Amir Husak
The New School University, Media Studies and Film, Faculty Member
- New Media, Cultural Memory, Social Conflict, Documentary (Film Studies), Sound studies, Film and Media Studies, and 25 morePsychogeography, Urban Sociology, South East European Studies, Nationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Civil War, Digital Humanities, Digital Story Telling, Documentary Film, Interactive Digital Storytelling, Collective Memory, Migration Studies, Citizenship, Immigration Status & Nationality, David Harvey, Media and Film Studies, Computer-Mediated Communication, History of photography, Interactive and Digital Media, Crowdsourcing, Media theory and Research, Online Media, Balkan Studies, Interactive Documentary, Expanded Film-making, Visual Anthropology, Interactive Documentary, and Bosniaedit
- Amir Husak is a Brooklyn-based documentary media maker, artist and Assistant Professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School, New York. He has worked as a director, editor and sound designer on numerous films and art installat... moreAmir Husak is a Brooklyn-based documentary media maker, artist and Assistant Professor in the School of Media Studies at The New School, New York. He has worked as a director, editor and sound designer on numerous films and art installations. Combining emergent and traditional media, essay and experimental techniques, Husak’s work explores documentary as social practice and investigates digital media representations of history and identity politics. He has shown films and interactive media projects at such diverse places as South by Southwest (US), Sundance Film Festival (US), Cinemateca Distrital (Colombia), Sarajevo Film Festival (Bosnia & Herzegovina), Stadtmuseum Graz (Austria), P.O.V./PBS (US), Big Sky Documentary Film Festival (US), TV Cultura (Brazil), and Full Frame Film Festival (US). Over the last decade, he has been teaching courses and conducting workshops on socially engaged filmmaking and interactive media at universities and community media centers in United States, Europe and South America. Both Fulbright and Jack Kent Cooke fellow, Husak published articles and essays on activist documentary and collaborative media practices. More recently he also co-edited a volume on socially engaged art and activist media in Bosnia-Herzegovina.edit
Počevši sa revoltom obespravljenih radnika u Tuzli, val masovnih protesta proširio se u februaru 2014. cijelom Bosnom i Hercegovinom. U naletu opravdanog bijesa demonstranti su palili zgrade i urede vlada, poslavši glasnu i jasnu poruku... more
Počevši sa revoltom obespravljenih radnika u Tuzli, val masovnih protesta proširio se u februaru 2014. cijelom Bosnom i Hercegovinom. U naletu opravdanog bijesa demonstranti su palili zgrade i urede vlada, poslavši glasnu i jasnu poruku korumpiranoj vladajućoj eliti: sada je dosta! Bio je to čin građanske hrabrosti i odlučnosti koji je ulivao strahopoštovanje. Ovaj izuzetan trenutak političke osviještenosti probudio je nadu i signalizovao da bi se stvari mogle početi mijenjati. Kao dokumentarista porijeklom iz Bosne – ali sa stalnim boravkom u SAD-u – i kao neko ko ima izražen interes za kulturni i društveni život zemlje, osjetio sam da je neizmjerno važno da zabilježim kreativnu životnost ovog revolta i osvrnem se na različite izraze nezadovoljstva koji su se proširili poput divljeg požara u samo nekoliko dana. Uslijedio je niz razmjena i saradnji, uključujući i istraživanje na licu mjesta, te projekt dokumentovanja koji je poslužio kao osnova za izložbu pod nazivom "Ništa više nije isto: Kultura krize i društvene promjene u Bosni i Hercegovini". Pored isticanja i dokumentovanja kulturnih izričaja ovog centralnog trenutka u novijoj historiji države, izložba je također bila pokušaj da se interveniše i odgovori na poziv za radikalne promjene. Ovaj esej je moj lični osvrt na iskustvo iz kojeg je nastala izložba "Ništa više nije isto", te kreativnu realizaciju, politiku i društvenu dinamiku koja je bila aktuelna. Pišem ga iz kompleksne perspektive jednog umjetnika-dokumentariste, amatera sociologa, aktiviste i nevoljkog etnologa.
Research Interests:
The utopian promise of the digital era and the seemingly open, democratic power of the Internet have raised the hopes of activists and documentarians alike. The immediacy, reciprocity and accessibility of the emergent communication... more
The utopian promise of the digital era and the seemingly open, democratic power of the Internet have raised the hopes of activists and documentarians alike. The immediacy, reciprocity and accessibility of the emergent communication technologies appeared to be particularly suitable for media projects that aspire to mobilise for action, engage communities, and challenge the existing power structures in order to have direct influence on policy making. Over the last ten years, a whole new crop of documentary projects involving new modalities and unorthodox ways of knowledge production came into existence. Interestingly, the rise of this particular form coincided with the global economic crisis and a number of social and political upheavals of epochal proportions. Documentary representation, like all other forms of cultural expression, was not immune to those shifts. This article looks at the ensuing crisis of representation as linked to contemporary documentary practice, and examines some of the ways the new, web-based forms of documentary use polyvocality to engage their audience, build communities, and mobilise in struggles for social change. It features several examples and draws on the existing documentary theory, as well as the implicit, yet rarely invoked, links to the so-called " relational art " .
Research Interests:
Crisis, Art, Action (Kriza, Umjetnost, Akcija), Irfan Hošić and Amir Husak (Eds.), with texts by Hrvoje Juric, Jasmina Merz, Serhat Karakayali & Ozge Yaka, Sefik Tatlic, Hajrudin Hromadzic, Aneta Stojnic, Irfan Hosic, and Refik Hodzic,... more
Crisis, Art, Action (Kriza, Umjetnost, Akcija), Irfan Hošić and Amir Husak (Eds.), with texts by Hrvoje Juric, Jasmina Merz, Serhat Karakayali & Ozge Yaka, Sefik Tatlic, Hajrudin Hromadzic, Aneta Stojnic, Irfan Hosic, and Refik Hodzic, Bihać/Sarajevo: Gradska Galerija, 2016. ISBN 978-9958-9416-5-8