Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#3

anyMeta 4.19.3 - Atom module 0.3.2 2012-02-16T16:52:03+01:00 http://www.mediamatic.net/feed/atom/14461/en Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#3 http://www.mediamatic.net/id/16935 2009-04-24T12:02:40+02:00 Advertorial

Video art should be watched in the living room. It's made for televisions, and televisions are made for living rooms. By this we don't mean that it should be broadcasted by one of the networks. That occurs so infrequently that the chance that one is caught in the appropriate mood is very small. Even if they aired much more then they do now, that would mean only an improvement of the programming and maybe the lot of the contributing artist. For those, interested in video art, it wouldn't really make much difference.

Video festivals (see pp 108, 130, 136) offer no alternative. Their condensed richness of information is of course indispensable, but one cannot concentrate on a single work, let alone view that work more than once to establish a relationship, to go beyond the dispersive kind of art tourism that nowadays is common, in the form of the mammoth exhibitions organized for other art forms. Then there is in each civilized country a number of places where artists present their productions to a select audience, little temples where a shepherd, with appropriate respect, presses the play button for you. Your editorial board is to be found there also from time to time, rustling a roll of peppermints in the back row. * *This intranslatable expression refers to a consumption pattern common to Dutch Calvinist churchgoers. Like in the late middle ages, when the spreading culture of private devotion brought icons and portable altar pieces to every believer who could afford them. Like Dutch art history which happened for centuries in the houses of the well-to-do. So not video art. At the same time one in every three households has a videorecorder ( NL 30%, GB 36%, USA 23%). So it enters even the house of the art watcher. Video art though, is on a market where there is no place for individual consumers. Rental is aimed towards one-time public screenings, sales towards museums and other collecting institutions. Production costs are very high (excl. honorarium 5-20 thousand guilders), rentals and sales are infrequent, so the prices one can guess: respectively f 100-200 and f 1,ooo-2,ooo. Private persons aren't going to quickly shell out that kind of money for a tape that you can't hang over the sofa, that is quickly subject to wear and in any case has a limited, say 10 year, lifespan. (In our next issue the economist/art historian Pablo Collette shall explore in depth the peculiarities of the art video market.) The biggest problem we seem to face as a magazine is that we write about a sort of art that one comes across every now and then, but is difficult to come on intimate terms with. One inventories, discusses, informs, legitimatizes, problematises. All on paper. By preference we should leave out the troublesome illustrations, and in every issue of this magazine include a videotape. Because of financial reasons this is impossible. Instead we are offering, on home format, to the readers of our magazine, some of the most important tapes discussed. At the price normally paid for a single public screening of the same work. The tapes offered (in this issue from Nan Hoover and Frank & Koen Theys) are of very high quality and impossible to understand seen only once. To our experience they only come to full blossom after repeated scrutiny in the concentrated intimacy of the home. We are very grateful to the co-operating artists for hazarding their livelihood; will a museum still be prepared to buy this work? Although the tapes purchased through us are strictly meant for private use, and although also the purchaser of such a tape will have to pay for any public screening, in fact the work of art is as original as a genuine copy. The effect of this selling strategy on the often modest income of the video artist is unclear. By this action Mediamatic does not intend to deploy any distribution activities, the experiment is only meant to investigate how we might solve our own illustration problem, and to survey whether there exists a private market potential for video art. Therefore the tapes will be available through us only for a limited time, and the distributer's representation of the artist is fully maintained. We hope that the regular distributes (in this issue Montevideo and De. Beursschouwburg), whom we thank for their cooperation, will in the long run steal the initiative. Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#2 - d d ARTICLE 1 http://www.mediamatic.net/id/14523 2009-04-24T10:13:34+02:00 No subsidy? No Problem!

Dear artists, dear friends began a letter sent to the Canadian media magazine Video Guide by the video artist Servaas from Hoorn. The letter was an appeal for his foreign colleagues to send telegrams to Minister Eelco Brinkman protesting against the ending of subsidy support for video an production facilities in the Netherlands. This could have excessive consequences for productions facilities for both Dutch and international artists.1 1 This is a direct quatation from Servaas' letter to the Canadian magazine Video Guide 1986. The letter, dated 6th June of this year, has as yet had no effect: the decision is now generally accepted as fact and those organizations affected are already involved with new plans. No subsidy? We'll just do without - at least it gets rid of all those hassles.

