ACMI Gallery 5 commission ‘We Are As Gods’

ACMI Gallery 5 – We Are As Gods
We Are as Gods explores the informal, spontaneous commentary that accompanies cooperative videogame streaming. Through a series of portraits of gamers in the act of live streaming, we hear dialogue that is simultaneously directed at the players themselves, at a remote audience, at a rival player of the game and at anonymous third parties. Using longform recording, stream of consciousness rants and animation, We Are As Gods seeks to find the human in the network, the flesh in the data packet.

Work commissioned through Gallery 5 will enter the ACMI collection.

Many thanks to Senior Curator Fiona Trigg for her focus and patience and Jini Maxwell, Isabella Hone-Saunders at Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Visual FX don Henry Lai-Pyne for being the best in the game, Web maestro Simon Lofler for the clickable NPC streaming interactivity, Flood Slicer for the green screen studio and all Mountain Dew drinkers out there preparing to raid.

Showing now online at ACMI; https://www.acmi.net.au/whats-on/emile-zile-we-are-as-gods/

Millionaire Hotseat

In the early 00’s I made a video about my experience of appearing on The Price is Right television game show. You can watch it on Vimeo; Larry Emdur’s Suit.

Today at 5pm AEDT [November 1 2023] I’m appearing on Channel 9’s Millionaire Hotseat with Eddie McGuire. My lifelong meta-artwork to be on every TV gameshow continues.

Adelaide Film Festival, EXPAND Lab 2023

https://adelaidefilmfestival.org/expand-2023-participants/

Adelaide Film Festival (AFF) announced today the 30 participants selected to take part in AFF EXPAND Lab 2023. This intensive five-day Lab brings together some of Australia’s most creative and inventive artists, filmmakers and XR and VR practitioners in a development and commissioning process to foster new ideas for moving image artworks.

Following a national call for Expressions of Interest, 95 applications were received for the 30 places in the Lab (15 South Australian and 15 national participants). Participants will form teams during the Lab and develop concepts to pitch for the AFF/Samstag $100,000 Moving Image Commission. In addition, two projects will be selected for mentoring by Illuminate Adelaide and the Art Gallery of South Australia.

The mentors for 2023 AFF EXPAND Lab are time-bending digital artist DANIEL CROOKS, theatre maker & media artist ROBERT WALTON, highly respected moving image & film producer BRIDGET IKIN with video artist and filmmaker AMOS GEBHARDT joining as a mentor for the first part of the lab.

AFF EXPAND Lab is an initiative of Adelaide Film Festival with Samstag Museum of Art, Art Gallery of South Australia and Illuminate Adelaide. It is supported by Principal Partner The Balnaves Foundation and Arts South Australia.

