A brutal look at the atrocities commited by Sierra Leona rebels and the complicity of the international diamomd cartels, cut to the haunting music of Peter Gabriel.

A sound-bite blitzkrieg challenging the messages we have been from our mainstream media and the government it serves.

A secret love story between two world leaders.

Observatory Archives 2003

/ CONTEXT 1994 - 2020

Observatory Archives 2003

The screenings for this edition will be based on a selection from the 150 audiovisual documents that have been added to the Observatory Archives over the last 18 months.

Together, this material reflects some of the most serious issues of our time, using different media and languages such as video art, independent documentary, media archaeology....to reflect the process of Globalisation and the Resistance it generates, and conflicts such as Palestine, Argentina, September 11th, etc.

The difference is that these issues, which we are used to seeing in the news headlines, loose here their relationship to news because they are taken out of this context and approached through different formal means and points of view, in a constant exchange between the micro to the macro; from microworlds and subjective experience to collective and social visions.

The program of screenings in this edition is based on a dialogue between two interconnected archives; on one hand, the works created by individuals or collectives that form the nucleus of the Observatory Archives, and on the other, the contemporary media archaeology material that makes up the Babylon Archives 1999-2003.

Autonomedia Ed. NYC. [www.autonomedia.org]

New York-based Autonomedia is one of the most lucid publishers of books on radical media, politics and the arts. They have published more than 300 titles that have influenced and given voice to a generation of authors, thinkers and social collectives, and established a dialogue between seemingly unconnected critical voices. www.autonomedia.org Their publications include: Temporary Autonomous Zones , by Hakim Bey; Digital Resistance and Electronic Civil Disobedience, by Critical Art Ensemble; Hacktivism , by the Electronic Disturbance Theatre; Pirate Utopias and European Renegades, by Peter Lamborn Wilson.

Lectures: Jim Fleming, Lewanne Jones, Eric Goldhagen.

Negativland [www.negativland.com]

Negativland Through their musical and media experiments since the early eighties, Negativland have been exploring the limits between intellectual property and market tyranny, fair and illegitimate use of information, and especially the right to deconstruct and reinterpret fragments of the media we are all constantly bombarded with.

Steve Reinke [www.myrectumisnotagrave.com]

Steve Reinke In the late 90s, Canadian artist Steve Reinke embarked on a project that consisted of making 100 separate videos. The result is a portrait of places, confessions and characters, media monsters and also ruins, forming a complex map of distant lands that are just around the corner. The Hundred Videos is a kind of web in which everything is mixed together, from the personal to mass media usurpation. In OVNI 2003 Steve Reinke will present and talk about the 100 Videos and his subsequent projects.

Lecture: Steve Reinke

A contemporary media archaeology project that collects and compiles material from the dark side of our civilization. Promotionals from corporative, militar, pharma and digital industries. Many of these audiovisual documents were not produced to last, but rather to fulfill specific functions at a particular time: training, publicity, etc...this is why, when they are taken out of the context of their time or intended use, their meaning is revealed with surprising clarity even to those used to the constant publicity aimed at consumers. The result is a disturbing catalogue of intentions, aims and the means used to achieve them.

Documents from the dark side of the empire. Government and corporate promotional material from military, pharmaceutical, digital and other mega industries...promoting them and their unspoken interests.

Many of these materials were not intended to last, but were produced with very specific purposes in mind: educational, promotional, propaganda, etc. As such, when they are taken our of their temporal or corporate contexts, they take on a transparency of meaning that is astounding, even to those who are used to consumer advertising. The result is a disturbing compendium of intentions, objectives, and the means to achieve them.

The Babylon Archives are embedded in the program (see program).

There will be a public presentation of the copyleft edition of the DVD Archivos Babilonia - The Dark Side of Empire ( 1999- 2003) .

Thematical screenings

Hall and Auditorium.Simultaneous Screenings

Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona

Montalegre 5. 08001 Barcelona

Image: Apolinario Mabini . Autonomedia's Jubilee Saints Calendar

Autonomedia Ed. NYC. https://www.autonomedia.org/

The night crossing of a Mediterranean city by car. Its passenger stay there almost invisible, absorbed by the urban view. A voice confirms a lonely night wandering in a city by the sea, an urban journey made to let the time pass away. Who crosses this city isn't only passing through it. He's a local, for a night, before an exile without return.

Hay mish Eishi, features portraits of 8 Palestinian women from different social and religious backgrounds exploring how they live war and imagine peace in the profound depth of lived realities and felt pains. These are not unusual women, women leaders or exceptional women in the news media sense. They are media and theatre professionals, farming women, a cleaning woman, a boutique owner, a university student, a high school teenage girl, and housewives. These are the ordinary lives which make up the news and which the news makes invisible. They speak with passion, bewilderment, anger, rage and outrage?.they situate themselves in a life of dignity and productivity, where their lives and actions are not reduced to a bundle of fear.They speak of profound losses - of self and direction, livelihood, land, homes and family members. What they say so powerfully and directly through their hopes and wishes is that they want a life of meaning, of sharing, of giving, of routines and rituals, of loving and caring, of ordinariness with all its blessings and grace.They do not want the degrading, terrorizing drama of war