The decision, which at first caused astonishment, fury and dismay, comes as the result of the Dutch Art Counsil 's advice (to the Minister of Culture) that there should be no more subsidies given to those organizations involved with video art, that is: all except one. So far as production facilities are concerned: in the future, subsidies will only be granted to individual artists and one central organization will be responsible for the presentation, distribution and documentation of their work. The organization chosen (after careful evaluation and comparison) is Time Based Arts in Amsterdam. TBA is doing its best to meet with the ministry's demands and has meanwhile been doing its homework: a 31 page policy outline which one hopes answers all the authority's questions and still adds something of its own. For TBA 's Aart Van Barneveld and his colleagues, it represented the firs step to the absolute power forced on them by WVC (The Ministry of Culture). We were a little shocked by these developments. WVC 's decision was lying on my desk when I came back from holiday. The ministry has arranged the whole business without the slightest consideration for the organizations. Such a radical decision destroys the whole structure which has been built up over the years. It means that the other organizations will have real problems; they've invested so much and now it's all gone. Although Van Barnaveld disagreed with the way in which the decision was reached, he agreed with its general drift: Of course we're happy that we're the one. One of the Art Council's strongest demands was that TBA should sever its traditional link with the Association for Video Artists . Despite the fact that in the new plan one seat on the Board of Management is reserved for the Association, Van Barneveld expects there to be problems with the Association: The influence of artists on the policy of an organization like TBA is essential and must be guaranteed. Artists have very little say in the WVC's plan and the members of the Video Association are resisting it. However, the Video Association doesn't funcrion as it should and things have to be changed there too. It's too 'clubby' at the moment. My ideal would be a broadly-based association, a bit like the Dutch Artists' Union (the BBK) but representing the whole area of video and with strong links, in terms of policy and content, with TBA. In this form, the Association must have some say in the division of subsidies amongst individual artists. For the rest, Van Barneveld thinks that it's mainly a matter of continuing the broadening TBA 's existing activities. He reckons that We're not going to get that big. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17155/en/mm1-3-no-sub"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/667/17155-269-400.jpg" height="400" width="269" alt="" title="MM1#3 no sub" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#3 no sub - Mediamatic.net" href="/17155/en/mm1-3-no-sub">MM1#3 no sub</a> As it functions at the moment, there is too little theory within the video circuit: We've been having presentations without the thinking to go with it for long enough now. We want to change all that. The 'new' TBA wants to give people from outside, artists, critics and art historians the opportunity to contribute to the formation of theory. Thus, it will lead to 'a grammar and idiom' with which new developments in media art can be adequately described. TBA must become an organization with a mediating function, one which remains open for outside influences. Van Barneveld thinks that this also holds good for the resetting-up of a presentation circuit; to do that now the national government is no longer a funding body, we must apply in cooperation with local initiatives to the regional governments. TBA hopes to view its task from a broad perspective, says its present director, and to develop into an art organization covering-the area of video, film and sound, a development which has already been set in motion. In its policy outline, along with its response to the government's demands, TBA attempts to underline the point concerning simple, inexpensive production facilities, which must remain available for experimentation by young artists in particular. It can be very practical like, for instance, at Stampij where you can work at inexpensive rates. Although the Arts Council emphatically advised that no production organization should be subsidized anymore (Meatball and Montevideo are the victims of this policy), Van Barneveld feels that there is still room for talks with the Ministry of Culture if you can show that it's important. Such benevolence comes too late for the previously well financed Montevideo. The organization is in a state of collapse after the internal discussions about what should happen after the withdrawal of funding. Founder Rene Coelho opted for 'back to square one' and retreated to the Singel, with no members of staff. That's how we began, as a small video gallery. I find it very attractive in itself; also, mainly due to the government policy, we became a bit too big. Now, I really want to have a sort of gallery showing the 'first devision of Dutch video art'. My preference is closely linked with visual art and with innovative aspects, the relationship between image and sound, new technology but always in terms of visual art and less to do with the media. Although it's called media art, in my terms, technology is not predominant. Along with the gallery, Coelho hopes to maintain the production facilities. We want to try to let the artists use the equipment as much as. possible at inexpensive prices that are much cheaper than in the commercial studios. Also we want to maintain our distribution, but without a subsidy because we're so tired of all that begging - and for all those years! <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17156/en/mm1-3-no-sub"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/976/17156-268-400.jpg" height="400" width="268" alt="" title="MM1#3 no sub" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#3 no sub - Mediamatic.net" href="/17156/en/mm1-3-no-sub">MM1#3 no sub</a> Coelho has little faith in the ministry's motives; They just want to get rid of that art form, they think it's too costly and uninteresting, so they've wrung the necks of the production places and the distribution facilities - that is, all except one because they - in my opinion at least - actually think that video should die a natural death. It's a terminal construction. 1 wonder how TEA will survive all this, I hope it will be OK. There was always friction between us but new-style Montevideo hopes that people from the new-style TBA will use our facilities as much as possible. Looking back at the wealthy past, Coelho says, There were ten people working here in its heyday, all paid. Of course, it was a bit too much, but OK, If that's made possible you're going to do it, aren't you? One important task which we can't do anymore but grew like the proverbial beanstalk with us is the consideration of the artists' interests. We had full-time staff for that work whom we can't pay anymore. At the time, that full-time staff was the Montevideo subsidy whizz-kid: Nico- that's how we deal with WVC-Paape. Along with colleague Maarten Noyons, Paape had very different plans for Montevideo which, after a somewhat turbulent meeting of the Board of Management, finally lead to a schism. We tried to introduce the board to other ways of thinking. The decision to do away with Montevideo in its old form is, in my opinion, not so much a rational as an emotional one. There were other possible alternatives. I find it very disappointing but I respect the board's decision and it's not as If we've split up like very angry kids; we're just pursuing our own interests. For Paape and his group, those interests lie in the area of new technologies. Of course, the point of departure is still the fact that the media artist inspires the whole thing. But the image of the artist will change in the future. The borders between the different art disciplines will become blurred through the use of new technologies and interactive electronics. Whether you're working for visual artists, musicians, theatremakers or architects, the equipment and the software is more or-less the same but it's about what you connect it with. Paape and Noyons are aiming for a technological experimental space à la Steim, a sort of creative think-tank' where, with support from companies such as Philips and Sony, the artist will be able to survey the borders of technology.The talks about it are at a very advanced stage, says Paape self-confidently, we've said to those companies, as large-scale industries, put some effort into making a media art laboratory like at Mit. Steim or Sonology, but there's not that much enthusiasm because it's tremendously expensive. So we're aiming not so much to own equipment ourselves as to find facilities at Sony and Philips, equipment we can borrow and suchlike. It's much easier; 'he who travels fast, travels light' - right? The media art laboratory that Paape has in mind will be housed in Montevideo's old premises in North Amsterdam. They've found a sponsor for next year's rent. The other large subsidized organization, the Kijkhuis in The Hague reacts somewhat laconically to the f 165.000,- cut-back to their annual budget. It doesn't mean we're going to have to throw in the towel, says Tom Van Vliet from the Kijkhuis , we have the advantage of not being dependent on just one source of income; we also get money from The Hague's City Council and we also have our own income. We'll have to boost that. OJ course it has radical consequences: up till now, we've been open five days and three evenings a week and that will stop. From January, visits will be by appointment only and when we have special programs. And that means redundancies. The Kijkhuis will still realize and show video performances, installations and tapes but less frequently than before. Also no-one's thinking of stopping organizing the successful annual video festival. In terms of distributing tapes (and the need to raise more income itself), the Kijkhuis will actually intensify its activities. Van Vliet (pugnaciously): We couldn't stop even If we wanted to because we've got contracts, appointments and people quite often approach us. We're involved with a number of international video concerns who have offered us the distribution of a number of tapes. We have here a distribution system that has been in existence for 8 years and which we're not going to close down because of what might be the ministry's short-lived decision. We don't have so much to do with WVC, besides they're talking about visual art whereas we've always been interested in the media whether or not it's art. And it can't have gone so far in this country that the state decides who can do what? Van Vliet hasn't got a good word to say about the ministerial decision to fund just one organization. It's a bad decision. Video in the Netherlands has its origins in all kinds of little clubs and that's its basis. And you see: all the artists find it an unwise decision as do the organizations. It removes the foundations. Of course you mustn't duplicate things but still you have more than just one gallery. They tried to centralize the film world and it's been a disaster. I think an artist must be free to choose which organization he wants to work with. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17157/en/mm1-3-no-sub"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/572/17157-266-400.jpg" height="400" width="266" alt="" title="MM1#3 no sub" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#3 no sub - Mediamatic.net" href="/17157/en/mm1-3-no-sub">MM1#3 no sub</a> The ministery's measures are also tangible in the provinces: Willem Velthoven and Jans Possel from the Mediamatic Foundation, which provides video art screenings in Groningen, are fed up of it. Velthoven: look, if the financier, in this case WVC, says that what you're doing isn't worth bothering about then the question of whether you should continue comes into play. We'll be stopping the regular screenings from 1st January which we've been organizing for the past three-and-a-half years. Apart from the subsidy being stopped, it's due to the fact that we want to spend more time on the magazine. Although Velthoven also finds the WVC decision unwise, he's inclined not to predict any disastrous consequences; I don't know If it's such a bad thing. I wonder, if you look back in five years time, whether 1st January 1987 will be seen as the day when Dutch video art disappeared. I don't think it will be that serious. What I am curious about is how TIM will fulfill their new task. They'll think - and this is the consequence of being the only one - that they'll have to cover everything now. It means that it will be still more difficult for them to follow a policy with clear choices of art and content. It's bound to result in a less inspired kind of universality which they've also been more or less forced into by WVC. I've got my doubts. Perhaps it's much more meaningful to make choices about content, actually it's something all the organizations have been lacking up to now. Now, with no more money and all that misery we should think what it is that we really find important and save our energy. For us it's the magazine, for others it could be a particular group of artists. Seen from the perspective of video, in a way the WVC decision does make things clearer. New initiatives are popping up in the margins of this regrouping. Sometimes 'reluctantly' as Geert- Jan Hobijn from Staalplaat, the avant-garde cassette shop, describes its resolve to distribute videotapes as well. Staalplaat is looking into the possibility of bringing out VHS tapes which don't fit into the art circuit, like the tapes form Research, an American group, English movements like the Romantic Aestethics and some music videos that are really experimental. Staalplaat plans to hire the tapes out to youth centers, discotheques and suchlike and speaks ideally of a system like the regular video farmer who hires out his tapes, preferably at the same prices. Bearing in mind the lack of capital needed to set up a VHS distribution system, people are looking to TBA for facilities and logistical support. 'The TBA big boys' are considering the proposal. Another new initiative comes from Ex-Montevideo brats Harry 'Dedo' Heyink and Kees De Groot who have decided to set up an agency-cum-club. The club, the Loge Bethanien (Bethanien Lodge) will be a meeting place for media artists with presentations of 'interdisciplinary, multi-media art' at set times. The work of the founders and a select group of other artists (including Sluik & Kurpershoek) is being housed in Loge 4D (4D Lodge) which also looks after the distribution. According to Kees De Groot, both 'loges' intend to go beyond video; we're also creating the underground, the marginal, we want more than just tapes and video installations, hence the emphasis on the interdisciplinary. The axis of Loge 4D will be its agent, someone who combine business acumen with the insight of an history. The group around Heyink and De Groot have applied to Amsterdam City Council for a starting subsidy, the agent will have to be paid out of money from the Ministry of Culture. The ministry will be dealing with still more subsidy requests in the near future. After a period of re-orientation and reorganization, nearly all the organizations affected by the cuts are going 10 apply to the minister with fresh courage and stronger arguments; the Arts Council is busy once more and will have to notice that probably very little will come of the most important objective of its last advice to the Minister of Culture. New and old distributers and presenters are undermining in advance TBA 's position as the umbrella organization for video art. Within the organizations, everyone is beavering away at the cultivated diversity which has lead to a complicated network of contracts and personal links between artists, organizations and public. Even Aart Van Barneveld acknowledges that there are real problems in . growing towards the umbrella function that the government requires. Perhaps the Arts Council has put its financial affairs in order but it has made a complete mistake about the social structure of the video scene. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17158/en/mm1-3-no-sub"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/499/17158-267-400.jpg" height="400" width="267" alt="" title="MM1#3 no sub" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#3 no sub - Mediamatic.net" href="/17158/en/mm1-3-no-sub">MM1#3 no sub</a> Translation: Annie Wright Mediamatic Magazine vol. 1 #3 Max Bruinsma http://www.mediamatic.net/id/881 c c ARTICLE 1 http://www.mediamatic.net/id/14549 2009-04-24T12:06:26+02:00 The primal Code

Simon Biggs chose at the Den Haag and Bonn video festivals (both held during September 1986) a number of tapes and one performance, which lend themselves admirably to a theoretical textual approach.

