmi.net.au/whats-on/emile-zile-we-are-as-gods/

In the early 00’s I made a video about my experience of appearing on The Price is Right television game show. You can watch it on Vimeo; Larry Emdur’s Suit.

Today at 5pm AEDT [November 1 2023] I’m appearing on Channel 9’s Millionaire Hotseat with Eddie McGuire. My lifelong meta-artwork to be on every TV gameshow continues.

Amber Gibson interviewed me about humour, performance, technology and gesture in her ongoing series that profiles artists working at ACMIX.

https://www.acmi.net.au/whats-on/inside-acmi-x-podcast/episode-10-making-dark-comedy-with-emile-zile/

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/making-dark-comedy-with-emile-zile/id1016322772?i=1000582208788

ARTLANDS CONVERSATION SERIES: REGIONAL ARTS AUSTRALIA

What role do we want technology to play in connecting our art practices to the wider world? What skills are artists working in isolated or remote parts of the world equipped with? Can issues such as digital saturation and digital inequality be overcome in order to create a more sustainable future?

Like many regional artists, Kim Goldsmith and Alana Hunt often create work in relatively isolated parts of Australia. In contrast, Jessica Olivieri and Emile Zile both practice in metropolitan areas, but have been no less impacted by the isolation imposed by lockdowns. What can these artists teach each other about isolation and digital connection, and how might this inform our thinking about where to next as arts practitioners?

Online Conversation on 25 Nov 2020
https://conversationseries.artlands.com.au/program/sessions/connection-in-times-of-isolation

AEST: 03:30pm – 04:30pm
ACST: 03:00pm – 04:00pm
AWST: 12:30pm – 01:30pm