Emile Zile is an artist, filmmaker and performer.
Utilising the overlooked remnants of network culture to create his performances, films and exhibitions, Emile engages with the boundaries of language to explore contemporary digital selfhood. Often performing in cinemas or art spaces using monologue and everyday technological tools, his live performances locate the user of platforms as a weary Everyman travelling through on-rail guided experiences. At present he is developing film and documentary projects and works from Studio 5 at the Boyd Hub, a complex managed by the City of Melbourne’s Creative Spaces program.
Emile received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from RMIT Media Arts Melbourne before relocating to Amsterdam in 2007 to commence an MFA degree at the Sandberg Institute. In 2012 he began a two year studio residency at the prestigious Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam. Upon returning to Melbourne he undertook full-time practice-based doctoral research at Digital Ethnography Research Centre, Department of Media and Communication RMIT Melbourne, graduating in 2023. His research elaborated on the role of gesture and non-verbal communication within social media platforms and their relationship to the the first wave of lens-based Contemporary video art.
Recent exhibitions, screenings and performances of his have included QUAI10 Belgium, NGV Triennale, LIMA Amsterdam and Artshouse Melbourne. His work is profiled in Australiana to Zeitgeist: an A to Z of Australian Contemporary Art 2017 published by Thames and Hudson and is included in Routledge Companion to Mobile Media Art 2020.
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