The work of the video makers John Adams ( UK), Jean Claude Riga (Belgium), Bill Seaman (USA), Nigel Rolfe(Ireland), Steve Fagin ( US) and Gad Hollander (London) all reflected sources and motivations outside the usual conventions of video historicity. The diversity of these forms - these previous artistic incarnations- suggested that their videos were substantially different, both collectively and individually. In these authors works can be seen to be evolving a language better suited to its context, cognizant of a medium that is not painting, sculpture, performance or film but is nevertheless not exclusive of them. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17213/en/mm1-3-the-primal"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/161/17213-400-313.jpg" height="313" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#3 The primal" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#3 The primal - Mediamatic.net" href="/17213/en/mm1-3-the-primal">MM1#3 The primal</a> Gad Hollander Background Music (Orphic) 1986 Watching their videos one is aware of modes of signification that, in one way or another, delineate a network of codes suggestive of a pre-historical textuality - the reference to some half-hidden process that could be conceived of as primitive. That is not to say that their work appears to be primitivistic (as early modernism) but rather that their work refers, at least obliquely, to some function of language more fundamental than the higher level codes that we are used to dealing with in normal communication. 1 1 According to the Jacobson, a code is a limited set of signs or units (taken from a morphology) but also the procedures of their usage (their syntactic organization). Articulation of these two components enables us to produce messages. <h2>Primal codes</h2> None of the artists dealt with here pretend to solutions regarding their individual, , although closely related, fields of inquiry. They all share an attitude that leads them to problematise the status of language in our culture. Each author explores the basic forms and structures of our dominant codes, deconstructing - through alternating convergences and divergences of information (for example Steve Fagin's use of rapidly shifting and seemingly disconnected scenario)- the forces that animate our communication and thus recognizing the orphic nature of their pursuits. 2 For each of them the means of this activity, the process of codifying, are seen as ultimately dependent on these same processes of multiplication, ambiguity and opacity that are so problematic in the first instance. This is most apparent in Bill Seaman 's work where language, and therefore the production of meaning, is seen to collapse in on itself as its tautological nature is unable to support the weight of its implications. 3 2 Deconstruction in Derridian sense implies analysing two terms since long believed to be opposites (e.g. nature vs. culture), demonstrating that they are in fact two aspects of the same thing and eventually delining a term that incorporates both aspects (e.g. 'World'). 3 This opacity results from the fact that the elements forming the code (the signs) are chosen arbitrarily and joined with a meaning that therfore is purely conventional and not motivated in any way by similarity between sign and meaning. In order to decode a massage one has to be aware of the meaning of each sign first. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17214/en/steve-fagin-the-amazing-voyage-of-gustave-flubert"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/238/17214-400-327.jpg" height="327" width="400" alt="" title="Steve Fagin The amazing Voyage of Gustave Flubert and Reymond Roussel 1986" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Steve Fagin The amazing Voyage of Gustave Flubert and Reymond Roussel 1986 - Mediamatic.net" href="/17214/en/steve-fagin-the-amazing-voyage-of-gustave-flubert">Steve Fagin The amazing Voyage of Gustave Flubert and Reymond Roussel 1986</a> Steve Fagin The amazing Voyage of Gustave Flubert and Reymond Roussel 1986 It is perhaps in the work of Gad Hollander, or not so much in his work but his evident background in poetry, that the initial signs allowing the critical eye to function become visible. Since The Beat Poets the forms of dissemination for poetry have multiplied into performance, film and television (amongst other media), not only introducing poetry to a broader audience but also giving cause to study the mechanics of their medium in its relationship with other media. In Hollander's work we have a poet making video which, in appearance, has little to do with his poetic activity. However, it is in the decoding of the work that we find its roots. Background Music (Orphic) is, in its very structure, its methodology of suggestion and association and its use of ambiguity leading to multiple readings, poetic in form. The devices Hollander employs in his recreation of the interwoven stories of Wozzeck and Orpheus are poetic in the same sense that Goethe's Faust was (or in contemporary fiction Borges or Calvino). In dealing with Hollander's work, and that of the other artists written of here, it is tempting to apply a 'poetics of video'. As noted in the Den Haag Festival catalogue, Hollander applies all the usual motifs found in the various readings (and conclusions) of Wozzeck, in addition interweaving this fiction with the equally ambiguous (in the sense of multiple readings of equal value) myth of Orpheus in the underworld, all this deployed in the form of tableaux vivants. It is in the form of these tableaus and how they interrelate to construct the artist's intent, that is found powerful evocations of poetic form - not in any readily mapped manner (for example, image onto verse) but in how these tableaus function as icons that are cross-referenced in time and space, suggesting multiple patterns to be discerned and read. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17234/en/mm1-3-the-primal"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/247/17234-400-227.jpg" height="227" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#3 The primal" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#3 The primal - Mediamatic.net" href="/17234/en/mm1-3-the-primal">MM1#3 The primal</a> ^^Nigel Rolfe Island Stories (live-performance and video// Although certain film makers ( Godard in Passion or Fellini's 8 1/2) have used similar techniques it is with video (its intimacy and programmability) that this method of meta-coding and organizing information begins to mature. The cinema screen functions as a 'field' on which our desires are played out, whilst the video monitor evokes the eye of the other, the eye of the author gazing at us, the viewer. More interestingly, we are given a degree of access to the process behind that electronic iris in a reversed form of the camera obscura. This authorical presence is particularly evident in the work of Steve Fagin, whose The Amazing Voyage of Gustave Flaubert and Raymond Roussel carries us through labyrinthian possibilities regarding the relationship between author and reader. In this context the literary terms 'author/reader' rather than the artistic 'artist/viewer' seem to function best. The term viewer, in particular, is highly suggestive of the mode we adopt when receiving television or film, whereas there are aspects to the act of whatching a video which place it closer to the act of reading a book. For this reason I wish to suggest a somewhat different relationship between the two poles of communication. Fagin's use of video functions as a 'language machine', a term applied by the French philosopher Michel Foucault to the text of Roussel, in the manner that it causes multiple associations in simultaneous directions, adding weight and pre- deconstructing the process of signification. A rapidly paced work it nevertheless sustains detailed interest, as Fagin's own script becomes entwined with both historically 'real' text (the lives of the two central characters) and the fictional author's fictions (an autobiography within an autobiography). What Fagin's work highlights is that in the position that the author attempts to place the reader is established the mode of language, the specific code or media. The author may deploy conventional means to achieve this position of power, however for video there are few existent conventions. On the whole the audience is uncomfortable with this situation as their place is not clearly defined - unless within the traditional codes of film, television, painting, sculpture of performance. The problem for the author here is to place their voice alongside that of their reader. The vector between author and reader is one of power- the power of seduction and rejection, absence and presence - the characteristics of the voyage. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17235/en/mm1-3-the-primal"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/028/17235-400-339.jpg" height="339" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#3 The primal" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#3 The primal - Mediamatic.net" href="/17235/en/mm1-3-the-primal">MM1#3 The primal</a> Bill Seaman Telling Montions 1986 Nigel Rolfe explores this vector of power with an incisive wit and physical presence through the specifics of social and personal politics and the ensuing contradictions found at their nexus. Island Stories deals, in the immediate, with the situation in Ireland, relating this to all political struggle (between one group and another, the author and their reader and between the author and the person who has become the author- in this last sense the work relates to the endurance performances of Stuart Brisley and Bruce Mc Lean). For Rolfe politics is essentially related to identity through power, as expressed in these relationships. The use of video in Island Stories as one element in the work is well considered and finely tuned to each piece's requirements and yet eclectic as Ihe role of the displayed image shifts from performance to performance. It is in the connections between these short performance tableaux that the poetry developes. Rolfe's work has a celtic rhythm and imagistic presence that, in a sense, could be read as a form of pre-verbal poetry, suggestive of tribal rituals and cleansing processes, as the performer took his place amongst the glowing monitors. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida has argued that the text (in the form of highly ritualised actions or inscriptions) pre- dates verbal communication of a sufficiently sophisticaled quality to be called language, in oppostion to the antropologist Claude Levi- Strauss who believed that verbal communication was more primal. 4 4 According to Derrida writing must be considered merely as a metaphor for the concept of sign. That is why he claims that language has always been written language and even the first language ever, and that there is no clear distinction between written language and spoken language. Island Stories manages to produce a powerful presence with transparant readings deploying a mixture of simple iconic (video) images, elemental human actions (performance) and sound of an almost physical tangibility (music). Nigel Rolfe admits to a fascination with prehistory (a time we define, as the word suggests, as pretextual) returning to it for inspiration in much of his work. One could see Rolfe's work as simulated or excavated prehistorical texts, as he searches in society and within the self for an archeology of signification and thus identity. If Nigel Rolfe's work seeks to establish a pre-verbal textuality then Bill Seaman attempts to reconstruct that point at which the division between the two occured. By using a limited number of video sequences, each subscripted with a letter of the alphabet, Seaman sets out to construct his language, his message. For him each sequence is similar to a child's alphabetical building block. Telling Motions, a visually splendid piece with a well integrated sound track, is composed of twenty six shorr sequences showing for instance a spinning top, a window, a human torso. Structured in three distinct parts Seaman initially introduces us to his alphabet - an abstract unitary system that requires organisation through set processes to attain meaning. The second and third parts seek to function at this higher level of language construction and signification. However, it is at this point that the language fails itself. The reader is unable to decode, or concode, the data. It remains seductive but opaque, confusing although stimulating. Seaman develops the idea of a language collapsing in on itself. The idea that language only attains meaning in reference to itself and not through some absolute relationship with its referent. Related to this is the problem of the privacy of the code, its site specific character relative to its source, the author. The problem therefore is not so much as how to make something transparent but rather (due to the problematic relationship between the artist and the conventions of language) whether it is at all possible to transcend the code's essential opacity, its natural collapse into tautology. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17236/en/mm1-3-the-primal"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/871/17236-400-309.jpg" height="309" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#3 The primal" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#3 The primal - Mediamatic.net" href="/17236/en/mm1-3-the-primal">MM1#3 The primal</a> John Adams Intellectual Properties 1985 It can be argued that it is through language that identity is constructed, both through the eyes of the other and in how we see ourselves in our actions (codes). A powerful sense of loss, even melancholy, permeates Telling Motions reinforcing this perception of incompletion, our inability to access either ourselves or our environment. This work functions as a beautiful mirror that would tell no lies regarding its beholder, evidencing the claustrophobia of our perceptions of ourselves and our things. Seaman's Telling Motions is language at its most fundamental, transcending arguments such as textuality versus verbalism, and touching on that which animates both. If Derrida's position on the historicity of language, in reference to textuality and verbalism, is in opposition to the structuralist position, Seaman's tape suggests a third option. Derrida accuses Roland Barthes of paradox in his celebration of the text but simultaneous denial of its precedence over the spoken word. In this Derrida is expressing his own preferences for the text. In Seaman's work the possibility emerges for a reconcilation as text and spoken word (parole and langue or langue and parole respectively, depending upon your position), image and music are all equalised, thus becoming secondary codes to a language process of a more primal aspect: an operation of signification that all these higher level codes refer back to, deconstructing the structuralist dependence (a dependence shared by Derrida, but in reverse) on oppositional (dialectical) logic. 5 5 'Langue' and 'parole' are an old couple here; according to Mario Pei 'langue' (a term coined by the Swiss Linguist Saussure) is //the part of the language system which is inherited or institutioned, a complete and homogenous grammatical system used by an entire community, as against an individual's verbal message or 'perole' (Pei, Mario, Glossary of Linguistic Terminology//, New York/ London, 1966, Columbia Univeristy Press). In fact 'parole' and 'langue' are equivalent to 'code' and 'message' that have been used supra. That video makers such as Seaman, Fagin and Rolfe are similarly touching on this vein buried deep in our culture is interesting in that the media they employ is of fairly recent invention- media central to L yotard's Post-Modern Condition. Strangely, video (a new technology) delivers the means to access or suggest processes considered as elemental or primal. Is it that video, due to some intrinsic quality in its nature or due to its historical position and context, is able to (in the hands of certain artists) open a fissure in the codes upon which we have constituted our culture. The Dantesque netherworld imagery of Jean Claude Riga's Ronde de Nuitimages of molten steel, steam and massive machinery - suggests what this fissure may look like if materialised in our artefacts, the expression of how we see ourselves. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17237/en/mm1-3-the-primal"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/125/17237-400-304.jpg" height="304" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#3 The primal" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#3 The primal - Mediamatic.net" href="/17237/en/mm1-3-the-primal">MM1#3 The primal</a> Jean Claude Riga Ronde de Nuit 1985 Ronde de Nuit is a visual metaphor for the conceptual/psychological world we have created, the codes we have developed. Codes that have become machines (artefacts) that dwarf their inventors. Riga's work deals with a number of interrelated issues regarding power, control, stratification and specialisation. That these readings could be applied to a large industrial complex (a symbol of a past age) and to the more abstract constructions of a post-industrial society suggests the fundamental similarities in the processes and forces that function through all forms of organisation - including the organisation of information as represented here in the medium of video. Such modes of organisation gain their power via complexity through reference to multiple readings that allow the system to function in a plurality of contexts and yet remain unassailable due to an inherent opacity- the essence (particularly evident in poetry) of ambiquity, the key to multiplicity and division. These factors are managed to great effect by John Adams in his work Intellectual Properties where his stated intent is to explore power: political power, economic power, the mass media and the temptation to create multiple fictions that nevertheless tally. Adams' world is one that is predicated on ambiguity and where that ambiguity can be exploited to give everyone a little of what they think they want whilst actually only giving them what you want to. That this function in art is constantly rewarded links the work to its own context and status whilst allowing it to look out on a world (of money, power and advertising) that is not reaJly that different from its own. Through using the same elements in varying sequences Adams' creates a multiplicity of readings that reinforces the idea that society takes its forms from the dominant language structures that have informed the human intelligence since its origin. In Adams' work it is the processes of power found in desire and gratification, fear and rejection, possession and dispossession and the ensuing paranoia/acceptance the subject must deal with that motivated his character. This in,turn reflected on the viewer's relationship with the video maker and the medium of video within this dynamic. <h2>Display</h2> The problems of this rela,tionship between viewer and producer and the video are manifold and still largely unresolved. Although some artists are starting to adress these questions the nature of the context within which they place their work, and its effect upon the production and reception of that work, remains highly problematic. Video Festivals such as Den Haag and Bonn have evolved as did the museum and the gallery system, almost at random. The video festival is essentially a hybrid form, based upon the film festival and the art survey exhibition models. This tends to place video art as the bastard child of film and video without its own context. Whilst some artists may be happy with this situation others must feel very uncomfortable in this context. (This could also be said of the audience). The positive aspects of video festivals are numerous, however one is left wondering why some artists place their work in a context that could be detrimental to their ideas. For these artists the need for an alternative mode of display is critical. Whilst Den Haag, which is broad and cinema oriented, and Bonn, which is focused on artist's video within a gallery context, do represent alternatives, further thought to the diversity of the works and their equally diverse requirements needs to be given if video is to get the best possible reception. Photos: Auke Bergsma for Kijkhuis Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#3 Simon Biggs http://www.mediamatic.net/id/14285 c c ARTICLE 1 http://www.mediamatic.net/id/17238 2009-04-24T12:07:19+02:00 Travel in Light

