From This(2010)

Ki or Breathing(ja)

'Ki or Breathing' is a spare concoction assembled from slow motion shots of nature and set to a score by the much-acclaimed Tohru Takemitsu.

Enigma: Nazo(ja)

Enigma is something of a more glamorous version of White Hole, with a wide variety of elaborate textures (often composed of iconographic and religious symbols) converging towards the centre of the screen.

Proyecciones del Limbo(es)

Cactus(en)

Religions are like cactus. They look like flowers, but with bare blades.

Wintopia(en)

IDFA and Canadian filmmaker Peter Wintonick had a close relationship for decades. He was a hard worker and often far from home, visiting festivals around the world. In 2013, he died after a short illness. His daughter Mira was left behind with a whole lot of questions, and a box full of videotapes that Wintonick shot for his Utopia project. She resolved to investigate what sort of film he envisaged, and to complete it for him.

Viva video, video viva(cs)

Today, analogue video is attractive primarily thanks to the distinctive aesthetic quality of its pixelated image and raster errors. But for Czech artists who first explored the possibilities offered by video art in the late 1980s, this medium represented a path towards freedom. Through a portrait of her grandfather Radek Pilař, one of the pioneers of Czech video art, the director explores her own legacy of imperative creative fascination. Her film’s main story, i.e., the process of reconstructing the 1989 exhibition Video Day, contrasts this enchantment with life in the final days of the totalitarian regime, which different sharply with the adventures of those who decided to emigrate – whom the filmmaker also visits in order to discover forgotten works, get to know their creators, and re-establish broken ties.

La Suture(en)

An attic, a giant sewing needle and an anti-gravity fairy tale of sibling rivalry. Three sisters fight over who gets the biggest phallus in this post-feminist animation-infused playground by media artist Michelle Handelman. If Hans Christian Anderson got a sex change, surfed the porn sites, and hung with the freaky girls, his stories would look like this.

Amazons(en)

A fiction science monologue about artificial fertilization and its consequences, delivered by four characters interacting with the text.

The Vasulka Effect(en)

The opening of The Vasulka Effect couldn’t be more apt: Steina Vasulka addresses her husband Woody through various TV screens. He does the same and replies. A perfect image of the relationship between the free-spirited, groundbreaking pioneers of video art. After meeting in Prague in the early 1960s, they relocated from Czechoslovakia to New York, where they later founded The Kitchen, their legendary art and performance gallery.

FOREIGN AFFAIRS(en)

Shot on 16mm film in New York and composed in Berlin, the work explores polarizing themes of the metropolis. Audibly and visually, the viewer is put in a flicker between serenity and intensity; harrowing ambience cut with sharp beeps, vulnerable steps mashed in high velocity.

data-verse 1(en)

data-verse is a data-driven audio-visual trilogy by artist and composer Ryoji Ikeda which marks a two-decade culmination in the artist’s research. The trilogy addresses the layered dimensions of our world, from the microscopic, to the human, to the macroscopic. Through Ikeda’s process, massive scientific data sets have been transcribed, converted, transformed, de/re/meta-constructed and orchestrated to visualise and sonify the different dimensions that co-exist in our world between the visible and the invisible. Each variation immerses visitors in the vast data universe in which we live, capturing hidden facets of nature and the vast scientific knowledge underpinning our existence. This large-scale data-driven trilogy is generated by extremely precise computer programming and features a minimalist electronic soundtrack, harmonised with Hollywood-standard, high-definition, 4K DCI video projections of scientific data onto a large screen.

data-verse 2(en)

data-verse is a data-driven audio-visual trilogy by artist and composer Ryoji Ikeda which marks a two-decade culmination in the artist’s research. The trilogy addresses the layered dimensions of our world, from the microscopic, to the human, to the macroscopic. Through Ikeda’s process, massive scientific data sets have been transcribed, converted, transformed, de/re/meta-constructed and orchestrated to visualise and sonify the different dimensions that co-exist in our world between the visible and the invisible. Each variation immerses visitors in the vast data universe in which we live, capturing hidden facets of nature and the vast scientific knowledge underpinning our existence. This large-scale data-driven trilogy is generated by extremely precise computer programming and features a minimalist electronic soundtrack, harmonised with Hollywood-standard, high-definition, 4K DCI video projections of scientific data onto a large screen.

In the Dark(en)

A film as part of the Spellbound installation at the Hayward Gallery in 1996 by Peter Greenaway.

Guadalcanal Requiem(en)

One of Paik’s most overtly political and poignant statements, Guadalcanal Requiem is a performance/documentary collage that confronts history, time, cultural memory and mythology on the site of one of World War II’s most devastating battles.

Lake Placid '80(en)

Paik produced this exuberant, high-speed collage as a commission for the National Fine Arts Committee of the 1980 Olympic Winter Games. In a fractured explosion of densely layered movement and action, images of Olympic sports events are mixed with Paik’s recurring visual and audio motifs.

I’m Scared But I’ve Been Here Before(en)

A short film adaptation of the titular poem by Melissa Lozada-Oliva.

Junior War(en)

In Junior War, a throng of highschoolers congregate at night for a party in the woods sometime in the year 2000. A band plays, the kids get drunk, the boys and girls tepidly flirt, and groups deploy into cars for the purpose of destroying mailboxes, tee-peeing houses, breaking lawn ornaments, and sparring with the police. The film is composed entirely of footage Trecartin took during his senior year of high school in exurban Ohio; as such, it baits the viewer with genealogical significance.

Continuum: 1. Initiation(en)

Part one of the two part abstract video art-piece, with music composed by Philip Glass and performed by the Kronos String Quartet.

Moby Dick(he)

Guy Ben-Ner, one of Israel's foremost video artists, gained international recognition with a series of low-tech films, starring his family in absurdist settings carved out of their intimate spaces and their everyday surroundings. Many of his videos are inspired by screenplays for films, folktales and novels. Analyzing these literary and cinematographic passages allows him to exploit the conventions of film narrative: how to tell a story, captivate an audience through a tale, sustain a degree of tension and entertainment, and so on. At the same time, he corrupts the magic of fiction by openly showing us the entrails of everything he records, without worrying about revealing the tricks of the trade. A large part of his filmic oeuvre features a conglomeration of cinematic and literary references which the artist quotes, adapts or interprets. Ben-Ner self-referentially links the great themes and their literary, cinematic and artistic realization.

Good Morning, Mr. Orwell(en)

In his book "1984", George Orwell saw the television of the future as a control instrument in the hands of Big Brother. Right at the start of the much-anticipated Orwellian year, Paik and Co. were keen to demonstrate satellite TV's ability to serve positive ends-- Namely, the intercontinental exchange of culture, combining both highbrow and entertainment elements. A live broadcast shared between WNET TV in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, linked up with broadcasters in Germany and South Korea, reached a worldwide audience of over 10 or even 25 million (including the later repeat transmissions).