lecture-performance (over Skype)
Terms: great stone, repetition, coincidance, rhythm, contingency, joy acceleration, mother-machine, speculative synthesis
The lecture-performance Chronic Film is based on a procedural film of the same name, a generative algorithm that plays out every possible combination of pixels that can be generated on a screen of a certain resolution. Due to the mathematics of the algorithm, it is visualised as continuous noise. The length depends on resolution; if HD resolution is desirable, the film has to last for billions of years, resulting in a posthumanist film not made for human senses.
The lecture-performance takes the history and mythology of the Greek island of Delos as a starting point, engaging in a parallel thinking of images as real archaeological and as technical artefacts. Through the material processes of decoding and degrading of signals the performance investigates images both as fetishes and as fetish-resistant, offering a critique of the processes of commodification and cultural appropriation. Using the algorithm of Chronic Film, the lecture-performance breaks the consumerist model of spectator-screen relationship, instead entering a symbiotic, meditative, or even hallucinatory state of image-word sensing.
