<nettime> EMAF 5-9 May 1999

["EMAF" <info@emaf.de>]

         European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück

                         5.-9. of May 1999

                        http://www.emaf.de

(Text available in German as well)

>From 5th to 9th May 1999, the 12th European Media Art Festival presents
the diversity of contemporary innovative and experimental media art. The
programme includes the work of established artists as well as
contributions from creative laboratories and inventive young artists
fascinated by unconventional images and visions.

1374 entries for the individual festival sections were received from 37
different countries. The largest numbers of submissions came from,
alongside Germany, the USA, Canada, Great Britain, and the Netherlands.
Some 230 works will be presented to the public in the course of the
festival. Taking place under the auspices of the German EU presidency,
the Media Minds congress is planned as an interdisciplinary forum for
philosophy, politics and artistic practice, and will act as the
theoretical backbone of this year’s festival.

FILM & VIDEO
The international film and video programme showcases some 145
productions ranging from the underground to the established, from
computer animation to TV productions and short films. Intimate
considerations meet up with classically structured film works. The means
deployed by the various artists and directors span the bandwidth of
contemporary technical and aesthetic possibilities.
In line with a festival tradition, the German Film Critics’ working
group will award its annual prize for the best German experimental film
or video production.

RETROSPECTIVE
The masterly work of Gregory J. Markopoulos, a unique figure in the
history of experimental film, has still to be discovered by a wider
public. Up to his death in 1992, the director remained faithful to his
theory that the viewer is the vital link obliged to support the
aesthetic power and reception of a film. Markopoulos accepted no
artistic compromises in realizing his vision of an all-embracing, ideal
film aesthetic. The retrospective is presented by Kirk Winslow, New
York.

METROPOLIZED
A pilot project initiated by the E.C.F.F. (European Coordination of Film
Festivals) and involving the co-operation of the graz biennale on media
and architecture, the Festival dei Popoli, Florence, and the EMAF.
Focusing on the urban network from the immediate perspective of the
overwrought city-dweller the goal of the project is to visualize the
tensions of the reciprocal relationship between man and city. The
keywords are communication, mobility, social bonds, loss of identity,
and the retreat into inner-city islands. Films by Derek Jarman, Jon
Jost, Claude Faraldo and other directors will be screened.

ELECTRONIC LOUNGE
An opportunity to catch up on new tendencies in digital art, and
featuring a portrait of the cyberpunks Necro Enema Amalgamated (USA),
whose CD-Roms BLAM!1 - 3 have already made media history, as well as
numerous other current CD-Roms, Net projects and Websites.

VRML-ART
A presentation of three-dimensional virtual worlds, objects, and
avatars. The compilation by Kathy Rae Huffman, Karel Dudesek and
Zvonomir Bakotin represents the largest collection of such works to
date.

CONGRESS Media Minds
Culture and Multimedia in Europe
The German EU presidency in 1999 is the occasion for an international
congress on the subject of the arts and multimedia in Europe during the
EMAF.

A cultural philosophy forum running under the title Reality – Realität
will take place with guests including theorist Jean Baudrillard, Peter
Weibel, director of ZKM Karlsruhe, Swiss cultural philosopher Gerhard
Johann Lischka, the philosophers Otto E. Rössler and Rudolf zur Lippe,
as well as Siegfried J. Schmidt, the Director of the Institute of
Communications Sciences at the University of Münster, and Austrian
philosopher Joseph Mitterer.

Lectures and roundtable discussions open the floor to new artistic ideas
in the field of broadcast systems and digital media that place in
question traditional concepts of TV and media production.

Innovative models like the Open Video Archive offering new impulses for
museum presentation. Or the TX film technique, and 3D and holographic
film applications will be presented to illustrate the potential outlook
for media production and design in the future .

What strategies are necessary in order to loosen up the rigid cultural
industry structures and create leeway for new concepts and projects?
Some answers may be expected from the European Cultural Backbone project
initiative as well as the ideas merchants of the German Cultural
Competence Center. RTMARK, the provocative art activists, will reflect
upon art and media marketing strategies. Rounding off the conference
programme: information on the arts programme devised for the EXPO 2000
in Hanover.

INTERNET BROADCAST
Broadcast Now!
www.kulturserver.de
Kulturserver TV-Radio, the Public Access Online Channel
Starting on May 7th at the EMAF, anybody equipped with a standard PC and
an internet connection can broadcast selfmade TV and radio programs live
and interactive via Kulturserver. More information at
www.kulturserver.de/tv. Please send technical and editorial questions
to: hotline@kulturserver.de. Kulturserver is a project of Ponton
European Media Art Lab.

