VIDEONALE.16 – Festival for Video and Time-Based Arts
PERFORM!
Exhibition: 17th February – 2nd April 2017
Kunstmuseum Bonn
The 16th Videonale – Festival for Video and Time-Based Arts, under the title PERFORM!, opens on February 16th 2017. The exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum Bonn will feature recent works by a total of 43 international artists. The exhibition
is accompanied by a wide-ranging festival program on the opening weekend, as well as the VIDEONALE.Parcours, now in its third year, which sees works by students exhibited at various locations around the city.
For the second year running, the Videonale has a specific thematic focus. Under the heading ‘PERFORM!’, VIDEONALE.16 revisits the beginnings of video technology in its relation artistic performance, as both a means of documentation and a kind of technological double. It asks after the meaning of video performance in the contemporary world, in which not only artists, but also often the spectators play the role of performers in artistic works. In addition, PERFORM! refers to the way in which performance has come to dominate all aspects of our lives. Whether consciously or unconsciously, our lives have become a kind of permanent performance: through our constant interaction with digital devices, in which we inevitably leave behind traces of ourselves; through the constant demand for self-presentation online; and through the demand for our self-optimization as economic subjects. Our every movement has become a choreographed performance, staged in public spaces over which we have very little control.
Under the heading PERFORM!, VIDEONALE.16 calls into question the idea of performance as a social, economic, cultural and artistic maxim in the context of the globalized world and our modern meritocratic societies. “The term performance has an incredibly broad scope. What makes it so exciting is that every performative gesture – be it in the world of art or of work, or in our social interactions with one another – implies a whole series of codes and sociocultural value-judgements. When performances occur, these codes are made public and opened up to discussion, whether consciously or unconsciously.
Today, the term ‘performance’ is used to describe a huge variety of elements of our lives, in an almost inflationary manner. Our aim is to unpack the different facets of performance, and at the same time to critically examine what its ubiquity in art and society means for us.
The 43 artists whose work will be displayed take a wide variety of different approaches to the theme. Artists like Lucy Pawlak, Stefan Panhans or Lina Sieckmann & Miriam Gossing address the way in which the digitized world can dictate the way we behave. By contrast, for artists such as Randa Maroufi, Louis Henderson, Jasmina Cibic or even Philip Widmann, the concept of performance becomes a kind of placeholder for culturally motivated patterns of behavior, and the exclusion or stigmatization of some in favor of others.
At the same time, we are all increasingly performers in the context of our everyday working lives. We are expected to find our individual self-realization in our careers, as Ale Bachlechner perfectly captures in her Performance Trailer. Moira Zoitl shows us the other side of this coin. The format of the works is as varied as their content, ranging from experimental documentaries and short films, to choreographed dance performances in space, 3D installations and video sculptures, to animations and live performances”, says Tasja Langenbach, Artistic Director of the VIDEONALE.16.
Artists featured at VIDEONALE.16:
Maria Antelman, Ale Bachlechner, Miriam Bajtala, Cooper Battersby & Emily Vey Duke, Jasmin Bigler & Nicole Weibel, Jared Buckhiester & Dani Leventhal, Jasmina Cibic, Yao Cong, Anita Delaney, An Van Dienderen, Jan Dietvorst & Roy Villevoye, Lisa Domin, Doplgenger, Teboho Edkins, Lotte Meret Effinger, Kevin Jerome Everson, Alex Gerbaulet, Miriam Gossing & Lina Sieckmann, Max Grau, Shadi Harouni, Louis Henderson, Vika Kirchenbauer, Sabrina Labis, Alwin Lay, Erik Levine, Randa Maroufi, Jennifer Mattes, Stefan Panhans, Lucy Pawlak, Benjamin Ramírez Pérez, Stefan Ramírez Pérez, Rachel Rampleman, Steve Reinke, Michael Robinson, Julia Scher, Sanaz Sohrabi, Moritz Uebele, Anna Vasof, Roy Villevoye, Philip Widmann, Susanne Wiegner, Felix Zilles-Perels, Moira Zoitl.
VIDEONALE.16 Award of fluentum Collection
To mark the opening of VIDEONALE.16 on 16th February 2017, an outstanding piece of art will be selected from among the works exhibited to receive the Videonale Award of fluentum Collection, including prize money of 5,000 Euro. The fluentum Collection is a private collection of time-based art works based in Berlin, which has also been coproducing artistic works for several years. For the first time, the fluentum Collection is financing the Videonale prize, in the hope of assisting the artist(s) who receive(s) the prize in the production of further works.
Jury VIDEONALE.16
Alexander Basile (Artist, Cologne), Dr. Julia Draganovic (Director of the Kunsthalle Osnabrück), Katrin Mundt (Freelance Curator, Bochum), Tasja Langenbach (Artistic Director of Videonale), Tobias Yves Zintel (Artist, Berlin/Cologne), Nicole Yip (Director, LUX Scotland)
VIDEONALE.16 Festival and VIDEONALE.Parcours
The exhibition of VIDEONALE.16 is accompanied by a wide-ranging festival program, which includes discussions with artists, performances, round-table discussions, retrospectives, tours, workshops and educational programs. Additionally, VIDEONALE.Parcours, now in its third year, will take place at various locations around Bonn (18th Feb – 3rd Mar 2017, opening: 17th Feb 2017). This year, it features works by students from the Academy of Visual Arts at Hamburg, the Academy of Design in Offenbach and the Academy of Media in Cologne. VIDEONALE.Parcours is curated by Lisa Bosbach and Sonja Wunderlich. The VIDEONALE.16 and VIDEONALE.Parcours Exhibitions, as well as the special projects and festival program, are all documented in the VIDEONALE.16 catalogue.
Exhibition Architecture VIDEONALE.16
As in previous years, VIDEONALE.16 will take place in the temporary exhibition space at the Kunstmuseum Bonn. The exhibition architecture was developed by architect and exhibition designer Ruth M. Lorenz of maaskant Berlin. She has previously developed exhibition spaces for clients including Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, The Academy of Arts in Berlin, the House of World Cultures in Berlin, ZKM Karlsruhe and HMKV Dortmund. Her design for the exhibition “Sounds like Silence” at HMKV won the AICA Critic’s Prize.
VIDEONALE.16 Schedule:
Press Conference: Wednesday, 15th February 2017, 11.30am
Preview: Thursday, 16th February 2017, 6pm
Opening and Presentation of the Videonale Award of fluentum Collection: Thursday, 16th February 2017, 8pm
Festival Program: Friday 17th February – Sunday 19th February 2017 (and further events throughout the duration of the exhibition)
VIDEONALE.Parcours at various locations in the Nordstadt area of Bonn: Friday 18th February – Sunday 12th March 2017
Opening: Thursday 17th February 2017
About VIDEONALE
Videonale was founded in 1984 by a group of students from Bonn. It is one of the oldest video art festivals in the world. Over the of its 30-year history, the Videonale has become one of the most important course and renowned festivals for Video art in Europe. Since 2004, the Videonale has had its headquarters in the Kunstmuseum Bonn, in which the Videonale exhibition also takes place. The Videonale festival program also takes place at various further locations around Bonn.