Travelling evokes numerous thoughts and feelings: often exciting because one is facing the unknown, because one thinks about the new destination, and recalls one's previous journeys. At the airport, still a few hours away from their destinations, the travellers only feel stress. Nervously they await the moment of taking off. The situation sketched above inspired Nan Hoover to make three tapes, which were eventually to be combined in the installation Travel in Light, which was shown at The Appel in Amsterdam, October 1986.

<a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17256/en/mm1-3-travel-in"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/389/17256-400-296.jpg" height="296" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#3 Travel in" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#3 Travel in - Mediamatic.net" href="/17256/en/mm1-3-travel-in">MM1#3 Travel in</a> Three monitors, on tall, slender pedestals, are each showing a landscape. The monitor on the left shows an impressive mountain with a snowy peak. Wisps of mist drift round the mountain. The image of the landscape is composed of many different shades of grey mixed with blue. The monitor in the middle emits an orange glow, in the form of a hilly landscape, and suggests a desert. The monitor on the right shows a road through a rolling country-side. Contrary to the two other tableaux, this sky is of a light colour, and not hidden behind the landscape. The colours yellow and blue were used for this tape. Only very slight changes can be perceived in the landscapes: differences of light and dark give the impression that the forms are changing place, and produce other shades of colour. However, the image stays the same. The beauty of these still landscapes is almost unreal and suggests that these are dream-visions. The artist has appropriately entitled this: the imagined landscape. This feature of Travel in Light is very close to its intention. The ideal location for this installation would be an airport. Thus Nan Hoover's proposal to place Travel in Light in a quiet nook of the departure hall of Schiphol Airport Amsterdam. Travellers, made nervous by the hectic atmosphere of the airport, are taken by Nan Hoover to landscapes that only exist in the imagination and the subconscious. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17257/en/mm1-3-travel"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/129/17257-400-321.jpg" height="321" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#3 Travel" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#3 Travel - Mediamatic.net" href="/17257/en/mm1-3-travel">MM1#3 Travel</a> The installation evokes memories of landscapes that one has seen before, which in the meantime have already become dream- visions. In this way the installation can function as a point of rest in the hurried atmosphere of the departure hall. It is remarkable that for the creation of these ideal landscapes Nan Hoover did not use intricate forms of image manipulation, but only worked with paper structures and light. <h2>Dialogue</h2> Travel in Light is also intended for a public which is not normally interested in video art. At the moment Nan Hoover is employed in making video art meant for public buildings. She wants her installations to start a dialogue with the building and its function. This kind of video art, intended for a wider audience than most video art, is quite suitable for art sponsoring, and in the future Nan Hoover hopes to collaborate with business companies. At the moment she is working on another installation which is intended for the entrance hall of a college for architecture. Five monitors placed on tall pedestals form a semi-circle with its convex side towards the entrance. The monitor screens are on the concave side. The tape shown in the installation shows how Japanese architecture deals with form, space and light. The artist focuses on the efficiency of Japanese architecture. The Japanese are always trying to reveal the essence of a certain space. This philosophic inside of the installation contrasts strongly with its massive exterior, which symbolizes the robust nature of architecture. Clearly the design for this installation in form and content is intended for a building which houses a college for architecture. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17258/en/mm1-3-travel"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/551/17258-400-319.jpg" height="319" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#3 Travel" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#3 Travel - Mediamatic.net" href="/17258/en/mm1-3-travel">MM1#3 Travel</a> <h2>Space</h2> Travel in Light, and the installation which she is working on now, seem to poim to a new direction in Nan Hoover's work. Both pieces refer to the locations where they are placed. This aspect was absent from her earlier video work. Compared to her earlier work, however, the changes are not really marked. In her earlier work as well, she explored 'space', besides light and motion. In her present work, she looks at 'space' from different angles, and also takes into account the function of a certain space. In earlier tapes and performances she highlighted the space in relation to light and dark, and motion within a certain space. An evolved version of her experiences seems to manifest itself in Travel in Light. In a very early tape, like Enclosures (1975) Nan Hoover is already showing how the incidence of light can change the forms of bodies and paper structures. In Landscapes (1977) a landscape is suggested by means of close-ups of a face. Here again forms are changed under the influence of light. Three- dimensional structures (bodies, paper-structures) are used in these tapes to create new effects by means of light and shadow. A space is created which can only exist in the imagination. In a tape like Profecrions (1980) Nan Hoover starts from an existing space, a room, which in combination with sunlight forms the medium for moving dream-visions. The tape was made in Berlin in 1980. Nan was given a grant from the DAAD (Deutsche Akademische Austausch Dienst), enabling her to work in Berlin for one year. Referring to this period in a 1981 interview, she said: The studio offered by the DAAD has had great influence on me. It was a large space, cut into two parts, in the Bundesallee. At the other side of this busy street is a huge cori/plex of buildings. When I came here in June 1980 the sunlight immediately made a profound impression on me.1 Projections are the shadows of passing traffic and pedestrians on the walls of her studio; in the tape they have a life of their own. 1 Willem van Beek Nan Hoover; de relatie tussen beeld en imagination in: Kunstbeeld 8 irg. 5 Amsterdam The new approach to space in Travel in Light and the next project is the fact that she no longer uses a certain space only to express something. In addition she concentrates not only on imaginary spaces, but also on existing spaces with their specific characteristics, She made a link, as it were, between the spaces in our minds, the 'imagined landscapes' in Travel in Light, and the actual space we find ourselves in, in the case of Travel in Light the departure hall. Similar aspects can be found in the installations which she is working on now. Here Nan Hoover links an existing space with ideas about the use of space, form and light in Japan. A more extrovert approach now supplements the introspective way in which Nan Hoover dealt with light, form and space in her earlier work. This adds an extra dimension to her work, and provides a well-defined destination for the poetic, introvert video images. Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#3 Marie-Adèle Rajandream http://www.mediamatic.net/id/14235 d d ARTICLE 1 http://www.mediamatic.net/id/17264 2009-10-12T08:21:43+02:00 Song of Songs

During the last two weeks of September artists who have extended elements of their work into performances made presentations in the Shaffy Theatre in Amsterdam. One of them was the artist Michal Shabtay, born in Israel, who developed a performance Song of Songs, a nine-channel video work presented in such a way (the monitors are moving across the stage) that it becomes a stage-play. Pim Jonker describes the performance which, in spite of the fact that it was not wholly convincing, made a very interesting link between video and theatre, ballet or even opera.

