San Francisco Art Institute

Gene Youngblood is an internationally known theorist of media arts, politics, and the history of alternative cinemas. His Expanded Cinema (1970), the first book to consider video as an art form, was seminal in establishing media arts as a recognized artistic and scholarly discipline. He will be giving a two-part lecture, Secession from the Broadcast, presented by SFAI and the San Francisco Cinematheque.

Program 1: Apocalypse and Utopia

Wednesday, February 1, 7:30 pm

San Francisco Art Institute

There exists in America today an alternative media environment that surpasses the wildest utopian dreams of twentieth-century media activism. It presents the possibility of the communication revolution that is essential if we are to create on the same scale as we can destroy. It enables the ultimate act of civil disobedience: leaving the culture without leaving the country. It holds the possibility of radical resocialization on an international scale and is a mortal threat to social control as we know it. This lecture is about what is at stake in the epic struggle for control of the Internet, and what we must do to release its revolutionary potential.

Program 2: The Challenge To Create On the Same Scale As We Can Destroy

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Presented by San Francisco Cinematheque

[members: $6 / non-members: $10]

This lecture explores in greater detail some key questions raised in program 1. What is the revolutionary potential of the Internet? How can we use it to cultivate radical will at scale? Why is social control in crisis, and what is state power going to do about it? What does it mean to leave the culture without leaving the country? What does it mean that culture is a technology of the self? What is counterculture, and how can it support a daily practice of conscious counter-socialization? What does it mean to create on the same scale as we can destroy, and what is the role of the arts in meeting that challenge?