EMBED: Public Workshop on Video Art and Its Integration with the Internet

The Spanish Embassy and the Cervantes Institute are happy to invite you to the EMBED workshop, taking place next Tuesday to Thursday (4th to 6th December) in Ashkal Alwan’s Home Workspace in Beirut. During the workshop, all participants will be invited to show and discuss their work in video and film, so please bring any material that you would be happy to show on a computer, hard drive or DVD, if applicable.



The word “embed” has become commonplace because it is used when video content is republished online using HTML code on platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion or Blip TV. The term “embed” thus represents a shifting in the contemporary audiovisual production paradigm. Anyone has the ability to upload videos to the Internet. Anyone can publish and distribute videos. Anyone can comment on them; anyone can remix them. The net is a giant audiovisual role-playing game, and the users are the players.



EMBED is an initiative of several Spanish platforms working with video art, and aims to become a place in which to analyse trends and projects that represent cultural and industry developments in audiovisual production. EMBED is organized through an online publication, available at www.embed.at and soon to be translated into English. As a physical space, it will generate various events and programs with various institutions.



Two of its members are travelling to Lebanon in December order to meet and discuss with video artists, producers and other individuals working in the field of video art. The final objective is to integrate the Lebanese scene with EMBED’s international network.