ARTBOX AT THE STADTBIBLIOTHEK,
MARKT 1, 49074 OSNABRÜCK
From 20. NOVEMBER
von Isaac Julien
»MAZU«
UK 2012, 2:00
“Mazu is a 16th century deity from the Fujian Province in South China, who is called upon by fishermen and sailors looking for peace and protection. In this short visual meditation, I have reworked the Mazu Myth, liberating her from this original context. Here, alone in these distilled film frames, we focus on the famous Chinese screen idol Maggie Cheung’s gestural performance, as she makes her haunting plea for peace and reconciliation.
‘Peace’ is often understood as an antonym of ‘war’ but it also has a broader meaning as freedom from disturbance. This is the peace longed for by the different generations of fishermen, cockle pickers, worldly travelers and migrants depicted in my film installations, such as Ten Thousand Waves, where Maggie Cheung first played the role of Mazu. People all over the word risk their lives daily in treacherous journeys, trying to reach difficult destinations, escaping famine and war, or improving their living conditions: risking everything to achieve a better life. I see this piece as Mazu serenading them all for peace. It is for those weary souls, who hopefully one day will receive the peace they deserve.”
Isaac Julien (born UK, 1960) currently lives and works in London, UK.
He received a BA from Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design, University of Arts London (London, UK) in 1984.
Julien received the Frameline Lifetime Achievement Award (San Francisco, USA) in 2002 and was nominated for the Turner Prize (London, UK) in 2001. His film Young Soul Rebels (1991) was awarded the SACD Prize, La Semaine de la Critique at the Cannes Film Festival (Cannes, France) in 1991.
He has been included in the 17th Biennale of Sydney (Sydney, Australia) in 2010, The Second Guangzhou Triennial (Guangzhou, China) in 2005, and DAK’ART 2004, 6th Biennal of Contemporary Art (Dakar, Senegal) in 2004.
Julien has had numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France) in 2005, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (Rotterdam, the Netherlands) in 2004, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (Chicago, USA) in 2000.
He has been included in group exhibitions globally, including at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA) in 2009, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution (Washington, USA) in 2008, and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (Sydney, Australia) in 2007.
His work is included in public and private collections around the world, including the collections of The Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), and the Tate (London, UK).
5. July – 30. September 2012
Janet Biggs
»AIRS ABOVE THE GROUND«
USA 2007, Single-channel video, running time 5:21 minutes
"Airs Above The Ground" examines the performance of youth, equating age with pageantry and masquerade. Biggs suggests that youth is bound by social constraints that set some on a search for impossible perfection or transcendence.
An ethereal image of an inverted, weightless, synchronized swimmer - suspended in slow motion - reveals the strenuous effort and dedication behind the appearance of youthful ease. The hyper-stylized gestures and affected costume of the athlete belies the power, agility, and strength required to make every action graceful.
Janet Biggs is known primarily for her work in video, photography and performance. She lives and works in New York City. She has captured such events as speeding motorcycles on the Bonneville salt flats, horsesgalloping on treadmills, Olympic synchronized swimmers in their attempts to defy gravity, and kayaks performing a synchronized ballet in Arctic waters.
03. April - 29. Mai 2012
Roel Wouters
»WHAT IF GOOGLE MAPS WENT LIVE ... «
Niederlande 2012, DVD
With a visual structure based on a large collage photo of a public space in the making, Roel Wouters brings still images to life by inserting video footage of performance events, filmed from above. It brings to mind the possibility of watching Google Earth in a real time experience.
WHAT IF GOOGLE MAPS WENT LIVE was recorded on the former Philips industrial site Strijp-S in Eindhoven, during performances by choreographer Katja Heitmann and composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven with orchestra and a large company of participating audience. The video forms an invitation to reclaim and redefine public space as performative space: a space where people meet, share experiences and do their thing.
EMAF ArtBox is a project of the European Media Art Festival.
Supported by Literaturbüro West-Niedersachsen and Stadtbibliothek Osnabrück.
10. JANUARY - 17. MARCH 2012
Regina Kelaita
VERTIGO
Niederlande 2005
DVD, 2:07 Min.
From 10 January 2012 the European Media Art Festival shows in EMAF ArtBox at the Stadtbibliothek, a video work of Dutch artist Regina Kelaita.
I was leaning out of the window looking down over the street, when the pavement told me this cock-n-bull story This is how it went. Her work concentrates on urban life and mainly consists of found absurdities that aim to alienate the viewer from their everyday perception. She lives and works in Amsterdam.
Regina KELAITA (1979, Netherlands) graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie with honours in 2005. She works with video and photography.
13. OCTOBER - 19. DECEMBER 2011
Bruno Nagel
SOMEBE + DJIQ
Deutschland 2004
DVD, 1:28 Min.
The title of the film refers to double self-reflection in modern art. Subject and medium or perception and reflection of machine/man or man/machine constellations culminate in an extremely amusing dialogue through the means of music and dance.
Bruno Nagel: * 1960 in Geislingen (D), lives and works in Berlin. Autodidakt, several artistic disciplines like project installations, art in public spaces, art products.
