VIII Media Forum of the 29th Moscow Film Festival
June 25-28 2007, Moscow

Organizers: MediaArtLab Center for art and Culture, Mediafest
Location: «October» Cinemahall, Era Foundation
Information support: Rambler.ru, Rambler Vision, Gif.ru, Artinfo.ru, Era DVD
Technical support: NCCA
Support: Royal Netherlands Embassy, Hungarian Culture Center

This is the eighth year Media Forum is organized as part of the Moscow International Film Festival. The role of new media in audiovisual art and culture received due recognition and Media Forum was immediately introduced into the official program of MIFF. The programme was started in 2000 at an initiative of Aleksei Isaev, a well-known Russian media artist, curator and theorist of the new media, who founded and directed the Moscow MediaArtLab Centre. Media Forum as action is an exchange of ideas, infusion of new forces into contemporary culture and vice versa. It is an attempt to demonsrtate the logic of new thought and new communications. At the moment it is inside media culture that new ideas go through trial and approbation, ideas that cannot be realized in contemporary art context.

Theme: Nudity /Game console/

The game is media par excellence. At long last the critical theory always aspires to strip media naked, to expose its game.
So game is a basic principle of media culture.
What is there to speak of and discuss in this connection:

Border between game and reality…
Common codes for real and virtual and how they become white noise

Mourning of soulful 80’s low-tech
Ethic of self-made games
Provocation of virtual
Encounter with your avatar

Society where everybody declares war on everybody
Game as a universal communication hub
The machine that play us / with us
Illusion of the game that continues even when it’s ended long ago

That games have become movable … The game is universal. It belongs to every critical and artistic statement, and even those who try to deconstruct it are only gamers.

Blessed is the society of naked gamers!