Event
In the Liquid
The shift from visualising the totality of the social through montage to an exploration of the totality of capital in the digital, has had immense repercussions on contemporary cinematic language. From derivatives, to meta-data and Algorithms, the human eye can no longer report on power's operations. Metonymy and demonstration are but two of many strategies employed in these post-representational times. By looking into the ways we envisage capital, this talk will look at an unlikely precursor to our current predicament - post-revolutionary Soviet cinema. Starting with the Five Year Plan, the Soviets have experimented with post-Fordist forms of production and management. This lead to a leap in the ways meaning in organized, one that would seem uncannily familiar to us today. In this talk we will look at specific mise-en-scene employed in The New Moscow (Aleksandr Medvedkin, 1938), and The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013). From Shockwork to social media, from manic propaganda to exhaustion, and from police state to surveillance capitalism, looking at psychotic finance in light of the purges might give us a better clue as to where we are today.
Joshua Simon is the founding editor of Western (Maarvon) - New Film Magazine, based in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. In recent issues the magazine has been focusing more and more on the shift from montage to the digital. It has dedicated special issues to filmmakers such as Jean Luc Godard, Alexander Kluge, Hito Steyerl, and Harun Farocki among others. Simon is a curator and author currently living in Philadelphia. Former director and chief curator of MoBY-Museums of Bat Yam (2012- 2017). Among his authored books is Neomaterialism (Sternberg Press, 2013). Recent edited volumes include Communists Anonymous (with Ingo Niermann, Sternberg Press, 2017), and Being Together Precedes Being: A Textbook for The Kids Want Communism (Archive Books, 2019). Recent curatorial projects include: The Kids Want Communism (MoBY-Museums of Bat Yam and Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien, Berlin, 2016-2017), Second Nature (International Photography Festival, Tel Aviv 2017), and In The Liquid (PrintScreen Media Art Festival, Holon, 2018). His short films were shown on ZDF/Arte, in The Anthology Film Archives NYC, and in film festivals such as Oberhausen, Berlinale, Mar Del Plata, INVIDEO, and FIDMarseille. Simon holds a PhD from the Visual Cultures department, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK.