Liquid Architecture festival interview by Line Jensen and Ronja Moss.

emilezile_sonicportrait.mp3

Emile Zile leads a collaborative workshop on (mis)using the internet for the purpose of art/lulz. Through a range of participatory exercises Zile will demonstrate techniques to detourn everyday social media and search engines in dynamic performative ways that offer new perspectives on these ready-to-hand tools.

#cavemanVJ #expandedhomecinema #officeworksavantgarde #postitnotebrut

With his history of performances that engage with popular culture and consumer technology Emile Zile recently premiered OMG_Sisyphus. The Greek mythology of Sisyphus, a tale of burden and absurdity, is used as a prop on which to enact a contemporary performance situation: being on YouTube. The performance happens in the midst of laptops, amplifiers, digital cameras, projectors and a heavy looking stone that the artist carries in from outside. In recent performances of OMG_Sisyphus at (Open Archive Melbourne, 30 November 2011, Palais Paradiso Amsterdam 16 February 2012) Zile enacts a humorously calculated switch. In his treatment we begin to understand that the laptop/webcam is now a rock, or vice versa. Its physical presence, weight, and texture become entwined in a passage of worship, as the ubiquitous Apple product is now something more equivalent to a Chinese scholar stone (Gongshi). Throughout the whole performance it is as if through some application of post-production what we should be seeing as a computer (the adored gateway to online audiences) is now a small volcanic boulder. Simultaneous slips between live action and published content begin, as Zile sits staring at the rock we imagine him staring at his computer, alone in a room while addressing an imagined YouTube audience. In doing so the actual live audience sitting in the gallery space is distanced, even denied.

At some points in the piece we are made to feel the joys of web 2.0 publishing, light relaxation muzak plays, we are all connected by technology. But the gallery space begins to fall out of step as the artist struggles against what appears to be self-doubt and loneliness. The rock remains motionless on a small table under lamplight. Is real life different to projected life? Maybe it used to be. Zile seems to suggest a new friction is built in this crossover rather than a seamless merger. Whilst various elements of the performance are online, the crux of this work hinges on being present live in the gallery space – where multiple facets of contemporary being are felt and fired simultaneously. As it happens we are pointed toward a space where states of alienation, corporation and intense connectivity collide into a state of indivisibility.

– Ry David Bradley, February 2012

Saturday October 4, 10am – 1pm.
Capacity is limited and bookings can be made through the MCA at http://www.mca.com.au/events/reschool-emile-zile-internet/

‘As part of our critical forum, Video Art in the Internet Era, we asked a series of artists, curators and video brains to send us “video letters” responding to the provocation of our critical forum: how can video artists orient themselves towards or against the complex backdrop of networked technology, smart phones and prosumers of our current world?
Riffing on the YouTube genre of “unboxing”, Emile Zile performed a “boxing” of some usurped analogue technology, the detritus of many a media artists studio.’

http://www.channelsfestival.net.au/program/forum-video-art-in-the-internet-era/

http://appendixspace.com/blankets/
http://briankhek.com/

October 4, 17.00 – 19.00
Royal Academy of Art, Den Haag

http://www.kabk.nl/newsitemEN.php?newsid=0413&cat=09

Performance: Emile Zile

OMG_sisyphus and *best*RapidEssayNSFW!! by Amsterdam-based Australian artist, resident of the Rijksakademie. Live video essays with online and prepared video sources from YouTube, 24hour news streams, scientific trials, viral marketing blips, social software and monologues by .com-era cult leaders to weave an audiovisual portrait of contemporary culture and its acceleration of signs. With tutorials, self-portraiture, factory presets, the ecstasy of viewing and the sadness of YouTube.

Lecture Almila Akdag (UVA)

A theoretical view on the nature of (high/low) art and the art market, and its relation to online art communities. Almila Akdag, from the University of Amsterdam, has received a Veni awardfrom NWO to conduct her own research for 3 years. The project is a combination of the application of various scientific methodologies (mostly social network analysis and analysis of image archives). In this lecture she will talk about DeviantArt, an online community of artists and art appreciators, that plays a nowadays role of the Salon des Refuses. She will show the history of this initiative and highlight its social and organizational structure as well as its impact on the art education for the next generation of artists.

