ITHACA, NY—Ithaca College’s Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) 2008 seeks entries for “ubuntu.kuqala,” the curated online digital media exhibition that will be displayed and archived on FLEFF’s web site. FLEFF 2008 will run from March 31 to April 6, 2008.

 

Radically reconfigured for the 21st century, FLEFF is a multimedia festival that aims to examine all forms of the environment and sustainability in the context of global politics, economics and aesthetics. The online digital exhibition takes its name from the Xhosa word “ubuntu,” which refers to interconnectedness and interdependence, and “kuqala,” which means first. Under this name, the digital exhibition would explore the ways the environment affects us collectively, suggesting that online digital media can affect awareness and positive change.

 

“We are looking for submissions of online digital/new media art and video that explore issues related to the four program streams of this year’s festival,” said Sharon Lin Tay, co-curator of “ubuntu.kuqala”.

 

Those streams are:

 

·         Camouflage—achieves its objectives by disrupting visual fields and fragmenting their boundaries. Ironically, through its disruptions, camouflage fosters connectivity, integration, and engagement.

 

·         Counterpoint—pushes against the dominant, the assumed, the accepted. A contrapuntal position releases us to see, hear and invent fresh meanings and radical structures.

 

 

·         Games—fuel fun and flow. Through movement and climax, games create imaginary and real places exempt from daily routines.

 

·         Gastronomica—connotes multiple divisions of labor, ravaging famines, hidden histories, complex systems of production, vast regimes of regulation, daunting genetic manipulations, mountains of cookbooks, and billions in advertising.

 

“We are particularly interested in collaborative work, interactive work, multiscreen or multichannel work that prompts critical dialogues on the often repressive aspects of globalization,” said Dale Hudson, the exhibit’s second co-curator. “That includes the rapidly accelerating disparity among populations in terms of wealth, power, and access to basic human rights. Submissions from artists living and working in the global South are of particular interest.”

 

Currently a visiting assistant professor at Amherst College, Dale Hudson’s research and publications focus on cinema and new media in relation to racialization, nationalism, immigration and globalization. He holds a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

 

Sharon Lin Tay is a lecturer in film studies at Middlesex University in London. She has published journal articles and book chapters on feminist film theory, Deleuze, world cinema and women filmmakers. She holds a doctorate in film studies from the University of East Anglia, in Norwich, England

 

Send submissions, with links and a brief bio, to BOTH Dale Hudson (dhudson@amherst.edu) AND Sharon Lin Tay (s.tay@mdx.ac.uk) no later than Nov. 1, 2007. Only work that can be exhibited online can be considered for this exhibit. Works produced in the last two years are preferred. There is no entry fee. Selections will be announced early in 2008. Ithaca College students, faculty and staff are not eligible.

 

For more information on the call for entries, e-mail fleff@ithaca.edu. For a description of last year’s curated exhibit, “Undisclosed Recipients,” visit www.ithaca.edu/fleff/exhibitions.html.