AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

CALL FOR WORKS Video Slink Uganda

Seeking 3 minute videos or shorter by African-Diaspora artists for

Video Slink Uganda, a 2012-2013 apexart Franchise project

apexart Franchise Exhibition in Uganda: Feb 6th - March 6th, 2013

Artistic Directors: Paul Falzone and Marisa Jahn (REV-)

Project Description

Ugandan video halls (or "bibanda") are often no more than small huts where viewers pay a few cents to watch pirated DVDs on television screens. Located in the majority of villages and towns throughout Uganda, they are the only form of popular visual entertainment and have a wider audience than television and newspapers combined. Numbering in the thousands, these bibanda reach millions of Ugandans each month. So-called 'fine art' never broached their corrugated walls. Until now.

'Video Slink Uganda' is a curatorial project that involves burning five short-form experimental videos by contemporary African diaspora video artists onto pirated DVDs that will be viewed by millions of viewers in individual homes and bibanda.

A "VJ" is a local performer/pirate who translates Western films into the primary local language of Luganda, acting as both translator and commentator-making jokes, providing context, and acting as a central node of distribution to the bibanda. In keeping with this tradition of viewership, we will involve several VJs in translating these works of contemporary art for Ugandan audiences.

'Video Slink Uganda's gesture of detournement recalls contemporary works such as Chris Burden's on-camera hijacking of a television news anchor, Negativeland's re-mix of a U2 album shopdropped into music stores in the late 1980s, The Yes Men's subversive self-insertion into the mainstream media, embedded art practices by artists such as Artist Placement Group in the late 1960s, electoral guerrilla politics such as Mr. Peanut, the life-sized tap dancing peanut who won 7% of the vote in his mayoral run in Vancouver, and countless undocumented interventionist projects. 'Video Slink Uganda' similarly reaches out towards new audiences in Africa and frames their viewership not as passive and silent but as active participants in the performative production of 'art.' By embedding experimental film into Uganda's existing black market cinema and culture of re-translation, 'Video Slink Uganda' raises larger questions about origination, authorship, translation, and the complexity of colonialism.

'Video Slink Uganda' draws upon the artistic directors' experience as organizers of media screenings in Ugandan bibanda with existing relations to local audiences and VJs. The project will be documented with specific focus on the audience's reception of the works and the VJs' involvement. 'Video Slink Uganda' also draws upon the artistic directors' decade of curatorial experiences curating, producing, and writing about experimental forms of curation-shopdropping, embedded art practices, and media hijacks. Through a series of cinematographic and installational translations, 'Video Slink Uganda' operates on a syncretic economy whose currency is the slippage that occurs between and through transposition.

Submission Deadline and Instructions

• Submissions due Sept 15, 2012 (early submissions greatly appreciated)

• Videos should be no longer than 3 minutes.

• Either (a) Email your video (attachment should be no more than 10 Mbs) OR (b) Upload your video to YouTube/Vimeo/etc. Then email the link to hello at rev-it.org along with the following attachments: curriculum vitae/resume (2 pages max) and statement about the work (1 page max).

• Email the link to your video to hello@rev-it.org along with the following attachments: curriculum vitae/resume (2 pages max) and statement about the work (1 page max).

• Be sure to include contact info (name, email, phone number) on the top of each page

• Please include the words "Submission: Video Slink Uganda" in the subject line of the email.

• Due to limited funds we are unfortunately only able to offer the artists a modest stipend of $100 for their video contribution. Stipends for future exhibition opportunities will be determined at a future point in time when venues are secured. We believe in compensating artists and will seek to provide stipends through future exhibition opportunities.

• You will be notified in early October about the status of your proposal

Contact: Marisa Jahn: 917-902-5396 * hello [at] rev-it.org

About the Organizers

Marisa Jahn is an artist/writer/curator/activist and and the co-founder of REV-, a New York City-based non-profit organization that furthers socially-engaged art, design, and pedagogy. She was a 2007-9 artist-in-residence at MIT's Media Lab and the editor of three books about culture and politics-("Pro+agonist: The Art of Opposition" (2012), "Byproduct: on the Excess of Embedded Art Practices" (2011), and "Recipes for an Encounter" (2010).

Paul Falzone is an activist, media scholar, and filmmaker whose work has appeared in a wide variety of conferences, publications and film festivals. He earned his PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and is currently Director of Peripheral Vision International, a nonprofit organization that produces and distributes advocacy media in East Africa.

apexart Franchise

The apexart Franchise is an open call for curatorial proposals for projects from anywhere in the world other than New York City. Three winning projects are selected by a jury each year and are presented by apexart.

REV- is a non-profit organization that furthers socially-engaged art, design, and pedagogy. The organization derives its name from both the colloquial expression "to rev" a vehicle and the prefix "rev-" which means to turn-as in, revolver, revolution, revolt, revere, irreverent, etc.

from Franklin Furnace