Tully Arnot (NSW) – Visual Artist, Media Artist, XR/VR Creator

Max Brading (SA) – Visual Artist, Media Artist, XR/VR Creator

Jake Bresanello (SA) – Visual Artist, Media Artist, Filmmaker

Thom Buchanan (SA) – Visual Artist

Linda Chen (ACT) – Writer, Performer

Marcus Chong (VIC) – Visual Artist, Filmmaker

Chloe de Brito (NSW) – Visual Artist, Filmmaker

Miles Dunne (SA) – Visual Artist, Media Artist

Nisa East (NSW) – Filmmaker, Cinematographer

Deborah Kelly (NSW) – Visual Artist

Isobel Knowles (VIC) – Visual Artist, Media Artist, Filmmaker, XR/VR Creator

Bryce Kraehenbuehl (SA) – Visual Artist, Filmmaker, Videographer

Anna Lindner (SA) – Visual Artist, Filmmaker, Writer

Liang Xia Luscombe (VIC) – Visual Artist, Media Artist, Filmmaker

Chris Luscri (VIC) – Filmmaker

Charlotte Mars (NSW) – Filmmaker

Orlando Mee (SA) – Visual Artist, Media Artist, XR/VR Creator, Games Creative

Conor Mercury (SA) – Filmmaker

Kim Munro (SA) – Media Artist, Filmmaker

Yasemin Sabuncu (SA) – Visual Artist, Media Artist, Videographer, Games Creative

Ryan Sahb (SA) – Visual Artist, Media Artist, Filmmaker, Videographer

Cynthia Schwertsik (SA) – Visual Artist, Performance

Liam Somerville (SA) – Media Artist, Filmmaker, XR/VR Creator, Games Creative

Van Sowerwine (VIC) – Visual Artist, Media Artist, Filmmaker, XR/VR Creator

Will Spartalis (SA) – Visual Artist, Media Artist, Filmmaker, Composer

Kate Vinen (NSW) – Filmmaker

Yandell Walton (VIC) – Visual Artist, Media Artist, XR/VR Creator

Raymond Zada (SA) – Visual Artist, Media Artist, XR/VR Creator

Emile Zile (VIC) – Visual Artist, Media Artist, Filmmaker

Test Sites, City of Melbourne 2023

I’m undertaking a Test Sites opportunity in October/November, supported by City of Melbourne. Generous support to test a public art idea and work with concepts of public space, private space, emotional engagement on the street, commercial and non-commercial interaction.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​The Test Sites program helps local artists test and develop their temporary public art ideas by providing practical advice, funding and support to work creatively in public space. The program increases local artists’ capability and confidence to work in the public realm through creative and professional development, support and mentoring, while engaging with the city, its sites and infrastructures as a place for creative expression.

https://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/arts-and-culture/art-outdoors/public-art-melbourne/test-sites/Pages/test-sites.aspx

ACMI Podcast interview

Amber Gibson interviewed me about humour, performance, technology and gesture in her ongoing series that profiles artists working at ACMIX.

https://www.acmi.net.au/whats-on/inside-acmi-x-podcast/episode-10-making-dark-comedy-with-emile-zile/

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/making-dark-comedy-with-emile-zile/id1016322772?i=1000582208788

ACMIOnline · Making dark comedy with Emile Zile

Logical Conclusions/Automation Effects

20 JULY 2022. MISCELLANIA 2/401 SWANSTON ST MELBOURNE VIC.

Curated by Mark Andrejevic, Laura McLean, and Joel Stern, this free experimental program at Miscellania club features artists, musicians, writers and researchers thinking with and against the logic of digital automation, algorithmic culture, and AI in order to trouble and subvert systems that extract, aggregate, model, and predict.

With performances and presentations by Monica Lim, Sean Dockray, Mara MacDonald, Vaughan Wozniek O’Connor, Roslyn Orlando, Emile Zile, Zacharius Szumer, Jathan Sadowski, Tom Smith, Sahej Rahal, Shareeka Helaluddin, Karen Ann Donnachie and Andy Simionato.

Logical Conclusions/Automation Effects is part of the 2022 ADM+S Symposium ‘Automated Societies: What Do We Need To Know?’ showcasing the Centre’s distinctive cross- and multi-disciplinary approach to automated systems and exploring a range of critical current and emerging problems, challenges, and conceptual questions.

Logical Conclusions/Automation Effects is presented by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society and Liquid Architecture.

Print Screen, a new podcast and event for the National Gallery of Victoria

I am producing a series of podcast interviews and a live weekend of events for Melbourne Art Book Fair, Melbourne Design Week commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria. Full event program below, the live event will be streamed via NGV website.
https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/program/event-print-screen-new-publishing-now/

Podcast audio production by Carl Anderson, Graphic Design by Lauren Messina

Melbourne artist Emile Zile hosts a podcast series and live event for Melbourne Art Book Fair and Melbourne Design Week at the NGV.

Looking at the state of alternate publishing and new forms of distribution, PRINT SCREEN will host discussions on the widespread disruption of traditional media channels and the accelerating digitisation of shared cultural consumption. Via podcast and live forum PRINT SCREEN will open up a vital discussion on the new waves of publishing and promotion that are located in simultaneously public and private realms.

What are the possibilities for new forums of cultural dispersion? Is there any escape from software after Covid? Where is the new gatekeeper? Who is making new claims? Is this moment of destabilisation a significant opportunity to reimagine publishing?