The Song of Songs is one of the oldest extant collections of profane love-songs and epithalamia (wedding songs). They date from the fourth or fifth century BC and are usually attributed to King Solomon. The Song of Songs contains a number of descriptions of love, its ceremonies and rituals, and of nature as a symbol of love. Because the Song of Songs describes physical love in a very straightforward way, it was difficult to accept it as an integral part of the Bible. Far into the first century AD it was only sung at profane festivals and in wine shops. Yet it was seen as a poetical work of such beauty that it was not allowed to disappear. The Song of Songs was said to be essentially an allegory, a song in praise of the love of God towards the land of Israel, and it was collected in the Old Testament. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17314/en/song-of-songs-installation-diagram"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/900/17314-400-282.jpg" height="282" width="400" alt="" title="Song of Songs installation diagram" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Song of Songs installation diagram - Mediamatic.net" href="/17314/en/song-of-songs-installation-diagram">Song of Songs installation diagram</a> Although the style is coherent, it is not easy to discover a plot in the songs, or to pin down the characters. Nevertheless two principal characters are always present: the lover or bridegroom, and the loved one or shulamith (bride). These two describe each other repeatedly, also metaphorically as plants, landscapes, or complete tableaus. ...His head is as the most fine gold, his locks are bushy, and black as a raven. His eyes are as doves by the rivers of the waters... ... Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor; thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins... Such expressions of erotic feelings and passions are typical of the Mediterranean area and the Middle East and were already the key to Shabtay's earlier video-work. These feelings are reflected in a cryptical way, and are always present, though hidden, in daily life. In the cultures of the North almost the opposite is true nowadays. According to Michal Shabtay , our exhibition and consumption of sex are emphasized by direct means and are public by nature. The combination of Eastern erotic symbolic language and the original intention of the Song of Songs, that is as a nonreligious cycle of love poems, inspired Michal Shabtay to create her performance. There is no intrigue or narrative. In each poem bride and bridegroom, or symbols referring to them, are put in different situations and on various locations. Panoramas, impressions of irrigation of the land, and a selection of subtropical vegetation become metaphors for the feelings of love. Some characteristics of our modern times, such as images of cars, tourists or soldiers, brusquely interrupt this poetic nature at regular intervals. The images are shown by nine video-monitors placed on mobile consoles. Eight of these are manipulated by actors dressed in black. This phrasing of movements leads to a tight choreography of geometric pauerns. The monitors are manouvered in a V-shape, a straight line, or a circle, in accordance with the images shown. A compilation of music and sound can be heard over the speakers in the auditorium, and each monitor produces its own specific audio-fragment in certain tableaus. Throughout the performance a possible meeting of bride and bridegroom is suggested. Yet they are never present on the same monitor at the same time. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17315/en/song-of-songs-performance-view"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/975/17315-400-287.jpg" height="287" width="400" alt="" title="Song of Songs performance view" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Song of Songs performance view - Mediamatic.net" href="/17315/en/song-of-songs-performance-view">Song of Songs performance view</a> Michal Shabtay Song of Songs desert scene The suspense created in this way reaches its climax when the monitors show the rituals of a marriage-ceremony. The marriage is celebrated according to old Jewish traditions, or traditions of other conservative societies that can be found in Arab countries such as Yemen. The fast and repetitive rhythm of the images and the dramatic action suggest the physical meeting of bride and bridegroom. Generally speaking, two monitors are reserved for the main characters, while six monitors function as decorative scenery, emphasizing the symbolic interactions. With these six monitors, Shabtay suggests motion and standstill by means of synchronous and asynchronous images. Now we come to the ninth monitor, which is fixed, and lights up from time to time. An old man in folkloristic dress is sitting on a stone staircase, and reads aloud the Song of Songs in a melodious Hebrew. There is a clear relation with the Japanese Bunraku- theatre, where actors dressed in black manipulate puppets of about 1 metre high while a narrator explains the story. Shabtay presents the old man as the connection between the narrative and the video-monitors. He announces the various stanzas and represents the universal value of communication. The performance Song of Songs is of a very accomplished technical level. Shabtay expresses her emotional relation with the erotic tradition of the East, especially where women are concerned, by means of cool video images and sometimes complex stage-directions. The result is not always easily accessible. Nevertheless she has unravelled basic elements of the medium video, such as colour, light, sound, image, size, space, synchronity, and motion in an interesting way. These elements were then recombined and used in a different way. Video as it were, comes out of the box, and starts a more intensive relationship with the spectator. Translation: Fokke Sluiter Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#3 Pim Jonker http://www.mediamatic.net/id/17263 d d ARTICLE 1 http://www.mediamatic.net/id/17316 2009-04-24T12:11:15+02:00 De Transfiguratie Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#3 Kees de Groot http://www.mediamatic.net/id/32768 d d ARTICLE 1 http://www.mediamatic.net/id/17320 2009-04-24T12:13:21+02:00 Das Rheingold

Frank en Koen Theys are staging a Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen by video: Lied van mijn land (song of my soil/ chant of my country/ air of my earth/ hymn of my home?). Part one, Het Rijngoud, was completed last summer and the second part, De Walkure, is expected in april '87.

