'EXPANDING VIDEO'
curated by Dirck MöllmanN
May 19 - 21, 2005, 8 p.m.

May 19: Volko Kamensky/ Frank Lüsing, Alexander Rischer
May 20: Eva Könnemann/ Lene Markusen
May 21: Emanuel Geisser/ Deborah Schamoni

The screening program Expanding Video introduces seven artists whose work with video crosses genre boundaries: Volko Kamensky, Frank Lüsing, Alexander Rischer, Eva Könnemann, Lene Markusen, Emanuel Geisser and Deborah Schamoni. These artists offer approaches to video from the fields of film and documentary, performance and sound, fine art, installation, and music video production, and their juxtaposition stresses the intermedial potential of video technology for uniting disparate media-specific practices within itself. Video is an open medium that profits from the “medialization” of society though photography, film and television and that in turn informs how digital technologies are employed. The model of simultaneous recording and transmission made possible by video fills a paradigmatic function outside of the arts while at the same time breaking down and changing conceptions of the image and altering viewing practices within the discourse of art itself. The title "Expanding Video" signifies this continuous process of expansion and consolidation of video as a societal medium.

Its dissemination within society distinguishes video from Expanded Cinema, in which art and technology share a similarly close link. The Expanded Cinema of the 1960s extended the concept of film by linking it to performance, theater, painting and electronic visual effects. In this regard, experimental film is a precursor of today’s video and media art. Expanded Cinema argued for the integration of art forms into day-to-day reality, which it incorporated into installation and projection spaces. Video takes the opposite approach: following its early experimental phase, it is now no longer charged with the “reality content” of its materials, but rather is artistically employed as a societally established and widely disseminated technology to problematize such issues as the relationship between medium and reality. Forms such as documentary, narrative film, science fiction, music video, performance or installation are evoked and combined with one another. Alongside the trend of recent years toward the documentary video essay, fictionalization has played a significant role, enabling reality and presentations of it to be placed in a relationship to one another in which they both reciprocally dependent and of equal precedence.

Expanding Video shows video to be an open medium, deployed by the most diverse artists as a fortuitous opportunity for creative production. The central question is how video is linked to the heterogeneous multiplicity of technical and conceptual possibilities. This can take place in an ambivalent and parasitic way, in that video makes use of the achievements of other technologies and genres to the point that it becomes almost indistinguishable from them. This program presents genre-crossing and intermedial ways of working with the technical instrument of video which foreground not only the apparatus itself but also its associated genre practices and which thereby open further contexts for the medium.

Dirck Möllmann

Thursday, May 19

Volko Kamensky
'Divina Obsesión', 1999, 27 Min., 16mm auf Video
'Alles was wir haben', 2004, 22 Min., 58mm auf Video, 5-Kanal-Sound

Frank Lüsing, Alexander Rischer
'The Disqualified Round Towers of Ireland', 1999, 30 Min., Video
Alexander Rischer: 'Memorial Towers - Gedenken und Heimkehr', 1999-2001, Fotografien und Text
Frank Lüsing, Oliver Kochta:'Travel with a Donkey', 2001, Trailer, 4 Min., Video


Friaday, May 20

Eva Könnemann
'Happy Problem', 2002, 12 Min, DV
'Light Boy', 2003, 17 Min., DV
'Wo meine Linie deine trifft', 2004, 15 Min., DV

Lene Markusen
'Grad', 2004, 22 Min, 16mm auf Video
'SKIZZE' (zu 'Mennesket'), 2003-2004, 14 Min., kein Ton, 58mm auf Video (s/w)


Saturday, May 21

Emanuel Geisser
'Patrol', 2002, 9:30 Min, DV
'Squadravolante', 2002, 2:35 Min., DV
'Traverse', 2002, 9 Min., DV
'Gran Turismo', 2003, 7:43 Min., DV

Deborah Schamoni
'Visitors, feat. ChicksOnSpeed', 2004, 26:13 Min., Video
'Hanayo, Banzai Neoteny', 2002, 3:43, Video
'EgoExpress, We are here', 1999, 4:17 Min., Video
'Held Down', 2003, 5:42 Min., DV