Saturday 27 March – Great Hall, NGV International

12-1.15pm
Newsletter DJ (Tiesto) LG Hill
Christopher LG Hill plays his newsletter live and direct, chopping download links and slinging .zip archives. Taking his esoteric and wide-ranging email newsletter as a starting point, Melbourne artist, publisher and musician LG Hill flips the great (dance)hall on its ear for Melbourne Art Book Fair.
Listen to Emile Zile interview Chris at Print Screen podcast.
https://disclaimer.org.au/contents/one-year-of-a-link-based-email-newsletter
https://printscreen.simplecast.com/episodes/christopher-lg-hill

1.30-2.45pm
NFT fireside chat with Joe Hamilton and Nic Hamilton
Digital Artists Joe Hamilton and Nic Hamilton talk about their individual video practices and the newest category of commercial art, the NFT. Join us for a jargon-free primer for those curious about all that is non-fungible.
Followed by audience Q+A
https://foundation.app/joehamilton/hyper-geography-7426
https://www.nichamilton.info/collection

Sunday 28 March – Great Hall, NGV International

12-1.15pm
Digital Self-Publishing with Amelia Winata, Diego Ramirez and Anador Walsh
Art Criticism is migrating online, join leading local writers and editors to discuss digital art criticism, self-publishing and the challenges and limitations of being very online.
With Amelia Winata of MeMO review, Anador Walsh of Performance Review, Diego Ramirez of Running Dog
Followed by audience Q+A
https://memoreview.net/
https://www.performancereview.online/
https://rundog.art/

1.30-2.45pm
Static Bodies, Networked Bodies with Shian Law, Lilian Steiner, Harrison Hall and Sam Mcgilp
During COVID-19 dancers found new ways to move. How did dancers and choreographers publicise and distribute themselves under pandemic conditions? What was learnt in the great pivot to digital, what is to be kept? What is to be left in 2020?
Followed by audience Q+A
With Shian Law, Lilian Steiner. Harrison Hall and Sam Mcgilp
https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/melbournenow/artists/shian-law.html
https://harrisonhall.com.au/
https://www.sammcgilp.com/
http://www.liliansteiner.com/

Connection in Times of Isolation

ARTLANDS CONVERSATION SERIES: REGIONAL ARTS AUSTRALIA

What role do we want technology to play in connecting our art practices to the wider world? What skills are artists working in isolated or remote parts of the world equipped with? Can issues such as digital saturation and digital inequality be overcome in order to create a more sustainable future?

Like many regional artists, Kim Goldsmith and Alana Hunt often create work in relatively isolated parts of Australia. In contrast, Jessica Olivieri and Emile Zile both practice in metropolitan areas, but have been no less impacted by the isolation imposed by lockdowns. What can these artists teach each other about isolation and digital connection, and how might this inform our thinking about where to next as arts practitioners?

Online Conversation on 25 Nov 2020
https://conversationseries.artlands.com.au/program/sessions/connection-in-times-of-isolation

AEST: 03:30pm – 04:30pm
ACST: 03:00pm – 04:00pm
AWST: 12:30pm – 01:30pm

Becoming The Icon – Premiere August 19

Becoming The Icon is a film in which the language of power manifests in familiar yet uncanny ways. Echoing the rhythms of political speech and gesture, artists Lilian Steiner and Emile Zile reveal the ways in which truth and conviction are more than abstract concepts, instead finding surprising roots in our embodied experience.

As debate and propaganda, intimidation and manipulation are all played out through posture, stance and gesture, the secret vocabulary of power is made apparent.

Both intimate and distanced, Becoming The Icon invites you into a seductive realm with a hidden agenda.

Becoming The Icon is the feature project of BLEED between 17 August – 30 August. New works and content will be going live throughout the feature dates.

http://www.bleedonline.net

Audience/Performer/Lens (after Dan Graham) performance at LIMA Amsterdam

https://www.li-ma.nl/lima/news/unfold-audienceperformermirror

On the 15th of January 2020 LIMA invites Keren Cytter, Jan Robert Leegte and Emile Zile to present their version of Dan Graham’s performance and video work Audience/Performer/Mirror. Reinterpretations by Adad Hannah, Ian Forsyth & Jane Pollard, and Judith Hopf will be exhibited as well.The works together show the possibilities of reinterpretation and give an artistic anthology, and criticism, of the work of Graham. Gabriella Giannachi (researcher & professor of Performance and New Media at the University of Exeter), Annet Dekker (curator & researcher, assistant Professor of Media Studies University of Amsterdam) and Willem van Weelden (curator & researcher, tutor media theory Gerrit Rietveld Academie,) will reflect upon reinterpretation as both an artistic as preservation strategy. Moderated by art historian & dramaturgist Suzanne Sanders.

