The Observatory Archives are structured around particular themes and have a clear purpose: to encourage a critique of contemporary culture and society, using different strategies: video art, independent documentary, and mass media archaeology.

The Archives cover a huge range of works that are very different from one another, but share a commitment to freedom of expression and reflect on our individual and collective fears and pleasures. Together, they offer a multifaceted view, thousands of tiny eyes that probe and explore our world and announce other possible worlds. It is a discourse that above all values heterogeneity, plurality, contradiction and subjectivity, an antidote to the cloning and repetition of corporate mass media.

Given that the call for entries organized by OVNI every 18 months is theme-based, the works selected over the years offer a reading, a kind of record of some of the dreams and nightmares of our times. We have seen the range of issues and preoccupations become more focused over time, from works with very diverse themes in OVNI 1993 to 1996 (extending and exploring the video medium, regaining the formal and the thematic freedom of its early years), to progressively narrow down to increasingly specific themes: identity versus media (1997-1998), community (2000), globalisation (2002), Post Sept 11th (2003), Resistances (2005), The Colonial Dream Autonomous Zones (2006), Exodus, The Margins of the Empire (2008), Dis_Reality (2011), Oblivion (2012).

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OVNI at transmediale archive

transmediale.04 – Fly Utopia! [exhibition] The Observatory Archives
transmediale.04 – Fly Utopia! [film/video] The Babylon Archives
 

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