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Video Programme of Transmediale Media Festival, Germany
The Transmediale Berlin festival is a communication space for media artists, experimenters and all people interested in contemporary art. Here all forms of artistic activity are welcome, exhibitions and performances, conferences and art projects presentations are organized.
The award
competition of transmediale is now in its 21st year. This continuity of
selecting and presenting video art has fostered the popularity of the festival,
and the great quality of the participating works from all over the world. For
the transmediale.08 competition again more than 1000 works were
submitted.
The transmediale.08
video selection consists of ten outstanding video works that were presented
in the 2008 edition of the Berlin
based festival for art and digital culture. For the video selection programme
of transmediale.08, we deliberately chose works that differ strongly in
the way they were produced. Consequently, these videos give a wide-ranging
insight into the dimensions of current artistic video production in form and
content.
The
programme 2008 includes works by Michelle Deignan, Thomas Kцner, Theo Ligthart, Zhenchen Liu,
Julia Meltzer & David Thorne, n:ja, Elodie Pong, Nelly-Eve Rajotte,
Semiconductor (Ruth Jarman & Joe Gerhardt) and Xu Tan.
Zhenchen Liu
Under Construction · fr/cn, 2007, 10:00
City planners decide to pull down parts of Shanghai's old town in
order to regenerate the city. Every year more than 100.000 families are forced
to leave their homes and move to the edge of the city. Under construction is a twoand three-dimensional flight across the
now destroyed living areas of Shanghai
which shows how random and brutal decisions can
affect people's lives. Zhenchen Liu was
born in 1976 in
Shanghai. He
graduated at Ecole Nationale Superieur de la VillaArson; and at the
Fresnoy National Studio of Contemporary Art in France. This work focuses on the
subjects of «urban», «modernisation», and «the problem with the development of China».
Recently, he participated in the Locarno International Film Festival, Festival
de Clermont-Ferrand and Oberhausen International Film Festival. Currently he
works as a freelance artist in France
and China.
Julia Meltzer &
David Thorne with Rami Farah
Not a Matter of If but When · us/sy, 2006, 14:00
Not a Matter of If
but When was developed
in 2005-06 in
Damascus, Syria.Over a period of several months, the artists worked with the
actor Rami Farah to record short sequences in which he responded to a prompt or
a written text. Through a combination of direct address and fantastical
narrative, Rami's improvisations speak to living in a condition of uncertainty,
chaos and stasis.
Los Angeles-based artists Julia Meltzer and David Thorne produce videos, photographs,
installations, and published texts. Their current works focus on the ways in
which visions of the future are imagined, claimed and realised, specifically in
relation to faith and global politics. Recent projects have been exhibited in
the 2008 Whitney Biennial, Akbank Sanat Gallery, Istanbul,
Apex Art, New York, Momenta, New
York, and as part of the Hayward Gallery's (London) traveling exhibition program. Their
video work has been screened at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, The
New York Video Festival, the Margaret Mead Film Festival, the Toronto
International Film Festival, among many others.
Theo Ligthart
Die
Internationale · de, 2005-06, 7:44
A gentleman
in a dark pinstriped suit turns the crank on a tiny music box playing «Die Internationale» - the anthem of
the workers movement.
Theo Ligthart was
born 1965 in
Drachten, The Netherlands. He was trained as a cinematographer in Poland, Germany
and in the USA, and has
studied Philosophy in Vienna.
Ligthart lives and works in Berlin.
Elodie Pong
Je suis une
Bombe · ch, 2006, 6:12
In Je suis une Bombe a figure in a panda
bear costume performs an «erotic» pole dance. On removing the panda's head, a
woman appears and steps up to the camera to deliver her own praises of a
complex image of woman, simultaneously strong and vulnerable, potential powder
keg.
Elodie Pong was
born in Boston in 1966, she lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland.
She has particapted in numerous exhibitions and received several international
awards and prizes.
Nelly-Eve Rajotte
VIHR · ca, 2006, 4:12
Architectural elements, rain, passers-by on an
esplanade-all overlap in VIHR and
intersect against a musical excerpt from Brian Eno's «Music for Airports».
With a bachelor's degree in art history, and a
second BFA and MFA from Ecole des arts visuels et mйdiatiques (UQAM), Nelly-Eve Rajotte joined the Canadian media arts research and
development centre Perte de Signal in 2003. Her work is geared toward single
channel digital video and installation. She explores a sensory investigation
that aims to render an environment at once visual and aural. Her work has shown
in Quebec, in Mexico,
in Germany, and in France.
