Marc Lafia and Fang-Yu Lin:
The Battle Of Algiers
2006
Marc Lafia (b. 1955) and Fang-Yu Lin (b. 1973), The Battle of Algiers, 2006 and 2018. Mac app. Co-commissioned by the Whitney Museum of American Art and Tate Online AP.2006.4
Marc Lafia and Fang-Yu Lin's The Battle of Algiers recomposes scenes from the 1965 film of the same name by Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo. The original film is a reenactment of the Algerian nationalist struggle leading to independence from France in 1962. The success of the actual battle for independence has been attributed to the nationalists’ organization: a pyramidal structure of self-organized cells. Lafia and Lin recomposed the film along a cell-based structure, in which French Authority and the Algerian Nationalist cells are represented by stills from the film and move according to different rule sets. When cells of different camps intersect, they trigger video cells displaying each side’s tactics (as depicted in the film) according to the rules of the system.
The Battle of Algiers is the second in a series of three works co-commissioned in collaboration with Tate Online. Critical texts and video interviews with the artists will accompany the works at Tate.
Read more at tate.org.uk.
Marc Lafia has shown work internationally in seminal exhibitions such as ZKM’s Net Condition and Future Cinema, The Walker Art Center’s Let’s Entertain, as well as venues including the Georges Pompidou, The ICC Tokyo and other museums and art centers. Throughout his work, including his films and photographs, the image is not understood as a representation or a record of an event but as an event in itself, an entire mode of “going.” For Lafia, computation and algorithmic procedures allow for the production of new structures of organizing image and information, as well as new ways of distributing affects and emotions. His recent “Computations|Permutations” project is an on-going exploration of the limits of the image, as it asks: what is an image? How can it “go”? Lafia lives in Brooklyn, New York, and currently teaches at Columbia University.
Born in Taiwan, Fang-Yu Lin is a New York–based new media artist and technologist. Focusing on Internet art and interactive installation, Fang's artwork reflects the interplay of human experience, culture, and technology. In addition to receiving an Honorary Mention from Prix Ars Electronica, his works have been featured in many venues, such as Tate Online, FILE São Paulo, Seoul New Media Festival, Les Rencontres Internationales, Bauhaus Dessau, and SIGGRAPH. Fang also co-authored Switch Craft: Battery-Powered Crafts to Make and Sew, a wearable technology DIY book. He holds a MFA in Design & Technology and a MS in Information.
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