VIDEO GALLERY
Presenting an extraordinary selection of European film and video work.
The collection gathers together prize-winning highlights from the
co-operating festivals in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Croatia and the
Netherlands.

STUDENT FORUM
On offer in this year’s forum: flying Wiener Schnitzel ... undead dead
... drugs! Not to mention mysterious doorways, frozen music, disembodied
voices, and mystic realms. Spanning the artistic range of new student
productions and projects, the forum includes films, videotapes, and
installations. Representatives from a number of film and media academies
(Mainz, Moscow, Würzburg, Prague, Stuttgart, and Brunn) invite the
interested public to view their presentations and become acquainted with
their syllabuses and students.

Re©ycle
Stachy (Ex-Fischmob, Hamburg)
Computerjockeys (Harvest, Cologne)
Cubistic Pop Manifesto (Eleganz)
Stereokiller (Eleganz).

The present generation of young audio-visual artists are increasingly
exploring the potential of clubs as venue for their experimental work.
For a present-day manifestation of the time-honoured vision of the
gesamtkunstwerk, clubs are the places to look. They combine 1990s club
sounds with video loops and live samples. In co-operation with Intro and
Urban Beat.


PERFORMANCE
BBM Intelligence – Machine art in the Caprivi Barracks
BBM are coming to town! Along with machines that, built from industrial
scrap, have emancipated themselves from subservience and now dictate the
rules. Any confrontation and interaction with visitors is purely
intentional.
BBM – who for some 10 years now have enjoyed an international reputation
on the strength of their stimulating action art – visit the EMAF with a
special performance reflecting upon media and the military. Reacting to
the media coverage of the current events in Kosovo, they take the
audience on a breakneck journey through the history of deconstruction
technology. Whether camcorder-shooting canon, joystick-controlled media
sofa, or ‘tank with integrated shredder’, all the contraptions were
designed with the aim of hammering home the imminent threat posed by
unleashed machine power.

EXHIBITION
New, open interactive installation concepts invite festival visitors to
quench their thirst for knowledge and indulge their playful instincts at
the same time. From 5 to 30 May 1999, the European Media Art Festival
show presents a richly facetted range of international media art.

On show for the first time in Germany: Maintenance, the interactive
installation by US artist Perry Hoberman. A furnished room and two
identical replicas, all merged into one projection, compete with each
other for the visitors’ attention. By shifting the furniture and
changing the camera angle, visitors can either disrupt or harmonize the
arrangement. Hoberman’s work is concerned less with man-machine
interaction than with the interplay among the users of his installation.

The ‘context of seeing’ is the subject of the installation Time Machine
or ‘The Future is an Accident between Past and Future’ by Egbert
Mittelstädt (D). Playing with different temporal and perceptual planes,
a static panorama of a city square is briefly brought to life by a
rotating video projection. The work plays with the different time and
perception levels which are due to discover.

The installation VinylVideo by BestBefore / Gerhard Sengmüller (A)
revives a medium some thought to be extinct: the long-playing record.
The wondrous and fascinating invention VinylVideo makes it possible to
store video films on conventional LPs. The ‘picture disks’ produced in
this way can be played on a normal record player – opening up new
possibilities of visual scratching.

By moving their hands and arms, viewers can conduct the chiming of bells
in the installation 200 Bells – Hyperscratch Vers. 9 by Haruo Ishii, as
well as coax sounds from the contrivance and compose their own melodies.

Alongside the installations mentioned, current works by Joachim Blank
and Karl Heinz Jeron (D), Karsten Trappe (D) and Michael van der Leest
(NL) are also on show. A parallel exhibition with works by Nina Fischer
& Maroan el Sani (D) and Peter Bogers (NL) is running in the Galerie
Dreikronenhaus and in the Vertikales Museum of the Felix-Nussbaum-Haus.

Other slots yet to be finalized will be listed in the festival programme
(appearing 16 April 1999), which will be sent on request. A catalogue
will be published at the beginning of the festival.

For programme updates visit: http://www.emaf.de

Funding by:

Ministry for Science and Culture, Hannover
City of Osnabrück
Foreign Office, Bonn
EU Commission, Brussels
Federal Ministry for Education and Sciences, Bonn


--
European Media Art Festival, 5.-9. May 1999
Alfred Rotert
Lohstr.45A
D-49074 Osnabrück

T:+49/541/25779/21658
F:+49/541/28327
Email:info@emaf.de
http://www.emaf.de

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