_ 5 June - 3 July 2024: The Great Netfix, Exhibition at Borough Road Gallery / Center for the Study of the Networked Image, London Southbank University.
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Open weekdays 14-17 and on appointment. Opening: 5 June, 5 – 7pm. Finissage: 2 July, 6-8pm.
Featuring the amount of VHS tapes actually required to record all of the contents of a platform such as Netflix, this low-tech infrastructure uses a VHS Farm of networked recorders to “fix” streaming media, reverse-extracting them off the networks. This “unclouding” of cinematic heritage remediates the material limits of streaming media platforms, which are shown to depend on a model of automated scarcity and material confinement rather than freedom of choice and an abundance of content. The Great Netfix unfolds as a material speculation on a possible counter-model to the exploitative politics of current big-tech media infrastructures. As the recording progresses, a stack of VHS data packages is built up, which will be redistributed in a global VHS network. You too can become a worker in A Video Store After the End of the World, simply by visiting the exhibition and picking up one of the VHS data packages.
The Great Netfix is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, The Swedish Research Council, K3 School of Arts & Communication (Malmo University) and is organised in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image (CSNI) at LSBU, The Digital Culture Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London and the research group Critical Infrastructures and Image Politics (CIIP) at Winchester School of Art.