Michelle Deignan
Il Cittadino · it/uk, 2007, 8:46
In Il
Cittadino, an actress filmed in Friuli Venezia Giulia in the North East
of Italy, performs a series of speeches to the camera. Her delivery, echoing broadcast
documentary and news report styles, is framed by desolate locations, an
atmospheric soundtrack and sporadic uncanny camera perspectives. Speaking in
English with an Italian accent, the narrative she presents combines facts about
this remote area of Europe with anecdotes about
the director of the film. The story meanders almost inappropriately from the
humorously confessional to the directly political including references to ski resorts,
Irish themed pubs and the CIA.
Michelle Deignans video works are concerned with the
limits of representation and the mediation of our experiences, culture and
politics. Her works draws on a wide a range of interests such as satirical
comedic forms, Brechtian theatre, nationalist ideologies and autobiography.
Born in Dublin in 1970, Deignan has been living
in London since
1998. Her video, digital and photographic works have been exhibited in various
international exhibitions and festivals. She is currently visiting tutor at The
Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford.
Semiconductor
Magnetic Movie · uk, 2006, 4:50
Magnetic Movie explores the remarkable secret life
of invisible interplanetary magnetic fields, revealed as chaotic everchanging
geometries in man's visible environment. All action takes place around the NASA
Space Sciences Laboratories at UC Berkeley California, set to recordings of
space scientists excitedly describing their discoveries.
Since 1999 Semiconductor, comprising Ruth
Jarman & Joseph Gerhardt,
have exhibited, screened and performed digital animations which reveal our physical
world in flux. Their work has been seen extensively, from Tate Britain and ICA London to the San Francisco
International Film Festival, Transmediale Berlin and the Venice Biennale. Recent
fellowships and residencies have supported site-specific work, including
research and experimentation at the NASA Space Sciences Laboratories UC
Berkeley, California. Semiconductor are based in Brighton UK.
Thomas Kuner
pneuma monoxyd · de, 2007, 10:00
As surveillance becomes a base of today's
society, Kuners work focuses on its implications by monitoring observation and
usurping its tools. With the intention of taking a step forward from here, the
artist began to invent his own imaginary tool. The scenes in pneuma monoxyd are observed with such
an imaginary tool. Its ability to unlock future, past and present unveils the
moment as it is being pieced together, blurred and unstable. Premonition,
memory and splinters of Here and Now become perceptible as part
of the fabric of the observed time. A static gaze of a Balkan market unveils
the present moment as a porous frontier and seems like a window looking out to
the beyond.
Thomas Kцner, born 1965, attended the academy of music in Dortmund
and studied electronic music at the CEM-Studio in Arnhem. Until 1994 he worked for the film
industry as editor and sound engineer. He extended his concept of time and
sound colour to images, resulting in video installations, photography and film
works. He received several international awards such as the «Golden Nica» of
the Ars Electronica in Linz
and the transmediale award 2005.
Xu Tan
To Build Zheng Daoxing Concert Hall · cn, 2004, 18:20
To Build Zheng
Daoxing Concert Hall -
Zheng Daoxing, a native of Yangjiang
County, formerly
owner-manager had to quit his business during the Asian economic crisis. He
decides to become a singer. His songs are often inspired by revolutionary
songs, in his texts he treats personal experiences. Yet singers like Zheng
Daoxing have no place to perform and therefore are forced to move from one
place to another.
Xu Tan was born in 1957 in Wuhan, China.
He has received his Bachelors and his Masters degree at the Guangzhou Academy
of Fine Arts. Currently he lives in Zhuhai, China and New
York, USA.
He has participated in various solo and group exhibitions.
n:ja
void.seqz 5 · at, 2006, 4:30
The number 5 in the title indicates that this computer
animation is part of a series. n:ja, aka Annja Krautgasser, worked with a
special script originally developed for audiovisual performances. What all the
works in the Void series have in common is that they are in black and white
with simple geometric
shapes providing the basis for computer-aided
formal studies. void.seqz 5 begins
with an empty white space. Gradually short black lines enter it from all sides,
leaving behind fine traces. The lines constantly change direction in a seemingly
random manner, overlap and fill the picture almost organically.
Annja Krautgasser born in 1971 in Tyrol, she lives
and works in Vienna.
She studied architecture at the Technical University of Vienna and Innsbruck and visual media creation at the University of Applied Arts,
Vienna.
Projects at international festivals and exhibitions amongst others at Galerie
im Taxispalais, Innsbruck; O.K Centrum fьr Gegenwartskunst, Linz;
Kunstlerhaus, Vienna; Lothringerhalle 13, Munich and MediaLab, Madrid. Various artist in residence programs
in London, Los
Angeles (MAK Schindler) and Paliano. Currently she is
artistic-scientific co-worker at the art and digital media department of the Academy of Fine Arts,
Vienna.
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