=ff=

[eff-eff], [da-bl eff] - visual performers group pseudonym. joint venture of the video artists fRED and Kiritan Flux from Berlin. Both share a cranky affinity towards pixilated and pixelated substance and appearance. fRED and Flux complement each other in their perception of the need to explore asetetic frontiers, experiment with geek technologies and actively get involved in the vj scene, pushing it towards a more cooperative self-conception.

Currently, they are dealing with the issue of communication between the visual artist and the obsever, trying to extract the VJ’s position from being a stark and stiff nerd gazing at a laptop screen in a dark corner of the stage towards a respected appearance as visual performer. The =ff= method to achieve this is presenting an exaggerated self glorification withing the narrative content of the shown short-films on screen and on stage at the same time.

The presented stories of a =ff= narrative ego performance consist mainly of wild documentaries of their travel journeys, filmed and produced till the last second before their presentation. Not until they are driectly inside the environment of their planned presentation, =ff= equip themselves with odd costumes, film each other within the foreign set of their surrounding and spontaneously interweave fictional actions and short narratives. The shots work without sound, without script and without editing and they represent a radically egocentric type of video journalism in the subversive tradition of “gonzo” pioneer Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson once stated, that “true gonzo reporting needs the talents of a master journalist, the eye of an artist/photographer and the heavy balls of an actor. […] Probably the closest analogy to the ideal would be a film director/producer who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least a main character.” =ff= push it even a step further and appear as exclusive presentators of their films - but in the role of the gonzo protagonists of their nonlinear video documentaries. Every presentation represents a unique premiere, because the cutting happens in real-time and is irreproducable in its momentary aestetics.

Thus, =ff= succeed in merging all the different paradigms known under the abbreviation “VJ”. Besides their appearance as gonzo “Video-Journalists”, they are cheeky “video jockeys” of the MTV generation, who present their self-made music clips to the public, and at the same time they eventually are ordinary “Visual Jockeys” from the illustrious underground club culture of Berlin, who can do their run-of-the-mill nerdcore flicker VJ standard program as well.

effeff.tv

Together with VJ Leinwandler, they founded the Berlin based video art association VisualBerlin, aiming at collaborative projects and mutual exchange within the local scene and to cooperate with other international VJ associations in the tradition of the globalized AVIT network.

fRED | Digital ist besser! is a member of the Gemeinschaftspraxis in Berlin, working there as a grafic designer and typographer. The VJ thing started with the contact to the Unkool Projet, a group of musicians and other artists. With the support of fAlk and together with Apparatschik he did the first couple of gigs at the Zapata, as the visual frame for the whole project. These experiences and the contact to other vjpeople led to other gigs in changing crews. His search for inspiration even led all the way to New Delhi, where he mesmerized the Indian high society. Seeking for a sharing (tech, hints and footage) community and a grafical language to communicate with the crowd is the main topic of his work at the moment.

Kiritan Flux is a geek to the core, who likes to play and experiment with aestetics as well as cables and nerd-gadgets. Armed with a powerbook, midi controller, his node based Max/Jitter software arsenal, he celebrates visual frenzies of mixing lo-fi trash with elegant high gloss treasures. His content consists of self-filmed absurdities, abstract forms and patterns and b-movie galore. Kiritan Flux has been living in Berlin since 2000 and presents his art in various venues around the city and beyond. In his regular life, he twiddles on his university degree in digital media sciences and earns his living by doing freelance multimedia work. Before he joined forces with fRED, he worked together with VJ Berlingrad as ZikZak Corp.