Altered States, Coastal Currents 2015

story © Michael Betancourt | published July 20, 2015 | permalink |  |  

Altered Statesis an immersive multi-screen show of the latest experimental film and video work curated by the Hastings-based filmmakers Toby Tatum and Mark French. Altered States features moving image by over seventy of the most fascinating international moving image practitioners working today, much of it unseen in the UK.

This exhibition includes the fruits of a worldwide search for works that articulate film's power to initiate heightened states of consciousness, transporting us across the threshold into a mind-expanding visionary state. The programme features a selection of cutting edge films that imaginatively reshape the base materials of the everyday world into something rich and strange..

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story © Michael Betancourt | published June 13, 2015 | permalink |  |  

Unseen Zinema 3 llega a su fin y qué mejor manera de celebrarlo que con una fiesta por todo lo alto. El año que viene volveremos, pero antes queremos divertirnos como nos merecemos, con cine y música.

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story © Michael Betancourt | published June 11, 2015 | permalink |  |  

Here is a scan of some notes on Glitch [pdf] from 2009 that might be of interest.

story © Michael Betancourt | published April 14, 2015 | permalink |  |  

“Cultural authority” seems a nebulous concept. At the same time it is easily understood—we recognize it immediately when reading the program for any festival, screening, exhibition—even though the force it exerts remains hidden within the curatorial choices on display—as the specific form these choices present.

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story © Michael Betancourt | published April 12, 2015 | permalink |  |  

This article is a revision of my article from Vague Terrain published several years ago.

The technical capabilities of computer technology obscure the nexus of capital, human agency, social reproduction, and physical production; thus, the denial of physicality that is specific to the aura of the digital, and apparent in the evolution from hand-labor to the automation characteristic of ‘digital capitalism,’ is inherent in how this technology has been deployed. The nineteenth century “protestant work ethic” is the conceptual starting point for this development, merging the ‘ideology of autonomous achievement’ with digital technology to create a new ‘ideology of automation.’

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