The Observatory Archives are intentional in nature and organized around specific themes, bringing together material that supports a critique of contemporary culture through different approaches such as video art, independent documentary and mass media archeology.
Although the archives include many different kinds of works, they all share a commitment to free expression, and reflect upon our individual and collective fears and pleasures. Together, they create a multifaceted vision, thousands of small eyes probing and exploring our world and proclaiming other possible worlds. A discourse that values heterogeneity, plurality, contradiction and subjectivity; an antidote to the cloning and repetition of corporate mass media. In the 16 years of OVNI's existence, the Observatory Archives have grown to include more than 2000 projects.
The call for works is open to all themes within the areas of independent documentary, video art and media archaeology.
The Observatory Archives thematic areas include:
- Identity and Mass Media.
- Inner Experience and other mystic visions.
- Death - Culture and experience. Rituals.
- Trance rituals - Religion - edited videos, camera tapes or found footage documenting trance rituals (dikr, haddras, Santeria, voodoo , media preachers...).
- Globalization and Resistance: Argentina, Palestine, South Africa, Iraq, Chechnya, the Antiglobalization movement, and the Landless People's movement.
-Heterodoxies and Autonomous Zones, different ways of thinking, living, communities....other worlds far from the "there is no alternative" single ideology.
-The Cathode Ray - Media Guerrilla, media critique, intercepted information and counter information, media attack, media deconstruction...
-Lost in Babylon: the adventures and misadventures of survivors of the Empire.
-Colonial Tourism - the phenomenon of tourism (image plundering, hijacked territories, tele-transportation, gift of ubiquity, theme parks....)
-Borders - Migration, cross-cultures, nomadism and globalization. The militarisation of borders. -Illegal in paradise. Europe-Maghreb, USA-Latin America.
-Work and ideology - Work and capital, politics and reality, imagery of progress, the taboo of representing workplaces.
-Babylon Archives - media archeology:educational and business documentaries, , marketing, tourism promotional videos, castings...
-Islam - View of the Other - other images, other information about a culture that has been almost exclusively represented through western eyes.
-Indigenous Rhizomes: indigenous culture, communities, specificities, conflicts. Alien representations through colonial anthropology, ethnography ...
-Cities - Portraits of cities - scenes from daily life, home, the workplace, memories...
-Machine Land - Deconstruction of technology, machine conspiracy, digital euphoria, corporate vandalism: genetics, pharmaceutic and transgenic industry
-Dream Archives - Stories of dreams, the imaginary of an age, desires, conflicts, madness, pleasures...etc.
-Michel Foucault, Guy Debord, Eduard Said, Hakim Bey, George Bataille, William Burroughs, Gilles Deleuze - Works directly or indirectly related to the work of these authors.
OVNI regularly adds projects to the archive under the following conditions:
_Pay 200/300 eu. to include a copy of the project in the Archives, and
make it available for archival consulting. The fee includes two public presentations.
_Pay 100eu per screening for any subsequent screening in the context of a OVNI program.
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Our CALL FOR ENTRIES is PERMANENTLY OPEN. You can let us know your proposals any time.
Please upload your preview materials and info to the internet and mail us the download address:
convocatoria(at)desorg.org
Please note that:
Notifications won't be sent to acknowledge works have been received.
Previews material won't be returned.
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Arxius OVNI
Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona
Montalegre, 5
08001 Barcelona
Spain
Ph. (34) 93 306 41 00