PROJECT STATEMENT:

 

The Institute of Film and Video Studies was a center for Moving Image Research and Radical Archivism, (or MIRRA,) chiefly comprised of an anonymous group of anti-establishment figures that was founded in 2008 in Copenhagen, before being dissolved prematurely in 2010. The Institute was established for the gathering and assembly of video archives from an unscientific perspective, often geared toward the construction of new urban environments from those which were documented by its practitioners in order to produce alternative narratives of the city, and regularly received unmarked packets of video material from cells in Rome, London and St.Petersburg, much of which was stored at the central depository on Teglgardstraede, Copenhagen. The key surviving works the archive are Capital (2008), Longbridge (2009), Deerpark (2008-2009), and The Double (2010), in which the ground was laid for what would subsequently be undermined for the excavation of The Unstitute in the following year.

The Institute of Film and Video Studies was abandoned in the fall of 2010 after an arson attack destroyed the vast quantity of materials stored in the depository. It is conjectured that, hidden within each of the surviving videos is an acrostic which indicates that the Institute and its archives were purposefully destroyed by it's creators for reason or reasons unknown. However, many of the videos display evidence of persecution, blackmail and paranoia which has led some critics to dispute this theory, suggesting that negligence, criminal activity or simply the spontaneous combustion of the archive was ultimately responsible.