New light on iconic work
LIMA presents a new edition of UNFOLD, focusing on reinterpretation and Dan Graham’s iconic work Audience/Performer/Mirror, 1977, De Appel, Amsterdam. During this performance, Graham describes his own actions and the reaction of the audience. The work is questioning who or what motivates who to act and respond and is a reflection on time and direct feedback. All of this happens largely through language: Graham’s flow of words is unceasing, and betrays his background in stand-up comedy. The gaze of the camera, in addition to that of Graham and the mirror, plays an important role in this. The work is effective and layered in all its simplicity and has become an iconic work. The analogy that Graham uses in the work, both at the level of technology and that of language and physicality, has invited many artists to make a homage or a new version of the work. What does Audience / Performer / Mirror stand for today? How is the work experienced; which part of the work is still relevant, what needs to be ‘updated’? LIMA invites Jan Robert Leegte and Emile Zile to translate the work to contemporary time and its digital techniques. Keren Cytter is invited to present her subtle feminist critique on the work. UNFOLD: Audience/Performer/Mirror offers the opportunity to think about reinterpretation and provides insight into both their working methods and the lasting (attraction) power of Dan Graham’s work. This core may be somewhere else for every artist, and each new work will highlight a different aspect of the ‘original’.

About UNFOLD
Reinterpretation is a core concept in music, dance and theater. Every re-performance is a translation into a new, often contemporary, context. Re-performing a work based on documentation, a script, memory or score is an essential part of artistic practice. For complex works in the field of media art and digital art, this is not common, but just as urgent. Reinterpretation of media art can contribute to the preservation and better understanding of the work. Since 2016, LIMA has put reinterpretation on the map as an artistic and conservation strategy. In the interdisciplinary and international UNFOLD project contextualizing, documenting, analyzing, understanding, embodiment and transferring digital culture are central. Relevant questions are: What is the core and production method of a work? Which techniques are used in which context? How do we translate this artistic legacy, practice and knowledge to the next generation? How do reflect and learn from different interdisciplinary practises?

 

Programme
5 pm Doors open
5.30 – 6.15 pm Presentation Rietveld Students (*free entrance)
6.30 pm Opening exhibition (in collaboration with De Appel): Dan Graham’s iconic work and documentation material of Audience/Performer/Mirror, 1977 De Appel, Amsterdam. Reinterpretations by Adad Hannah, Performer Audience Remake, 2008; Ian Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Audience Performer Fuck Off, 2009, Judith Hopf, What Do You Look Like / A Crypto Demonic Mystery, 2006. (*free entrance)
6.30 – 9 pm Performances Keren Cytter (Performer/Audience/Mirror, 2012), Miron Galić reenacting Cursor, 2016 in Jan Robert Leegte’s Mirror (2020) and Emile Zile (Performer/Audience/Lens, 2018) + artist talks followed by a panel discussion with: Gabriella Giannachi, Annet Dekker and Willem van Weelden moderated by Suzanne Sanders (*a ticket is required for this part of the program).

Event
UNFOLD: Audience/Performer/Mirror
With works and contributions by Dan Graham, Keren Cytter, Emile Zile, Jan Robert Leegte, Gabriella Giannachi, Annet Dekker, Willem van Weelden, Adad Hannah, Ian Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Judith Hopf and students from the Rietveld Academy.
Wednesday 15 January, 2020
5 pm Doors open
5.30 – 6.15 pm Presentation Rietveld Students (free entrance)
6.30 pm Opening exhibition (free entrance)
6.30 – 9 pm Performances & artist talks Keren Cytter, Jan Robert Leegte and Emile Zile, followed by panel discussion (a ticket is required for this part of the program)
Entrance: € 7,50 / 5,- /Free with Cineville
LIMA/LAB111, Arie Biemondstraat 111, Amsterdam
Language: English
Facebook event

Exhibition
UNFOLD: Audience/Performer/Mirror (in collaboration with De Appel)
With works by Dan Graham, Adad Hannah, Ian Forsyth & Jane Pollard and Judith Hopf.
15 – 22 January 2020
Every day from 12 – 23 pm, entrance is free
LIMA/LAB111, Arie Biemondstraat 111, Amsterdam

Graphic design by Bin Koh.

UNFOLD Audience/Performer/Mirror is supported by De Appel, Rietveld Academie and the Mondrian Fund and is part of the collaborative research project Documenting Digital Art, supported by the Arts & Humanities Research Council.