<a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17334/en/alberich-he-he-ihr-nicker-wie-seid-ihr-niedlich"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/547/17334-400-320.jpg" height="320" width="400" alt="" title="Alberich: He he! Ihr Nicker! Wie seid ihr niedlich neidliches Volk!..." playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Alberich: He he! Ihr Nicker! Wie seid ihr niedlich neidliches Volk!... - Mediamatic.net" href="/17334/en/alberich-he-he-ihr-nicker-wie-seid-ihr-niedlich">Alberich: He he! Ihr Nicker! Wie seid ihr niedlich neidliches Volk!...</a> In 1848, Richard Wagner drew the outlines for the theme of his music drama Der Ring des Nibelungen. This work had initially been planned as a single narrative about the adventures of the immaculate hero Siegfried, but in the years that followed, during which Wagner worked out his ideas, it grew into a grand epic, to be performed on four separate evenings. The principle narrative, Siegfrieds Tod (later on Götterdämmerung), was combined with Siegfried and Die Walküre to form a trilogy, to which was added the overture Das Rheingold, which relates what happened before the beginning of the narrative. In this seminal period, many new ideas and influences found their way to the heart of Wagner's drama, without compromising the original unity. It is this abundance of themes, motives and narrative strands which explains the tremendous appeal this masterpiece has always had for his fellowartists, who have taken it as the startingpoint for their own works. Der Ring des Nibelungen and Wagner's other operas could irreverently be called a liberally filled grab bag, where everyone can take his pick. Tragedy, love, war, death: all the grand themes of life can be found in the operas. After the Second World War interest declined for a while because Hitler's boundless admiration for Wagner's music prejudiced the post-war generation against the German composer. More recently, however, interest in Wagner has been growing steadily. Two german artists who exemplify this interest are: the German painter Anselm Kiefer with his leaden, burnt out and carbonated landscapes, and filmmaker Hans Jürgensyberberg (filminterpretation of Wagner's Parsifal). <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17335/en/mm1-3-das-rheingold"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/673/17335-400-329.jpg" height="329" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#3 Das Rheingold" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#3 Das Rheingold - Mediamatic.net" href="/17335/en/mm1-3-das-rheingold">MM1#3 Das Rheingold</a> Koen en Frank Theys, two brothers living in Brussels, have been working for some years on a video production of Der Ring des Nibelungen, of which the first part, Het Rijngoud, has been completed. This video was shown at the exposition In het hart van de Maalstroon in the Paleis voor Schone Kunsten in Brussels, and by Mediamatic in Groningen. For Lied van mijn Land (the title of the brothers' version), Koen en Frank Theys have exploited the limited technical facilities at their disposal in an original and effective way. Quite in the spirit of the Leitmotiv technique used by Wagner in composing his drama the brothers developed pictoral motives for the different characters, situations and events. In Wagner's music certain instruments and melodies accompany specific characters or situations, and the Theys brothers have applied the same principle to video-language. These pictorial emblems were then combined and mixed. However, this does not make it any easier to follow the anecdotal narrative and its specific meaning. After seeing the video for the first time, I remained in the proverbal dark about many of its aspects. The Theys brothers made frequent use of the chroma-key technique, and in this way they were able to generate enough images from their limited basic material to unfold the narrative. On other levels as well, the possibilities of the medium have been creatively exploited, without the technical aspects being given undue emphasis. The Giants, Gods, en Dwarfs, for instance, are played by actors who were given rheir appropriate size (stretched out, normal, or compressed, respectively), by means of a technical trick. Successive horizontal or venical sliding of frames suggests large spaces and long distance travelling. Simple but effective. In this way, the Theys brothers have visualized the complex narrative structure of Das Rheingold in quite an interesting way. Wagner's long vocal scores have played them a few tricks here and there; visually the tape is not always attractive, and at times even rather dull. The tape is more interesting from a theoretical point of view. The Theys brothers have used the narrative as a starting- point for a complex statement about the state of affairs in present- day culture. <h2>Das Rheingold</h2> As a preliminary to a further review of their interpretation of Wagner's drama, it is necessary to consider the overal structure of Das Rheingold. The opening of the story is set on the bottom of the Rhine, where the Rhine-daughters guard the Rhine-gold. Out of night's darkness appears the Dwarf (Nibelung) Alberich, who at once falls in love with the Rhine- daughters and tries to seduce them. Each in turn seems to yield to his advances, only to deceive him afterwards. At dawn the Rhine-gold is glistening and glowing. It catches Alberich's eye, but the Rhine-daughters tell him that the only way for him to take possession of the gold, and forge it into the powerful Ring, is to make a vow to renounce love. Woglinde sings: Nur wer der Minne Macht versagt, nur wer der Liebe Lust verjagt, nur der erzielt sich den Zauber, zum Reif zu zwingen das Gold. Mindful of his recent experiences with the female sex, Alberich is easily persuaded to make the sacrifice. The Ring he will forge from the gold will make him ruler of the world, and he secretly hopes that he can buy the love of women with gold and power. Alberich disappears with the gold to the realm of the Nibelungen deep under the ground. He forges rhe ring, subjects the dwarf-tribe of the Nibelungen, and forces them to dig up treasures for him deep in the earth. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17336/en/mm1-3-das-rheingold"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/360/17336-400-344.jpg" height="344" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#3 Das Rheingold" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#3 Das Rheingold - Mediamatic.net" href="/17336/en/mm1-3-das-rheingold">MM1#3 Das Rheingold</a> In the meantime, the Gods wake up in their heavenly realm, where the Giant brothers Fasolt and Fafner have just built a beautiful castle for them (Walhalla). In reward the supreme God Wotan has promised them Freya, the goddess of eternal youth and love. The Giants make a point of collecting their reward, in spite of repeated entreaties, especially from Fricka, Freya's sister and wife of Wotan. In the nick of time rhe sly and crafty fire-god Loge appears on the scene with the story about the gold amassed by the Nibelungen, and in the end the Giants are persuaded to accept this enormous treasure instead of the beautiful Freya. Loge and Wotan leave for the underworld where Alberich plays the tyrant in a reign of terror. By means of a cunning stratagem they succeed in tricking him out of the Ring and his brand new magic helmet which allows him to be invisible and change shape. Furious about their treachery, Alberich curses the Ring: Wie durch Fluch es mir geriet, verflucht sei dieser Ring!... Jeder giere nach seinem Gut, doch keiner geniesse mit Nutzen sein! ohne Wucher hüt' ihn sein Herr, doch den Würger zieh' er ihm zu!... so lang er lebt, sterb er lechzend dahin, des Ringes Herr als der Ringes Knecht: bis in meiner Hand den geraubten wieder ich halte!, and when he is set free, he vows to win back the Ring for himself. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17337/en/mm1-3-das-rheingold"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/749/17337-400-303.jpg" height="303" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#3 Das Rheingold" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#3 Das Rheingold - Mediamatic.net" href="/17337/en/mm1-3-das-rheingold">MM1#3 Das Rheingold</a> Then the Giants bring back Freya, and claim their treasure. Fasolt pretends to be so depressed by the loss of the beautiful hostage, that she must be covered with gold before he can forget her. The treasure is piled upon her, but parts of her body (her eyes and her glistening hair) are still visible. Much to his regret, in the end Wotan must add the Helmet and the Ring -which he naturally intended to keep for himself- to the pile of gold to fulfill the conditions for her release. In this way the Ring changes hands again, and at this moment, Alberich's curse becomes operative: in a quarrel about the division of the treasure, Fafner kills his brother, and flies with the gold and rhe Ring. The day, which began so gloriously, draws to an end, and the Gods retire to their castle to reflect on the situation. While they cross the Rainbow-bridge, deep down below them the Rhine- daughters bemoan their loss. End of Das Rheingold. Obviously a rich narrative like this can be interpreted and developed in many ways. I will not venture to name all the possibilities, instead I want to bring up a single important element: the theme of the increasing corruption of beauty and purity, which in the form of the gold, and later on the Ring, are abused in the power game. Essentially a reflection of the ancient theme of the struggle between good and evil, purity and corruption. Here lies the connection with the interpretation of the Theys brothers. In their turn they relate this theme to a kind of culture criticism that is rather in vogue these days: the idea that it is no longer possible to create original images and ways of expression. The crisis of the postmodern era, the disbelief in a progress in the visual arts. (I will restrict myself to this example, although it is not the only interesting theoretical aspect of the tape). <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17339/en/mm1-3-das-rheingold"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/346/17339-400-298.jpg" height="298" width="400" alt="" title="MM1#3 Das Rheingold" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#3 Das Rheingold - Mediamatic.net" href="/17339/en/mm1-3-das-rheingold">MM1#3 Das Rheingold</a> The Theys brothers' Rijngoud opens with a noise-picture in a round frame. Video- noise is here to be interpreted as the simplest and purest of images. The unspoilt, archetypical image, with all its creative possibilities still present. This amorphous (noise-) image symbolises the Rhine-gold. When Alberich takes possession of it, the image assumes a square shape, clearly an echo of the frame of the video-monitor. Then Alberich turns the noise-picture upside-down; the picture turns to grey. He seems to be activating the picture, switching on the possibility to form pictures, imitate or copy them. The Ring created in this way allows him to reproduce reality (a theme we shall meet again in Der Ring des Nibelungen) and gives him power over the world (another time-honoured theme). This is clearly expressed in a scene in the underworld, where the events in this world are presented by nine images, placed on top of each other like monitors, which are controlled by Alberich. Above we see the realm of Gods, in the middle the Rhinedaughters and the Giants with their hostages, and at the bottom the terrorstricken world of the Nibelungen. This is clearly a negation of the power of the imagination, because Alberich does not use the power of the Ring to create original images; he is only reproducing already existing images. Another scene, where the Goddes Freya is covered with the treasure of the Nibelungen, remains rather mysterious in my interpretation. Freya is caught in a grey frame within the picture-frame. While at the bottom of the picture the Gods hand over the treasure to the Giants, the frame is filled, by fits and starts, with the noise-picture, the Leitmoriv of the treasure. In the video-noise, another image of Freya can be discerned, only this reproduction (produced by the Ring) is naked. Behind the naked Freya, we can still see the original (dressed) Freya moving about; two realities superimposed on each other. When the treasure has been given to the Giants, Freya (dressed) steps out of the frame into Wotan's arms. She is free again. The Giants, in the meantime, are caressing the television-image of the naked Freya, and quarrel (about what? Freya, or the treasure? are these one and the same?). Then Fafner kills his brother Fasolt. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17342/en/mm1-3das-rheingold"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/918/17342-284-400.jpg" height="400" width="284" alt="" title="MM1#3Das Rheingold" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - MM1#3Das Rheingold - Mediamatic.net" href="/17342/en/mm1-3das-rheingold">MM1#3Das Rheingold</a> A complex symbolic image; eroticism and the power of reproduction seem to be intertwined. Emphasizing the natural similarities between sex/lust and reproduction/creation/art. Another, important theme is the contrast between , nature and culture. Yet nowhere is it's meaning clearly defined, an objection that goes for other themes of the tape as well. Quite a lot of interesting openings are presented, but no real 'goals' are scored. On the other hand, this openness invites the audience to reflect on the philosophy behind the tape; there is food for thought. The theme of the endless repetition of images, and the loss of originality is most clearly expressed in the scene in which Alberich curses the Ring. All at once we are confronted with an marked break in style, in the form of a sequence that was obviously lifted from another video. While in the foreground, Alberich curses the Ring, behind him we see pictures of a kind of mediaeval tower, on top of which stands a solitary figure, with his wings outspread. Next follows a close-up of a menacing commander-like character wearing reflecting sunglasses, who is apparently standing at the foot of the tower and ordering the solitary figure to jump/fly. In spite of his wings, the latter is doomed to be crushed bv his fall. This fatal event is repeated s'everal times, and again and again the winged character is forced to try and conquer the law of gravity. This scene was done by means of a loop; the sequence of images is always the same and the audience know from the outset that the winged person will die. In a context of reproduction and repetition, this scene can be interpreted in more than one way. It is not only an attempt to bring new life and significance to an image (which already existed in another context); this regeneration process is also repeated many times. In this way, the reproduction process attacks itself, and questions its own function. This idea is given additional force by the contents of the image -which, refering to the tragic myths of Icarus and Sisyphus-, expresses a growing feeling of futility and impotence. A possible interpretation would be that Alberich's curse curbs the power of the Ring to create images, confining it to endless, and therefore fruitless, repetition. No invention, no innovation, from now on only more of the same. Imitatio! <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17343/en/alberich-bin-ich-nun-frei-wirklich-frei-so-grüss"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/999/17343-251-400.jpg" height="400" width="251" alt="" title="Alberich: //Bin ich nun frei? Wirklich frei? So grüss' euch den Feiner" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Alberich: //Bin ich nun frei? Wirklich frei? So grüss' euch den Feiner - Mediamatic.net" href="/17343/en/alberich-bin-ich-nun-frei-wirklich-frei-so-grüss">Alberich: //Bin ich nun frei? Wirklich frei? So grüss' euch den Feiner</a> The impossibility of creating new images is a negative and pessimistic notion, which carries in it the seeds of paradox: for how is it possible to state, on the one hand that progress has stopped dead, and on the other hand, to continue to produce works of art, even prestigious ones such as a video-version of Der Ring des Nibelungen (talking about reproduction). Is it really true that new images cannot be created anymore, or is this, generally speaking, only a clever excuse for a kind of regressive lust for copying, and a lack of imagination? When I consider the kaleidoscopic image of present-day art, I am not -quite honestly- struck by a feeling of stagnation, emptiness, and despair. On the contrary, I feel that an enormous range of new possibilities has been created after the compulsive urge of the avant-garde for innovation has died down. New ground, which -it must be said- as yet only a handful of artists have begun to open up and cultivate. The others are traumatized, waiting to see what will happen, or still plowing the same, too familiar, soil. They do not (yet?) grow new crops, and instead analyse the fertile ground to death. This is where I see the danger of excessive 'self-thematization', by which I mean an art that is only concerned with itself and its own crises. The seventies have provided sample illustration of the (often) distressing resultsbe it in another context. There is nothing wrong with taking a pause every now and then to analyse the situation, on the contrary. All the same we must take care not to get stuck in a kind of complacent self-pity, and above all, we must not forget how to keep moving. One of my criticisms on Het Rijngoud concerns the fact that it partly falls into this trap of 'self-thematization'; another one is that the tremendous range of dramatic possibilities and openings of the original opera has not been developed sufficiently. The quality of the acting, for instance seems to have received little attention. On the other hand we must not forget that Het Rijngoud is only the first part of the Nibelungen-cycle. The synopsis of the other parts explains that the old culture of the Gods will be taken over by the new culture of the anarchist heroes Siegmund and Siegfried. For a new culture, a new videolanguage is needed. Perhaps we ought to see this first part as an exploration of new ground. Het Rijngoud is of 85 minutes duration and is distributed by De Beursschouwburg in Brussels. A home format copy of this tape is available through Mediamatic at the reduced price of /250, - You get a copy that is only to be used for private viewing. Copying, renting or public presentation would be illegal. Please use the reply card in this issue. For tapes with extended rights or rental please contact De Beursschouwburg. Translation: Fokke Sluiter Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#3 Gerard Lakke http://www.mediamatic.net/id/17321 d d ARTICLE 1 http://www.mediamatic.net/id/17616 2009-04-24T12:18:23+02:00 Touch Screen Video

Video art costs time. Thus, it's more frequently presented in other situations than non- time based art forms, for instance: in cinema or theatrical setting. This article is seeking alternatives that are more suited to current ways of looking at art.

