VBS.TV – Immersionism Journalism

I’ve wanted to talk about this little site for a long while. VBS.TV is part of Vice Magazine, which is a free magazine (glosssy) about independent arts and youth culture. I’ve read the magazine once or twice and it doesn’t interest me at all, it’s also got that ‘hipster’ feeling which I don’t really like, but the free internet tv-channel VBS.TV is amazing. It’s one of the best things on the internet.

If you live in the Netherlands, you might know the public broadcasting company for the youth called BNN. BNN is awful and I think VBS.TV shows how BNN should be. It’s internationally orientated, innovative, taboo-breaking and shows stuff no one has seen before. For example, they just have a team of 2-3 people including a camera and just attempt to enter a country like… North Korea, somehow find a way to get into the country and then just film stuff inside the country secretly and interview people. Or they go to Baghdad and enter areas where CNN journalists never go, totally giving you a different perspective than what you hear in the Western press.

They call it Immersionism Journalism, they don’t really try to make objective documentaries, but just enter a situation, immerse themself in it and report from a rather personal perspective. You can find their mission-statement is here.

Anyway, they have a lot of good short docu’s, interviews and reports on music/art on their site. Make sure to check out their Guide To North-Korea, the reporter can be a bit rude and annoying, but him doing a karaoke version ‘Anarchy in the N-K’ of the Sex Pistols, which deeply shocks the Koreans there is rather hilarious. Check out True Norwegian Black-Metal, espescially when you hate metal, the interview with Gaahl in part 5 is one of the most epic interviews I’ve ever seen. Also take a look at Inside Sudan, Bolivian Maching Powder (with Evo Morales and Coca, very interesting!), Back in Beirut, El Dorado. There’s a lot more good stuff, but I haven’t seen everything myself. Also check out the Soft Focus interviews done by Ian Svenonius with Ian MacKaye, Penny Rimbaud and Henry Rollins, if you’ve heard of those people before.