A Video Store After the End of the World is an analogue video store, not a nostalgic but an alternative infrastructure set in an imaginary retro-future when cloud networks have ceased to exist. The world that has ended here is the world as a coherent narrative and cultural imaginary in a time of complex ecological disaster. The store becomes a temporary infrastructure that gathers materials into an evolving archive of practices within computation that resist the extractivist spatio-temporal regime of the cloud, with a focus on collaboratively maintained and de-scaled services of transversal and trans★feminist activists, artists and designers.
The store hosts a collection of about 2000 VHS home-recorded tapes and an ongoing research which generates new audiovisual content in the form of interviews, texts and other materials. This new material gradually overwrites the existing content of the tapes, reformatting them into “Mix Tapes” on different themes relating to non-extractivist practices.Current Activities
_ 28 April – May 14 2023: A Video Store After the End of the World at Arnestedet, Enghaveparken, Enghavevej 50B, Copenhagen
As part of the series "Gang i Arnestedet", during World Capital of Architecture 2023, A Video Store After the End of the World is installed into one of the two glass pavilions at Enghaveparken. Here, one of the houses is transformed into a fictitious video store "after the end of the world", where the defunct VHS medium becomes the backdrop for a conversation about how we can collectively imagine new, more sustainable and local ways of sharing knowledge, art and culture than through the energy-intensive cloud-based networks we rely on today.
In 2023, it will be 15 years since Vesterbro's legendary video store Yvonnes Video closed after 27 years on the corner of Saxogade and Istedgade. Today, we live in a different digital reality where physical video rental no longer exists. At the entrance to Enghave Parken in Copenhagen, the window facades of a glass pavilion is used to create the feeling that even though you are standing outside, you are inside a video store. From the outside, your gaze is met by stacks of VHS videotapes and screens running a series of subtitled video interviews with designers, artists and scientists who, in different ways, reflect on and fight for a more sustainable and just digital world. Like a regular video store, we will also be open at certain times and from the street, you can enter and participate in a series of events that reflect on the sustainability of our digital lives and speculate on possible alternatives.
_Counter Cloud Sewing Circle, 30 April 12-18: Counter-cloud banner-making workshop and talks. With data.coop, Jacob Remin among others.
_International Workers’ Counter-Cloud Day, 1 May 13-16: join us in protesting the exploitative regime of Big Tech (at Fælledparken, meet-up point tba).
_Publication launch, 12 May, 18.00: “Counter Cloud Mixtape”. The publication gathers research undertaken through the Video Store into counter-cloud initiatives from around the globe.
NB.Bring your video-tapes! Drop by on any of the above announced dates and donate one or more old VHS tapes to the video-store! You can simply leave it to be included into a growing archive or let us know if you want to tell about your tape’s contents and screen a clip from it (this will be possible during the opening program 29 & 30 April).
All events at Enghaveparken, Enghavevej 50b, 1674, Copenhagen, Denmark. Supported by Vesterbro Lokaludvalg.
Contact: videostore@posteo.net
Past Activities
_ 8th of March 2023: Counter Cloud Action Day