Introduction - Accelerated Living “Time. Time. What is time? Swiss manufacture it. French hoard it. Italians squander it. Americans say it is money. Hindus say it does not exist. Do you know what I say? I say time is a crook.” - O'Hara (Peter Lorre) in ‘Beat the Devil’ One century ago Filippo Marinetti published his controversial “Futurist Manifesto”, in which he described the enthusiasm brought about by the arrival of industrial modern times, driven by a total belief in speed and progress. In his recent “upgrade” of the Manifest, media philosopher Franco Berardi rejects unilateral interpretations of modern speed culture, making a plea for more refection and autonomy. “The omnipresent and eternal speed”, he writes, “is already behind us, in the Internet, so we can forget its syncopated rhymes and fnd our own singular rhythm”. Our society is still driven by an insatiable hunger for speed, but during the past decades, the spread of globalisation and the revolution of information and communication technologies have unmistakably led to a new temporal dynamics, emphasizing the increasing importance of connectivity and fexibility. The tyranny of clock time has given way to a complex web of diverging rhythms, cycles and tempos, which stimulate the temporal imagination as never before. Under the title “Accelerated Living”, the Impakt Festival 2009 focuses on changing notions of time and speed today. During a period of five days, a number of artists, filmmakers, musicians and thinkers will share their views on the construction and intensifcation of time, and its infuence on our perception of reality, and by extension thereof, of ourselves. The resulting search for a new engagement with time will be explored in a range of screenings, talks, performances and an exhibition. FESTIVAL CURATORS: Stoffel Debuysere (Belgium, 1975) is active in the feld of media culture and arts, as researcher, producer and writer. He's interested in the relationships between media and memory, analog and digital, sound and image, seeing and being. Over the years he has (co-)organised numerous conferences, lectures, performances and film programs. He is one of the members of the Courtisane Collective and teaches 'Critical Film Studies' at the art academies KASK and Sint-Lucas in Ghent. María Palacios Cruz (Spain, 1981) is an independent curator of artists' film and video. She teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels and is a PhD candidate at Université Libre de Bruxelles, where her research concerns the relationship between flm theory and avant-garde film. She's also the production coordinator of Atelier Graphoui, a filmmakers' collective specialized in animation and documentary film. As a member of the Courtisane collective, she regularly organizes screenings and events in Belgium and abroad. |
|
