[-empyre-] +

[Marcus Bastos]

thanks Gabriel, Felipe and Marc for posting, looking forward to hear
from the others.

Felipe,

could you, please, introduce yourself as a complement to the links you
sent (btw, where is the English version of http://pub.descentro.org/?
I did not find it...). Very nice to have you around, your
contributions to the topic will surely be very important.

Gabriel,

could you talk a bit further about the lawsuit you mentioned? Do you
think it happened only because you decided to host your project on an
institution? Wasn't it part of a broader process of misunderstandings
about the role of p2p in culture? Are there any online materials about
it? Also, I was wondering why you guys screened blockbusters when you
could have chosen other materials (like in Platoniq's Burn-Sation, for
example, http://www.platoniq.net/eng/fbstation2.html)... of course
there are downs and ups on both sides, just wanted to hear a bit about
how you see the topic (specially given that CineFalcatrua also made a
burn station recently)

Marc,

would you elaborate a bit on the reasons why you believe our world
still views traditional frameworks of 'fine art' as the main focus for
art engagement? It could be argued that music and film industries have
changed this perception and digital culture is consolidating that
process, by allowing collaborative processes to arise where
broadcasting was formerly the standard. Also, if we think of Land Art
or the Situationists, there seem to be a systematic effort to change
the framework of arts within itself. I was under the impression that
your final question might have contradicted what you said before --
but for the fact that it apparently aim to take even further the
consequences of what you identify as an already existing "shared
investment with those who have
traditionally held the keys in controlling our cultures".

best
2008/8/3 Felipe Fonseca <felipefonseca at riseup.net>:
> pois entao
>
> just to confirm that whenever one invites 3 brazilians to a party,
> at least another three should be expected to come along. I read Marcus'
> announcement of this discussion on nettime and that caught my attention. I
> am Felipe Fonseca, just getting back to living in Brazil, and have been
> involved with some things that I believe are related to the subject:
> metareciclagem [1], bricolabs [2], descentro [3] and some others. Looking
> forward for the discussions here.
>
> [1] recent text in enlish:
>  http://mutirao.metareciclagem.org/wiki/CaseStudy
> [2] www.bricolabs.net
> [3] http://pub.descentro.org/
>
> noix
>
> efe
> ---
> motw: 'o que nos mata é o vamo que vamo'
> http://efeefe.no-ip.org
> http://metareciclagem.org
> http://weblab.tk
>
> Gabriel Menotti wrote:
>>
>> Hello ppl!
>>
>> I think I should start doing a brief introduction about Cine
>> Falcatrua's history, since it explains a lot about the way it works
>> and how its experience can contribute to this month's themes: media
>> centers, cultural works' distribution and institutionalization.
>>
>> In 2003, Cine Falcatrua were but a group of undergrad students from
>> different courses, none of us involved directly with cinema besides of
>> spectatorship. Just your regular P2P leechers: we downloaded from the
>> internet feature and short films we could not find elsewhere, either
>> because they were rare, either because they haven't been released in
>> Brazil yet.
>>
>> Interested in showing each other the movies we got, as well as
>> watching them in a real cinematographic struture (as they were meant
>> to be seen), we formalized an academic project so that we could borrow
>> a DLP projector from the University's communication department. With
>> this equipment, we started doing some regular, free screenings. Each
>> week, we projected a different movie we got from the internet.
>>
>> Since we did not had a DVD-R drive, we projected the movies from the
>> same computer we used to download them. We liked to say it was the
>> first digital movie theater of Espírito Santo (our state).
>>
>> Word spread quite fast, and in less them a month we had a regular
>> audience of more or less 300 people. Naturaly, Cine Falcatrua became a
>> venue for local moviemakers, and also local "curators" – it was a nice
>> place to show everyone an almost unknown movie you liked a lot.
>>
>> Hence, almost by chance, unwantedly, we were propelled from mere
>> spectators to producers and curators of a film society which gathered
>> a weekly audience of hundreds.
>>
>> A film society that, using a cheap (almost domestic) digital structure
>> and headless (unauthorized) networks, could be quicker than the
>> stablished cinematographic venues. We could screen million-dollar
>> movies like Kill Bill, in a great (divx) quality, two months before
>> they were officialy released in Brazil. And we got first-page
>> publicity in some newspapers, as if we were promoting official
>> premieres (always for free).
>>
>> (Of course, that resulted in a lawsuit from some brazilian film
>> distributors, accusing us of "unfair competition".)
>>
>> I think the most interesting thing to point out from this story is the
>> double process of incomplete institutionalization we went (and are
>> always going) through.
>>
>> At first, we had to institutionalize ourselves in order to borrow
>> equipment from the university. It was this institutionalization that
>> made us vulnarable to the lawsuit. This happens everytime: even if we
>> do not follow all of a system's ways of proceding, in order to take
>> part of it, we must agree to its protocols (I always hear people who
>> create art within cellphone networks complaining about this).
>>
>> But what was most impressive is that we were institutionalized from a
>> side we did not expect: the audience. The audience was expecting us to
>> serve them. To work failless. To educate people exhibiting "good
>> movies". To take art to less-favoured population. To "democratize
>> culture". To be an NGO. To be populistic. To remain static and
>> predictable.
>>
>> And our goal was to go beyond this. Using our cheap structure, we
>> could go were the cinematographic institution couldn't. We were free
>> to explore new cinemas, new ways of screening movies, new genres.
>>
>> Is it possible to use the structures of diffusion and exhibition as
>> creative or critical interfaces? Isn't exerting authority also a way
>> of creating meaning and value?
>>
>> But that are another points altogether. I'll come back to them in
>> another post. ^^
>>
>> * * *
>>
>> Gabriel Menotti takes part of the Cine Falcatrua group/ project since
>> the beginning. Cine Falcatrua ("scam" or "hoax") is a pirate film
>> society that has gone wild and invaded other cultural domains: new
>> media, videogame, open source software, contemporary art, etc.
>>
>> His activities within Cine Falcatrua led him to his MA research, on
>> spatial dynamics for audiovisual consumption (namely, the historical
>> construction of the movie theater architecture and the effects of
>> digitization in movie distribution and screenings).
>>
>> At the present time, he is enrolled in PhD courses both in the
>> Catholic University of São Paulo and in Goldsmiths College (University
>> of London), being a fellow of Goldsmiths' "Spaces, Connections,
>> Control" research programme.
>>
>> His present academic interests include the relations between curating
>> and coding, as well as (cinematographic) circuits as "expanded
>> apparatuses".
>>
>> In the spare time, he does some old-school 2D animation.
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>