<a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17643/en/touch-screen-video"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/142/17643-400-117.jpg" height="117" width="400" alt="" title="Touch Screen Video" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Touch Screen Video - Mediamatic.net" href="/17643/en/touch-screen-video">Touch Screen Video</a> There's nothing as cosy as a video festival. The social hullabaloo around video (art) and the useful business contacts one establishes. The delightful snacks, inspiring and extremely fluid discussions at the bar, flirtations with male or female colleagues. Crowded appointment and address books, seeing old friends and acquaintances again - I wouldn't miss it for the world! It's just that the looking at the videos is a bit of an ordeal. Not that there's anything wrong with video art, at least not more than with any other form of art or video. The problem is really its presentation form at festivals. All video festivals are built around the same nucleus: the screening of tapes. A different program takes place around this in each festival: the social rituals, forum discussions, live performances, installations, TV transmissions and workshops. Once again: my life and pleasure. But the tapes are a disaster. For instance, the World Wide Video Festival (organized annually by the Kijkhuis in The Hague since 1980 and perhaps the best in Europe) showed around a hundred tapes this year with an average lenght of 25 minutes. Therefore, that's more than a full working week of continuous video art. By means of repetitions and parallel screenings in the three halls, it's possible for the viewer to compose and follow an individual program. The festival lasts six days, twelve hours a day, so along with the tapes there is still time for the sideprogram. The whole design works perfectly and I have a deep respect for the people who prepare this and other festivals. However, there's a problem: the problem of time. The problem of time is naturally mentioned in connection with video art but at festivals one is confronted with it in all its, awfulness. Not if you attend the whole festival but certainly if you only have a few days. This year, it wasn't possible to follow the whole program even if you stayed four days in The Hague. Of course that doesn't have to be a problem. But despite the fact of a rigorous selection process by the festival's organizers (less than 10% of the tapes submitted are actually chosen), fewer than half the tapes - to me personally at least - are worth the trouble. The festival's over before I've been able to work out which part I ought to go to see. I go home with the feeling of having missed the most beautiful and important tapes and of having wasted too much time on what for me was unimportant material. But I worked so hard! Much to the annoyance of my fellow festival visitors, I would get up and leave the hall as soon as I lost interest in a tape. Then I'd hurry to another floor to check out if something was happening there. After a quick inspection, I'd often decide to take a look at the third program. Only to realize that perhaps I should have stayed in the first hall after all. Where meanwhile a new tape had already started. So I waste an important part of my time at the festival by nervously running up and down stairs and flicking through the catalogue in a panic. Even when I do see something brilliant which I stay to watch, there's always the nagging doubt that perhaps that tape being shown in hall 3 is even better? There is a simple solution for the problems outlined above which is the logical result of the medium's technical characteristics and even offers the festival arranger new possibilities. <h2>The New Festival</h2> The process of looking at video art must be individualized. Every visitor to the festival (or perhaps every two or three) should be provided with a monitor with a remote control unit and headphones. Using the remote control, the visitor chooses from the festival program which is simultaneously available on a large number of channels. Probably, this situation seems familiar. The possibility of making a free choice from a wide range of programs already exists in the living room. But please note, this isn't an argument for transmitting video art on TV . I'm only borrowing the distribution techniques developed for (cable) television. By these means, installations are also easy to realize, they can be completely arranged from component parts for cable television. Along with the 'individual monitor', a regular colour TV with a 99 channel stereo tuner. And, of course, teletext: perhaps for subtitling, background information about each tape and clear information about the whole program. In its purest and most neutral form, every tape from the festival would have its own channel. Arranged in the alphabetical order of the authors. The tapes would be shown all day. They would begin every ten minutes so that it's easy for the viewer to start at the right moment if that's appreciated. One can find one's way through the festival with the help of the teletext, check everything out for the first hour in order afterwards to view particular tapes, some'in part, some many times over. Of course, it's possible to use one TV with other visitors, the continuous process of choice stimulating discussion. If a particular tape is recommended by an acquaintance, it's easy to view it at once, perhaps together and to discuss the tape's peculiarities with each other. A still more important benefit is the regained intimacy of the new festival. My feeling is that video art is best seen in the privacy of one's living room. During the first video festival in The Hague, there was a small hall with eight chairs and a monitor. That was the best hall in the Kijkhuis: you could touch the image. There was a space like that at this year's Videonale in Bonn. But next time, that festival will probably attract too large a public and switch over to projectors. A compensation deemed necessary for the horrors of looking at art in herds. Along with individualizing the process of looking at video art, this technique also offers possibilities for the exhibition organizer. <h2>The New Video Exhibition</h2> The presentation techniques described above have an interesting resemblance to the way in which museums present visual art. It concerns simultaneousness. The simultaneous presence of all the work shown at an ordinary exhibition gives its organizer specific possibilities for expression and a related responsibility that goes further than the choice the festival organizer makes. Along with the selection, the exhibition arranger's power also exists in the combinations and successions within that show. In the new video art exhibition, one is aware of the obvious equivalents to these possibilities. Everyone knows that interesting confrontations occur on television when the same news item is covered in different ways on four channels simultaneously. Or when the President of the United States appears on the news program while elsewhere holding an innocent family hostage in an old B film. These sort of more or less trivial and coincidental meetings can be arranged and exploited within the total program available in the video art exhibition. In addition, it's of course still possible to play a number of tapes one after another on one channel so that the visitor switches between clusters. Within the total number of channels, one can also imagine groupings: 1 to 9, 20 to 35 and so forth. Or, less artificially, the program combinations are distributed amongst a number of monitors which then function in a way which resembles a room in a museum. These monitors can in turn be confronted with stationary installations within the exhibition space. It is also possible to . form combinations with tapes which are permanently being screened and with other forms of visual art. This individualization of screenings will restore significant contact between the public and video art and stimulate its easy integration amongst other forms of visual art. Translation: Annie Wright <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17644/en/touch-screen-video"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/127/17644-400-111.jpg" height="111" width="400" alt="" title="Touch Screen Video" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Touch Screen Video - Mediamatic.net" href="/17644/en/touch-screen-video">Touch Screen Video</a> Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#3 Willem Velthoven http://www.mediamatic.net/id/874 d d ARTICLE 1 http://www.mediamatic.net/id/17664 2009-04-24T12:20:23+02:00 Untitled <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17666/en/untitled-1"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/754/17666-274-400.jpg" height="400" width="274" alt="" title="Untitled 1" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Untitled 1 - Mediamatic.net" href="/17666/en/untitled-1">Untitled 1</a> <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17687/en/untitled-2"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/768/17687-398-400.jpg" height="400" width="398" alt="" title="Untitled 2" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Untitled 2 - Mediamatic.net" href="/17687/en/untitled-2">Untitled 2</a> Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#3 Karin Wortelboer http://www.mediamatic.net/id/17663 d d ARTICLE 1 http://www.mediamatic.net/id/17688 2009-04-24T12:21:17+02:00 Videonale Bonn

The Bonn Videonal is a biannual videofestival that took place for the second time last fall. Friedemann Malsch describes the set-up of the festival and spots media-specific developments in art video.

