03 Nov 2011

28th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival: Monitoring

The exhibition Monitoring has been taking place as part of the Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival since 1997 and is devoted to contemporary media art.

This year, 14 installations by artists from six countries will be presented at the Kasseler Kunstverein, the KulturBahnhof and the Stellwerk.

Contributing artists are: Jan Bode, Gair Dunlop, Ulrike Franke and Michael Loeken, Christoph Girardet, Chaja Hertog and Nir Nadler, Ryota Kuwakubo, Annika Larsson, Dennis Neuschaefer-Rube, Stefan Panhans, Anu Pennanen, Björn Perborg, Ana Esteve Reig, Rebecca Ann Tess, Rolando Vargas

The works were selected out of more than 300 submissions. Since the exhibition does not try to fulfil a pre-set topic in its call for submissions, it is flexible to react to current developments of media art and to display a broad spectrum.

The exhibition focuses on installations, which contrast the single-channel projection as used in movie theatres and thereby exploring and creating new possibilities of projecting. We will see converted suitcases, which expose stop-motion animations in the contribution of Björn Perborg and the play with light and shadow in the work of Ryota Kowakubo, in which a model train makes its way through the exhibition venue and casts images onto the walls. These forms of interaction between the video images and the exhibition space create a special relationship with the viewer and dissolve the head-on confrontation and examination in the movie theatre. Repetitive images of a single projection, played in short intervals, may also develop a sculptural quality, as is the case in the works of Stefan Panhans and Annika Larsson.

This year, many artists focused on the analysis of film as a medium and at the same time developed very different approaches; aesthetically as well as in the choice of the medium. They deal with the collective, cinematographic pictorial memory, dissect the images and reassemble them. Established viewing habits are questioned and the structures and mechanisms of image generation are revealed. The artists do not simply deal will film in a theoretical or analytical sense, but use it as an 'artistic' medium and develop individual aesthetic forms of analysis. Christoph Girardet does so by and re-editing film material from the 1950s and thereby dealing with the genre of the German Heimat film. Cinematographic archetypes are brought into focus, such as the classic character of the detective of different film eras in the contribution of Rebecca Ann Tess, or the film idol Rocky, who is reenacted by Jan Bode.

All installations displayed in the exhibition are nominated for the „Golden Cube' endowed with 2,500 Euro for the best media installation. This prize is donated by the Kassel software company Micromata and will be awarded at the BALi Cinema on November 13, 2011 at 8 pm.

Monitoring is a cooperation between the Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, Kasseler Kunstverein, Kulturdezernat / documenta Archive and Stellwerk.