README.first

README is a collection of mini-essays that will be published leading up to the festival. We’ve asked writers, researchers, theorists, artists, programmers, and others to pick an online video that functions as a stepping stone for their thought and practice and to comment shortly on why they find the video so significant, funny, or outright disturbing. The resulting reflections speak about Silicon Valley obsessions, our mediated social lives, the impact of technology on centuries old games, and more. 

Plokta showcases film as a frame of socio-technological themes and discussions. With these essays we want to broaden the scope to one of the most significant developments in visual culture of the past decades: the rise of online video. At the Institute of Network Cultures, online video has been a research topic already since 2007, in a continuous project named Video Vortex. Together, Plokta and INC, hope to stimulate reflections before, during and after the festival on what the moving image has to say to us.

The essays will be published in the weeks leading up to the festival, and will be collected afterwards in a downloadable publication, including Dutch translations. We hope you enjoy coming back to find more of these texts and videos, as they whisper softly… readme.

Miriam Rasch, Institute of Network Cultures
Jurian Strik, Plokta