<a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17978/en/hanno-baethe-fairy-tales-1986"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/339/17978-400-286.jpg" height="286" width="400" alt="" title="Hanno Baethe 'Fairy Tales' 1986" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Hanno Baethe 'Fairy Tales' 1986 - Mediamatic.net" href="/17978/en/hanno-baethe-fairy-tales-1986">Hanno Baethe 'Fairy Tales' 1986</a> When asked about his disappointments, and his expectations of video art, Wulf Herzogenrath gave the fallowing answer in the catalogue of the Videonale Bonn: The video-clip and its influence on the perception of video art and control Over the television culture! Indeed, but...is the situation described in this answer a hopeful one, or has video an resigned itself to this situation in disappointment. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17979/en/hanno-baethe-fairy-tales"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/709/17979-400-274.jpg" height="274" width="400" alt="" title="Hanno Baethe 'Fairy Tales'" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Hanno Baethe 'Fairy Tales' - Mediamatic.net" href="/17979/en/hanno-baethe-fairy-tales">Hanno Baethe 'Fairy Tales'</a> Herzogenrath's answer is ambiguous, hence not decisive. Still, his sketch of the situation is accurate, although a catalogue is not the place to go into such manners. Video art has indeed been subject to some important ethical and aestherical changes. These changes are so fundamental that they are unsenIing even to the advocates of video art. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17980/en/hanno-baethe-fairy-tales"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/574/17980-400-282.jpg" height="282" width="400" alt="" title="Hanno Baethe 'Fairy Tales'" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Hanno Baethe 'Fairy Tales' - Mediamatic.net" href="/17980/en/hanno-baethe-fairy-tales">Hanno Baethe 'Fairy Tales'</a> On the other hand, self-confidence has increased among video artists. The noisy complaining in the past about the partly conscious evasion of a confrontation with the medium video, has given way to a strong feeling of self-confidence among specialists. This development could be characterized by the title of F. Paul Grunert's painting: Picture, so that bluebottles will not fall asleep from boredom when watching television. Bluebottles and dragonflies perceive 200 times faster than the human eye, so in their eyes, everything seems to pass in super-slow-motion. To keep their adrenalin up to the mark, they need incredibly fast-moving events. The specialists of such a development are the artists of the electronic era. <h2>Competition</h2> This change of generations was clearly noticeable, more so than ever before, at the Videonale Bonn. This Internationale Feslival und Wettbewerb fur Kunslvideos is still the only one of its kind in West Germany. It offers the possibility for a world-wide orientation in the field of video art. The first festival in 1984 still suffered from financial problems and lack of experience of the organizers, and gave a rather arbitrary picture of the kind of videos that were made in orher countries, but this year there was a representative selection of tapes from Western Europe, The United States, Canada, Scandinavia, Japan, Latin America and the Philipines. The initiators and organizers Dieter Daniels, Bärbel Moser and Petra Unnützer used the past two years for a thorough stocktaking, and for keeping up contacts in Germany and abroad. The results of this work command our respect. The greater financial scope of the festival (among other things, grants from the Ministry of Culture of Nord Rhein Westfalen, the city of Bonn, and the Art Foundation) made it possible for the first time to publish a detailed catalogue. This catalogue contains articles by Peter Weibel and Bruce Yonemoto , statements of video artists, collectors, theorists and distributors, and descriptions and photographs of the tapes shown at the festival. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17981/en/sanja-ivecovic-dalibor-martinis-black-white-1985"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/546/17981-187-400.jpg" height="400" width="187" alt="" title="Sanja Ivecovic. Dalibor Martinis 'Black + White' 1985" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Sanja Ivecovic. Dalibor Martinis 'Black + White' 1985 - Mediamatic.net" href="/17981/en/sanja-ivecovic-dalibor-martinis-black-white-1985">Sanja Ivecovic. Dalibor Martinis 'Black + White' 1985</a> The possibility to submit work was again this year open to everyone. However, there was a jury (Philomene Magers, Wolfgang Preikschat, Uwe Rüth, and the organizers) which made a preselection from the 350 tapes that were submitted. Some seventy tapes were eventually admitted to the competition. The final jury (Jo Ekhardt, Nan Hoover, Lori Zippay, Regina Wyrwoll, Alex Graham) judged these seventy preselected tapes and awarded the prizes: a cash prize of DM 5000, a production prize and a material prize. Beside the tapes taking parr in the competition, the organizers found another seventy tapes worthy to be shown. In addition, video- magazines from France, West Germany, Holland and Yugoslavia, and video art from Latin America and The Philipines were on show. Without exception, the quality of the selected tapes was good. Apparently the large number of works admitted to the competition caused no problem in maintaining high technical and artistic standards. This proves the increased appeal of the Bonn festival, which can now compare with video festivals with a longer tradition, such as Montbéliard and The Hague. It is remarkable that the jury did not hesitate to exclude work by well-known video artists from the pre-selection. Apart from works submitted without participating in the competition- Nan Hoover, Watching out, 1986, and Gabor Bódy, Walzer, 1985. Which might have heen candidates for a prize- well known names such as Peter Weibel, Gesänge des Pluriversums, 1986, Tony Oursler, Evol, 1986, Lydia Schouten, Beauty becomes the Beast, 1985 and Herbert Wentscher Alles Bestens II, 1984/5, were absent from the competition. This proves the independent judgement of the jury. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17985/en/dara-birnbaum-will-o-the-wisp-1985"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/537/17985-182-400.jpg" height="400" width="182" alt="" title="Dara Birnbaum 'Will-O-The-Wisp' 1985" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Dara Birnbaum 'Will-O-The-Wisp' 1985 - Mediamatic.net" href="/17985/en/dara-birnbaum-will-o-the-wisp-1985">Dara Birnbaum 'Will-O-The-Wisp' 1985</a> <h2>Programme</h2> Some of the tapes that did not participate in the competition (forming the so-called 'programme') were especially worthy of attention. Giorgo Cattani (Prisma, 1984) made tapes based on music. Prisma shows a picture split in two parts, accompanied by a minimalistic droning noise. The lower pan of the screen shows the feet of a walking man in realtime. The upper pan shows, in alternating modes of time, associative images that refer to a vague narrative, which only develops in the second half of the tape. Maria Vedder and Bettina Gruber produced a tape Catfish Tango, 1986, which was commissioned by the ZDF . Cologne humor and funny moral inventions make this, not specifically videographic, tape very entertaining. Black and White (1985) by Sanja Ivecovic and Dalibor Martinis fits in the tradition started by Chanayu in 1983. Its sparkling with very plausibly uses the possibilities for manipulation of the electronic image. This in the form of a merry anarchist story, the clear structure of which leads to an existential chaos, to return again to a (damaged) form of this structure. This tape should have taken part in the competition. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17986/en/dieter-kiessling-fallende-scheibe-1986"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/469/17986-186-400.jpg" height="400" width="186" alt="" title="Dieter Kiessling 'Fallende Scheibe' 1986" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Dieter Kiessling 'Fallende Scheibe' 1986 - Mediamatic.net" href="/17986/en/dieter-kiessling-fallende-scheibe-1986">Dieter Kiessling 'Fallende Scheibe' 1986</a> The weakness of the 'programme' was not its quality but its structure. The organization did not make any thematic arrangements. As in the competition, the videos were arranged in alphabetical order. This approach, where no catagories are set up, is quite understandable from the point of view of the organizers. However, it made it more difficult for the spectator to come to grips with the works shown. In addition, a thematic grouping of tapes would offer the possibility to explain in a very simple way the strategy of the festival as regards contents. All the international video festivals organized in Europe first of all want to show the broad 'spectrum' of video. The Bonn festival already restricted itself to video art, thus excluding documentaries etc. This is not a disadvantage, on the contrary. The video 'boom' of the past few years has led to a very obscure and complex state of affairs. However, the restriction to one area of production (and one that is difficult to define at that) is not yet a solution, but only a start. In 1984, the festival's programme was composed of groups of videos from the several participating countries. This gave an idea of the actual situation, because some countries proved to possess very definite stylistic characteristics of their own. In the meantime these differences have almost disappeared, as the Bonn festival made clear. Instead the fact that artists are more and more often involved in TV- programmes, and the high level of development of manipulation technology, has led to a division in the artistic approach to video. It would have been quite possible, for instance, to destill two groups out of all the works submitted: one around the theme suitable for television and another around the theme of electronic manipulation. And there is something else: two years ago the prize- giving ceremony provided publicity for a new generation of video artists, who have increasingly received attention since. Artists such as Axel Klepsch, Jean- Francois Guiton and Norbert Meissner not only proved that there is a generation after Klaus Vom Bruch, but also that there is a renewed interest in the specifically electronic nature of the (picture) screen. In this regard the Videonale led the way and exhibited the new trend, as it revealed the changing climate of discussion among young artists. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17996/en/norbert-meissner-ai-c-1985"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/705/17996-400-124.jpg" height="124" width="400" alt="" title="Norbert Meissner 'Ai.C.' 1985" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Norbert Meissner 'Ai.C.' 1985 - Mediamatic.net" href="/17996/en/norbert-meissner-ai-c-1985">Norbert Meissner 'Ai.C.' 1985</a> <h2>Generation gap</h2> This year's restriction on the 'spectrum' also influenced the jury's selection of prize- winners. The cash-prize was divided among three tapes that were suitable for TV: John Adams' Intellectual Properties, 1985, a 56 minute video essay on the theme of power; Dara Birnbaum's Will-o-the-Whisp, 1985, a very beautiful tape in which a woman at a window thinks back on a previous relationship; and Llurex' Ironland, 1986, a video 'narration' of a landscape, with a formalistic approach towards editing. A pupil of Reiner Ruthenbeck, Dieter Kiessling (Fallende Scheibe 1986) was awarded the production prize, indeed the best - and only - candidate for the prize. Like the cash-prize, the material-prize was shared by three artists: Hanno Baethe (Fairy Tales, 1986) J.F. Guiton (La Tache, 1985/6) and Ivo Dekovic (Linardo, 1985). The following artists received an honourable mention from the jury: Marcel Odenbach (As if memories could deceive me, 1986), Bill Seaman (Telling Motions, 1986) Mark Wilcox (Celebrities, 1985) Gusztàv Hàmos (Killer, 1986), Fabrizio Plessi (Backwater, 1984), Vulture Video (Lo Pay No Way, 1985) Rafael Ortiz (Bridge Party, 1985), Gorilla Tapes (Till Death to Apartheid, 1985) Shalom Gorewitz (Blue Swee, 1985), and James Byrne (Lament, 1985). <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17997/en/paul-garrin-a-human-tube-1986"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/094/17997-198-400.jpg" height="400" width="198" alt="" title="Paul Garrin 'A Human Tube' 1986" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Paul Garrin 'A Human Tube' 1986 - Mediamatic.net" href="/17997/en/paul-garrin-a-human-tube-1986">Paul Garrin 'A Human Tube' 1986</a> The judgement of the jury -apart from the quality of the videos submitted- was conservative, and therefore conflicted with the festival's intention. With one exception (Baethe), all the tapes that might be suitable for TV received awards. Not one of the artists named by the jury was seen as a likely candidate during the festival. This proves that there is a difference in generations where video-aesthetics are concerned. The label suitable for TV implies certain stylistic characteristics, and a fundamental attitude towards the video image. Work that is suitable for TV always has a didactic intention, that is to say, it restricts the use of electrpnic effects, and often has a narrative structure. It is entertaining, does not have too many fast cuts, and often has a lyric ring to it, and meditative images. In this respect it conforms to the ideas about video from the seventies. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17998/en/axel-klepsch-doch-du-bist-gut-und-edel-1986"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/271/17998-400-345.jpg" height="345" width="400" alt="" title="Axel Klepsch 'Doch Du bist Gut und Edel' 1986" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Axel Klepsch 'Doch Du bist Gut und Edel' 1986 - Mediamatic.net" href="/17998/en/axel-klepsch-doch-du-bist-gut-und-edel-1986">Axel Klepsch 'Doch Du bist Gut und Edel' 1986</a> <h2>Bluebottles and dragonflies</h2> The jury's verdict was a clear denunciation of 'technical fiddling'. Yet it does not take into account that the days of busily experimenting with new effects are past. In the videos of Dan Reeves (A Mosaic For the Kali Yuga, 1986), Paul Garrin (A Human Tube, 1986), Axel Klepsch (Doch du bist edel und gut, 1986) or Norbert Meissner (Ai. C., 1985), many technical effects are used. However, the intention behind their use has clearly changed, and this seems to point towards the real future of video. These video artists are outgrowing the documentary function of video. They do not intend to 'communicate' as in the seventies, nor do they want to educate the public in the correct way of 'watching video'. They step in the world of electronics and develop the idiom of the electronic era. Images are created that can only be created by the medium video. The semantics are adapted to video, the language becomes electronic, images lose their 'literary' meaning, and become autonomous. Especially in the work of Garrin and Klepsch, a new way of expression has suddenly been created. Both were clearly influenced by Paik in their formative years. Now they are disengaging Paik's video world from its conceptuality, and changing it into a system of meaning. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/17999/en/axel-klepsch-doch-du-bist-gut-und-edel"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/840/17999-400-328.jpg" height="328" width="400" alt="" title="Axel Klepsch'Doch Du bist Gut und Edel'" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Axel Klepsch'Doch Du bist Gut und Edel' - Mediamatic.net" href="/17999/en/axel-klepsch-doch-du-bist-gut-und-edel">Axel Klepsch'Doch Du bist Gut und Edel'</a> These were some of the notable aspects of the Videonale Bonn, which has proved to have an important signalling function. The jury was wrong, video is no longer an experimental extension of the mass communication medium television. As far as video is concerned the time is ripe for a new syntax as Vera Bódy writes in the catalogue. Ripe for bluebottles and dragonflies. <a href="http://www.mediamatic.net/18000/en/axel-klepsch-doch-du-bist-gut-und-edel"> <img src="http://fast.mediamatic.nl/f/sjnh/image/730/18000-400-313.jpg" height="313" width="400" alt="" title="Axel Klepsch 'Doch Du bist Gut und Edel'" playable="1"/> </a><a title="Click to get a larger image - Axel Klepsch 'Doch Du bist Gut und Edel' - Mediamatic.net" href="/18000/en/axel-klepsch-doch-du-bist-gut-und-edel">Axel Klepsch 'Doch Du bist Gut und Edel'</a> Translation: Fokke Sluiter The catalogue is available at DM 20 trough: Videonale Bonn Dieter Daniels KurfürstenstralBe 27 5300 Bonn 1 t.0228/220790 Mediamatic Magazine Vol. 1#3 Friedemann Malsch http://www.mediamatic.net/id/17689 d d ARTICLE 1