Contamination, followed by repeated sensations of feeling sick and dizzy, and topped off with a bout of art rage. Never mind the hedonistic celebrations for the New Year: perhaps the Microwave video festival is how you should really see in the new millennium.
There is no obsession with the apocalyptic here. These calamities are the titles of the works going on parade this year. Organised by local left-field troupe Videotage, the theme for the 2000 instalment is 'World, Wave, Wild'; and beefing up the message are many pieces depicting the alienation the human race faces in an age of digital technology - the abbreviation for the theme is WWW, the acronym for the World-Wide Web.
Among the pieces are Contamination, a collection of videos from Brazil, Argentina and Peru and curated by Solange Farkas, artistic director of Videobrasil.
The individual pieces within the collage fall under four larger themes - memory, boundaries, displacement and identity - and deal with how people lose their ability to understand their own culture and roots as their vistas become submerged in a sea of foreign influences.
Sick And Dizzy, meanwhile, is a collection of 11 videos curated by Griffiths Artworks in Brisbane, Australia and Videotage.
The title refers to the dual characteristics of the work presented: an exploration of new visual aesthetics (the abrupt mobility of the camera) with the re-orientation of people in ever-changing cultural landscapes that are brought about by migration and population shifts.
