“‘Clip Kino’ events are self-organised screening events of short video clips & documentaries found online. It aims to drag aspects of normalised ‘private’ activity – of viewing downloaded content on one’s own computer – into public space for screening, appreciation and debate. ‘Media-environmental awareness’ applies to include the social ecology of one’s interests, desires, and attentions in one’s peer-group and community”

Our friend Andrew Paterson has written an extensive report on a important cultural experiment involving video-sharing practices, see the full article published on SQUIDproject here and downloadable as PDF.

“The roll-down screen, the fold-up chairs, the sound-system, laptop, projector and popcorn were all prepared in the public underground passageway to coax people out of their pathway, to sit down and watch video clips they might have or never seen before. The billboard proclaiming ‘Jii Hutikka’s Clip Karavaani!’ was the beginning of ‘Clip Kino’ in Helsinki and beyond: a self-organised social event platform consisting of screening events in public spaces, featuring not full, or even short, film screenings but video clips and documentaries found online.

Since this event in late 2007, I have initiated and facilitated similar events. This activity was and is motivated by my interest in participatory and social processes as an artist-organiser, and as a pedagogue in online and digital media culture. Over the years, I maintain a belief that such a platform can explore in corporeal public space what you, I, them and we are watching or find interesting online; opening up discussions related to online media, copy and remix culture; but also in the process, create space for different groups to meet, reflect and encounter each other.

The text elaborates the development of the Clip Kino platform as it emerged from that roll-down screen onwards, including reference to the surrounding contexts which the process and events have been situated within.”
…

“My desire was also to explore the peer-to-peer theme in collaboration with young people, using metaphors from BitTorrent protocol. The slang terms for key roles in P2P file sharing—seeder and leecher—refer to the original uploader who provides the original file to ’seed’, and the downloader who ‘leeches’ the content from the network. The BitTorrent protocol is also a form of encoded cooperation: When you start downloading the file you wish for, you are also, by default in the protocol, helping others, by making the file more available for them. I hoped the workshop, exploring and sharing of video-clips between us as a group, would give us the roles of being ’seeders’ and ‘leechers’ of content—face-to-face—sharing content in presence of each other, gradually helping each other understand one another’s interests.”