pirate cinema this sunday: consequences will never be the same

[pirate cinema berlin]

Ten years ago, it was still a commonly-held belief that while television 
produces separation, the internet produces community. It was a classical tale 
of technological progress: a one-directional medium, useful only to transmit 
orders, was being replaced by a person-to-person network that could be used to 
actually communicate. Obviously, the media industries tried hard to sabotage 
it, and the commonly-cited worst case scenario was a repeat of the history of 
radio: peer-to-peer technology reappropriated as broadcast infrastructure.

Ten years ago, Google bought YouTube, and since then we have learned what it 
means to turn the internet into television (incrementally, of course, but by 
now, they're pretty much done with it). The most important lesson is that in 
order to produce separation, there is no longer a need to turn the masses into 
passive consumers of propaganda: to capture and commodify their personal 
communication works even better. The sad figure of the couch potato has been 
dislodged by an even sadder one: an office chair potato, in short: a YouTuber.

Of course, internet television is still television, and most of what YouTubers 
do is just a waste of time: the "content" they produce is meaningless, useless 
and entirely harmless, and no-one is watching it anyway. From time to time 
though, we can witness a perfect storm, when deep personal isolation meets a 
strong penchant for exhibitionism in front of an unusually large audience.
These are unique moments of transcendence, images that make visible what it 
looks like when we turn internet into television. And it's not a pretty sight.

Our program is going to be rather short, since most of us have a relatively low 
upper bound of tolerance for this type of material (even though none of it 
contains any nudity, violence, gore or nazis - these are just bored teenagers, 
and like previous generations, they're the most radical outsiders our societies 
have ever seen). At the same time, our screening shouldn't be mistaken for a 
cringe fest or a fail compilation: this is footage that rises way above cringe, 
and the failures it exhibits are not individual, but obviously systemic.

Anyone who still has any hope in the internet as a medium of enlightenment 
should watch this kind of stuff at least every now and then, since rather than 
just a peek into a deep corner of the internet, it provides a look at the dark 
core of enlightenment itself. If the culture industry used to make consumers 
imitate commodities (see Horkheimer/Adorno), then social media turns this act 
of imitation into a commodity of its own. Separation is no longer a product of 
this process, but its raw material: it is not perfected until it is shared. 

And to reiterate our warning: Under the right wrong conditions, the results can 
look very weird, often not in a good way, and sometimes even a bit disturbing.

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                                                            pirate cinema berlin
                                                                u kottbusser tor
                                                      sunday, september 25, 9 pm

                                                                  12 seats, rsvp
                                                          first come first serve
                                                       location in separate mail

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pirate cinema berlin
www.piratecinema.org