In 2013, IAWP Founding Director Mark Amerika was appointed the Labex-H2H International Research Chair at the University of Paris 8. Now he has been invited back to screen the Paris premiere of his classic work of early mobile phone video art, Immobilité, as part of the Forms of (the) Apocalypse conference in Paris.
Released in 2009, Mark Amerika's Immobilité appropriates the stylistic tendencies of what is generally referred to as a "feature-length foreign film." The artwork features the creative use of subtitles that double as a literary text depicting a future world where the dream of living in utopia can only be sustained by a nomadic tribe of artists and intellectuals living on the edge of apocalypse.
"Immobilité mashes up the language of auteur-driven 'foreign films' with a more amateur video vernacular we now associate with social media platforms like YouTube and Vine," explains Amerkia. By experimenting with a low-tech glitch aesthetic associated with pre-HD mobile phone video recording technology as well as more sophisticated forms of motion picture narrative found in European art-house movies, Amerika both asks and answers the question "What is the future of cinema?"
Shot entirely on a Nokia N95 mobile phone in 2007 (before the release of the iPhone), Immobilité was filmed on location in the Cornwall region of England and received support from the University of Falmouth iRES research group, Tate Media and the University of Colorado Innovative Seed Grant. Immobilité has been exhibited in many international museums, galleries and festivals.
For more on the Paris event, visit http://www.univ-paris8.fr/Projection-du-film-Immobilite (French language website).