In light of capital’s (dead labour) control of the planet, labour leaves the factory to the company, then to the network, just as money transforms from coins and paper notes to electronic credit then into cryptocurrencies. Hence, labour goes from controlling the body to controlling the soul, mind, spirit, nerves, and moods, where it comes out of a specific time and place to swallow all aspects of life. The individual, then, becomes a self-entrepreneur; the more he works, the more his individuality, narcissism, competitiveness, and isolation increases. His activity becomes measurable and profitable work, producing representations and images. These images spread quickly, as evident on social networks and video game networks on computers, Playstations, and smartphones.

How can we track the evolution of such images and concepts? That is what we are going to discuss in this seminar.

Please read the following materials carefully:

1- Check out some of the videos on this page (thank you to artist Asim Hindawi, who drew my attention to it).

2- Harun Farocki: Computer Animation Rules.

3- The Marginals 2 - 2019 (text by Ahmed Gharbia and Reem Naguib + text by Charles Akl).

Ali Hussein Al-adawy is a curator, researcher, editor, writer, and critic of moving images, urban artistic practices, and cultural history. He curated several film programs and seminars, such as Serge Daney: A homage and retrospective (2017) and Harun Farocki: Dialectics of images…Images that cover/uncover other images (2018). He also curated, together with Pau Catà, the exhibition The Art of Getting Lost in Cities: Barcelona & Alexandria (2017). He was one of the founders of Tripod, an online magazine for film and moving images criticism (2015-2017), and was part of the editorial team of TarAlbahr, an online platform and a publication for urban and art practices in Alexandria (2015-2018).