<videovortex> Hito Steyerl about Youtube Oratorship

[vera tollmann]

Hello,

tonight the filmmaker and writer Hito Steyerl gave an entertaining talk
about online video and lecturing as performance at
unitednationsplaza.org in Berlin. I try to sum it up for you:
Steyerls approach was to look at the genre conference/lecture videos to
find an answer to the question: How to make theory more public?
In her understanding, on Youtube contemporary social conflicts are acted
out, fo example the copyright debate. She said that Youtube is a "legal
space for illegal activities" (looking at the recent viacom action, this
seems to change a lot now) and that Youtube is "administrating
invisibility".
With a video of a talk by Agamben at the Swiss elite summer school
http://www.egs.edu/main/videolectures.html
Steyerl stated that most of the videos are simply not possible to watch,
because the quality is so poor (V2V would proof the opposite!), as the
quantity really is and that the visuals are simply too boring, that the
form totally contradicts the content.
The next source was a series of fashion photography by Steve Meisel
called "State of emergency" (shown from the livejournal.com website), in
which models were shot in exceptional situations, even imitating Abu
Ghraib pictures. The reason she showed these photos was to say that
these images, even if they seem new at first sight, "reproduce the state
of the status quo".
With the next video she was looking at the ritual of introduction - "the
part where the institution reaffirms itself" - before a lecturer
actually starts the presentation and in particular how the lecturers
react to these introductions. To illustrate her thoughts, she showed a
very funny example:
http://www.humanities.uci.edu/humanitech/multimedia/BadiouBalibar1.mov
and a very pointed psychoanalytical reaction by Slavoj Zizek: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh_KO4tSMeU&mode=related&search=
The next example of a theory-video is by Slavoj Zizek, too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=socYMgxJhwk
This is what Steyerl called "theory without theory".
As an alternative, more performative example of a theory-video, she said
that she likes this one of Derrida a lot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8WeojkDv48
because one cannot figure out what he is actually talking about because
the clip is way to short - all questions stay unanswered, open. Steyerl
continued, that usually all conference videos try to answer all
questions. 
In a TV interview, Derrida is so self reflexive that he is even able to
find a strategy for integrating an incoming phone call into his text:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK-o5KEqmAM
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1921276117304287501&q=white+hou
se+correspondants&hl=en
That there is something like rethorical dictatorship shows the video
above.
Finally Hito Steyerl said that there might be a general problem with
conference, that these conferences might promise to much and that we
should reconsider these promises.

Cheers,
Vera