[spectre] VIDEONALE 11 - Festival of Contemporary Video Art

[Andreas Broeckmann]

VIDEONALE 11 - Festival of Contemporary Video Art
Exhibition in the Kunstmuseum Bonn from 15 March to 15 April 2007


Red, erotic, carnal, halfway between glamour and cannibalism: this is 
how the mouth with its impeccable white teeth filling the screen of 
the monitor shows itself. This work by video artist Lia Anna Hennig 
is one of the 48 exhibits presented at the VIDEONALE in the 
Kunstmuseum Bonn. Besides the latest video creations by artists such 
as Jeanne Faust, Christoph Girardet or Mischa Kuball, the exhibition 
also presents works by young artists like the Japanese Hideyuki 
Tanaka, who shows the strange rites surrounding a godlike figure 
called Jappy.

"We want to show the whole spectrum of video art today. Above all, we 
are interested in the appeal of the contemporary", says Georg Elben, 
curator of VIDEONALE 11.


HIGH-PROFILE JURY

The five-strong preliminary jury chose 48 works from the more than 
600 submitted which the VIDEONALE 11 now presents at the Kunstmuseum 
Bonn. From these works the final jury will choose the winner of the 
VIDEONALE PRIZE worth 5.000 euros. This jury consists of media artist 
Candice Breitz from Berlin, Rudolf Frieling, curator of media arts at 
SF MOMA, and Susanne Titz, director of the Moenchengladbach Abteiberg 
Museum.

FESTIVAL PROGRAMME: Thursday, 15 March - Sunday, 18 March

Workshops, lectures by experts and artistic statements: The 
supporting programme of the VIDEONALE 11 deals with theoretical and 
practical aspects of video art. For details see< 
http://www.videonale.org> http://www.videonale.org


EXHIBITION DESIGN: FULFILLING FUNCTIONAL AND AESTHETIC REQUIREMENTS

“Our aim is to present video art in an authoritative exhibition in a 
museum. One of the things the VIDEONALE allows us to do is to find 
and explore adequate forms of presentation for the particular 
reception requirements of video art”, says Georg Elben. The challenge 
was to avoid the video works overlapping each other visually and 
acoustically, and to steer clear of small, darkened rooms – the 
so-called black box.

The design by Frank Leuwer, Muna Sawas and Anke Rohlfing solved the 
problem by interleaving three different forms of presentation and by 
grouping together the works with heterogeneous content by means of 
identical framing. Plain cubes in black and white determine the 
appearance of the exhibition space. A symbolic power cord in the 
shape of a silver-coloured pipe system traverses all exhibition 
elements, guides the visitor and contains part of the wiring.

Visitors sit down on benches inside boxes resembling beach chairs and 
watch the video works on the back of the “beach chairs” in front. The 
second component consists of sound bonnets with small, integrated 
loudspeakers, which visitors can adjust to fit their individual 
height. A row of monitors with headphones is used as the third form 
of presentation, predominantly with those works where the visitor is 
meant to be isolated in order to focus on quiet, subtle sounds.


QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS: VIDEOVOICES

As an alternative to the conventional guided tours the VIDEONALE 11 
introduces art in direct conversations with the help of the so-called 
VIDEOVOICES: art history students who have studied the contents of 
the VIDEONALE and who will present art in a personal dialogue.


THE STORY OF VIDEONALE 11

VIDEONALE has "
 for the past 20 years had the advantage, as a 
quasi-film-festival for Video Art, of being able to map the current 
state of filmic development. This accounts for its function as an 
aesthetic indicator." (K.WEST)

The Videonale e.V. - founded in Bonn in 1984 - is the organiser of 
one of the oldest Video Festivals in the world. The festival has 
grown continually and since 2004 been able to use the premises of the 
Kunstmuseum Bonn.


SPONSORS

VIDEONALE 11 is sponsored by the Federal Cultural Foundation, the 
State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Arts Foundation NRW, the City of 
Bonn, Stiftung Kunst der Sparkasse in Bonn and the KfW Bankengruppe 
as principal sponsor.