Mark Amerika Interview 2007 - 2008
Immobilité
Mark Amerika remixes personal narrative, philosophical inquiry, spontaneous theories, and cyberpunk fictions that investigate the emergence of digitally constructed identities, fictional personas, narrative mythologies, and collaborative networks.
In this interview, Amerika discusses his mobile film project Immobilité and its relationship to previous work,whilst proposing the notion of aYouTube aesthetic and laying out the context for Net Art 2.0
The story of Immobilité revolves around three pirate personas. Existing, as if in another time, looking back. The work critically reflects on the fluidity of emerging identities in digital culture from both philosophical and literary (fictional) perspectives. Amerika mixes landscape, portraiture, mobile videography, poetic intertitles and subtitles, along with an original 75 minute soundtrack, to create a provocative story about a dreamworld within our own world.
Immobilité is the first artwork in Amerika’s Foreign Film Series. Amerika refers to the work as ‘a feature-length foreign film shot entirely on mobile phone.’ Shot in Conrwall in the UK, the work includes an original soundtrack by sound artist Chad Mossholder and introduces Camille Lacadee and Magda Tyzlik-Carver, whose characters go by the name of ‘Etc.’ and ‘…’
Download mobile film: Immobilité (.mov, 51 MB)Excerpt from Immobilité © Mark America 2007 - 2008
Immobilité was produced in collaboration with the University College Falmouth, where Amerika was a visiting artist in residence at iRES in the summer of 2007.
Also read / view
Video as Social AgentArchaeologist, Michael Shanks, discusses public space and the world wide web as theatres of encounter
Curing the VampireLynn Hershman Leeson and Tilda Swinton interview Gilberto Gil, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, Larry Lessig and Elena Panetowska on revolution, empowerment and technology
NoplaceMarek Walczak and Martin Wattenberg present Noplace, enabling visitors to construct their own vision of Utopia by drawing image and audio data from the internet and compiling it into a movie
Further References
Mark Amerika's websiteGrammatronA story about cyberspace, Cabala mysticism, digicash paracurrencies and the evolution of virtual sex in a society afraid to go outside and get in touch with its own nature.
FilmtextFilmtext is a hybridized online/offline digital narrative created as a net art site, a museum installation, an mp3 concept album, an artist ebook, and a series of live performances.
PHON:E:MEA Net Art - audio narrative work commissioned by the Walker Art Center's Gallery 9.