Paradiso, Amsterdam
February 16, 2012
http://www.palaisparadiso.nl

Featuring Dennis Verbeke, Ieke Trinks, Sina Khani, Uta Eisenreich, Guido van der Werve, Emile Zile, Nina Yuen, Bregje de Kater, Danai Reints, Loeke Gerritsen, Nederlands Dans Theater 2, Broersen en Lukács, Renée van Trier, Isabelle Schiltz, Jeroen Offerman

This week I will be conducting a workshop at the Netherlands Media Art Institute for Video Vortex, an international conference on the politics and aesthetics of online video. Netherland’s Beeld en Geluid archive have opened up their state collection of broadcast media for participants to remix and re-release into orbit.

On Saturday night I will perform a new work, *best*RapidEssayNSFW!!, a live essay-video using prepared and online a/v sources. Caveman VJ’ing. Brutalist effects. Think of millenial dot com crash cult leader monologues, evolution and decay, language and  truth, animism and portraiture. Constant Dullaart, Anja Masling and Giorgi Tabatadze are also showing work, Katja Novitskova will be the DJ.

Production still from *best*RapidEssayNSFW!! test.

tired of the mirrors, noise and eyes.

tired of prickly, intimate and fleshy human relationships being flattened into ‘friend’-nodes, the erasure of myth by constant visibility and exhausting availability.

what kind of network society do i want to support? a closed compound of willingly data-mined crayons or an open net of chance and unpredictability?

if facebook is the brightly-lit suburban mall of internet communication, i want to be under the bridges; in the torrent-swapping irc channels, small social networks, anonymous message boards and darker locations thriving with their own individual languages and codes.

tired of feeling exposed, of being infantilised, of being farmed.

the incessant ‘now’ of FB started to infect my creative process; making for ‘blip’ attention spans and the enormous appetite of the beast, as Geert Lovink puts it ‘feeding a machine’. I want to think in longer time frames to make deeper work.

tired of feelings of interpassivity and the formless mild angst it instills in me; spectacle 2.0 and the build-your-own-ego-ghetto.

hello friends, goodbye facebook.

Bring Your Own Beamer group exhibition curated by Angelo Plessas

Athens Kunsthalle, 23 October 2010

Participating Artists: Alexandros Georgiou, Alexandros Psychoulis, Aliki Panagiotopoulou, Amateurboyz, Andreas Angelidakis, Angelo Plessas, Anne de Vries, Billy Rennekamp, Dimitris Foutris, Dimitris Papadatos, Dionisis Kavallieratos, Eftihis Patsourakis, Emile Zile, Irini Karayannopoulou, Ioanna Myrka, Georgia Sagri, Katerina Kana, Kostis Velonis, Lakis & Aris Ionas/The Callas, Mai Ueda, Makis Faros, Mano Plizzi, Maria Papadimitriou, Natasha Papadopoulou, Pantelis Pantelopoulos, Pegy Zali, Petros Moris, Poka-Yio, Rafaël Rozendaal, Sifis Lykakis, Spiros Hadjidjanos, The Erasers, Theo Michael, Theodoros D Giannakis, Vassilis, Patmios Karouk

Saturday 23rd October 2010, 8 p.m.

Kerameikou 28 str., Kerameikos – Metaxourgeio, Athens

Κunsthalle Athena has the honour to host “Bring your own beamer” (BYOB) event, an “exemplary” and crucial gesture supporting creative expression in a period of financial, social and cultural crisis.

“Bring your own beamer” (BYOB) exhibition comprises an edition of a broader set of events organised by different artists in different cities every time. In every occasion the organisers choose the participating artists with the aim to experiment and discover “what will occur in site when it is filled with moving light”.

In this special evening, under the acronym BYOB (a symbolic reference to bring your own booze parties), artists are invited to bring their own beamer and present any work they choose in any place they desire to. It is a case of “presenting” moving images and performances in a DIY context, expected to evolve organically in progress of the evening. Therefore, a significant aspect of BYOB’s concept is to be realized without the financial support of any third parties beyond the immediate participants.

The first BYOB event was held with great success in Büro Friedrich, Berlin with the initiative of Rafaël Rozendaal and Anne de Vries. Now, curated by Angelo Plessas, BYOB makes its second worldwide appearance in Kunsthalle Athena. All the artists will attend the event, even those who are not based in Athens, so you are welcomed to contact them. Complementary to the event and during the night a joined performance will take place by artist Angelo Plessas and japanese artist Mai Ueda followed by DJ sets from Amateur Boys and Emile Zile.