The Image Event Event 1: Uprising & Citizen Journalism

Speakers and contributors: Eliot Higgins, Peter Snowdon, Joanna Callaghan.

Schedule:
6pm: Joanna Callaghan - News Making Processes screening, 15 minutes + responses
6.45pm: Eliot Higgins
7.45pm: Break
8.15pm: The Uprising - film screening by Peter Snowdon
9.30pm: End.

The first Image Event, entitled Uprising and Citizen Journalism, examines different approaches to producing public stories, as forms initiated by media responses to geopolitical events, the interventions of citizen journalism, and artistic interpretations.

Joanna Callaghan will screen News Making Processes, a film from 2007 that analyses UK terrestrial television from 7th July to 29th July 2005 in the aftermath of the London bombings and gives insight in her investigative work as an artist, filmmaker and media theorist. The film addresses sensationalisation as an essential component in news making, the role of 21st century ‘Citizen Reporter’ and the relation between art and activism.

Eliot Higgins will give insights into his practice as a citizen journalist under the name of Brown Moses and Bellingcat. Amidst a growing distrust in so called 'regular media', Higgins has surfaced as one of the key figures in global citizen journalism where ordinary citizens take on analyses of (war)crimes and atrocities, without necessarily being physically close to the site. Acting mostly from their living rooms, citizen journalists use freely available information to create an open source investigative platform to authenticate how and where events might have taken place. In what ways might citizen journalism be a threat to 'professional' journalism? Can artists learn from these methods and techniques?' For more, see www.bellingcat.com

The Uprising by filmmaker and artist Peter Snowdon shows us the Arab revolutions from the inside. It is a multi-camera, first-person account of that fragile, irreplaceable moment when life ceases to be a prison, and everything becomes possible again. This feature-length documentary is composed entirely of videos made by citizens and long-term residents of Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Libya, Syria and Yemen. The film uses this footage, not to recount the actual chronology of events or analyse their causes, but to create an imaginary pan-Arab uprising that exists (for the moment) only on the screen. Visit http://theuprising.be.

A workshop which corresponds to this event will run on Saturday 20 June from 11am until 2pm. See here for more.