Date: 21.10.2019 — 17.11.2019

The screening starts at 19:00 on 7 November 2019.

The screening series The Urge to Share presents art videos whose authors work with audiovisual content shared by users of social media, in particular on YouTube. Artists treat user-generated content as a symptomatic material, which they subject to a comparative analysis to reveal established patterns of online behaviour. Even though the vast majority of data generated by internet users is dominated by professional commercial production, we can also find content that – through its documentary attributes – captures the life of different communities. However, the idea of these audiovisual materials recording a truthful statement about their creators is questioned by some of the artists. In their videos, artists point out the structures of exploitative relationships that take place on seemingly democratic platforms. Images created by users can easily be appropriated or misused to produce a stereotypical depiction of a certain community. The analysis of user-generated content does not necessarily take the form of distanced voyeurism, but can also serve as a tool of radical empathy. Sharing personal experiences in such ways contributes to the activation and mobilisation of compassion and solidarity.

Tomáš Kajánek

Screened videos:

Daniil Revkovskiy & Andrey Rachinskiy – Labor Safety in Dnipropetrovsk Region – 2018 – 2018 – 22:13 min

Neozoon – Call of the Wild – 2016 – 3:48 min

Neozoon – Big Game – 2013 – 7:20 min

Neozoon – MY BBY 8L3W – 2014 – 3:02 min

Aria Dean  – Eulogy for a Black Mass – 2019 – 5:54 min

Penny Lane – The Pain of Others – 2018 – 71 min