5.AUGUST - 4.OCTOBER 2011
Ola Simonsson, Johannes S. Nilsson
music for one apartment and six drummers
Schweden 2001
Beta SP (Original 35mm), 9:30
Six burglars create percussion music with furniture and household appliances.
Camera: Johannes S. Nilsson, Robert Blorn, Charlotta Tengroth;
Edit, Music: Ola Simonsson
Sound: Hâkon Garpestad
5.APRIL - 4.JUNE 2011
Jean Bonichon
H-SHIMA
Frankreich 2010
DVD, Loop
H like the Hour: a quarter past eight a.m, Enola Gay the american bombe drop his bomb.
H like H bomb: Little boy, first atomic bomb.
H like Hospital: Hospital Shima, precise impact point of the explosion.
H like Hiroshima: town which had been completly eradicated, August 6th, 1945.
Needles fixed show the terrible hour while the clock turn endlessly reversed sense. Perception is disturbing and scary is born from this humanist decline.
18.JANUARY - 1.APRIL 2011
Daniel Burkhardt
RAUSCHEN & BRAUSEN I
Deutschland 2007, DVD, Loop, 5:00 Min.
At 2008's EMAF the Digital Sparks Award was given to Rauschen & Brausen I, the videopart of a multilayered installation by Daniel Burkhardt. The award giving jury stated: »The image of a skyscraper facade, tristesse and urbanity. A zoom releases us from the representation and sets us in motion. The composition of image and sound evolves a maelstrom into the unforeseen and into a bottomless abyss«
Burkhardt manages to create a challenging artwork from the daily traffic in front of an apartment building. As starting point serves a 16 minute static recording of the building. At times the view is interrupted by a car passing quickly. Through the movement the image is changing. The effect is as simple as subtle.
Daniel Burkhardt, * 1977 in Bochum, Germany, studied audio-visual media at the media art department at Kunsthochschule für Medien in Cologne (KHM). Since 1998 he developes and produces experimental videos, video concerts and installations.
Prizes: 2008: digital sparks award 08 of Fraunhofer-Institut IAIS and Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Germany, at EMAF in Osnabrück. 13. Marl Video-Art Award of Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten in Marl. 2007: Jury's award of 15. Festival für Video und Film, Bochum, KunstFilmBiennale Cologne. 2006: Special Prize of 12. Marl Video Art Award.
Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung: Ästhetik aus Tristesse
5.OCTOBER - 17.JANUARY 2010
Aline Bouvy, John Gillis
VENUSIA
Belgien 2007, DVD, Loop, 8:00 Min.
Aline Bouvy and John Gillis use video, collage, animation, painting, sculpture and installation. Their works are highly visual and stylistically varied. Venusia is a dark and opulent vision of a post-technological future, influenced by 60s French photographer Serge Lutens. It is an animated collage of scraps from fashion magazines. Parts of the bodies of models are used to represent corpses and other more ambiguous lumps Dealing with concepts of beauty, pagan ritual, sex and death, the work is a mystical vision of life and desiccation.
The work of Aline Bouvy and John Gillis is multi-faceted in its approach, addressing such issues as the future and the human condition, through lo-fi means. Working with sculpture, video, painting and installation, their exhibitions are highly visual, and stylistically varied. Their work is simultaneously colourful yet dark, seductive yet feral, testing the spectrum of responses.
Often there is a retro sci-fi feel to the work, reflecting on visions of the future that are influenced by a distant, pagan past. (Nav Haq)
Aline Bouvy, *1974 in Brussels (B). Studied at Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, NL and Ecole de Recherche Graphique, Brussels. Lives and works in Brussels.
John Gillis, *1972 in Halle (B). Studied at Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht and Ecole de Recherche Graphique, Brussels. Lives and works in Brussels.
Aline Bouvy and John Gillis had solo exhibitions (Selection) at Zoo Galerie, Nantes, F (2007), Nosbaum & Reding, Luxembourg, L (2007), IPS - International Project Space, Birmingham, UK (2007), 404 arte contemporanea gallery, Napoli, I (2006), Wendy Cooper gallery, Chicago, IL (2006), Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, B (2006), Galerie Kuttner Siebert, Berlin, D (2005), GAK - Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen, D (2001)
17.AUGUST- 2.OCTOBER 2010
Martin Brand
PITBULL GERMANY
Deutschland 2005, DV auf DVD, Loop, Colour, mute
The video installation Pit Bull Germany shows a series of video portraits of adolescents belonging to different groups such as skinheads, gabbers, punks and gothics. Prior to filming, the adolescents were instructed to look into the camera in a concentrated manner for the duration of two minutes while allowing as little distraction as possible to take place. Almost every teen who steps in front of the camera is identifiable as being part of a certain youth-culture by his/her outfit. Through intense examination of the portraits, cracks and deviances in the presented identity-constructions become visible at a surprisingly fast rate. It is often particularly the adolescents’ gaze through which the insecuritites become noticeable.
Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung: 13.08.2010
6.JUNE - 15.AUGUST 2010
Johanna Reich
LINIE III
DVCPRO HD, PAL, 2`20, 2009
One-Channel-Videoinstallation
A high-resolution digital camera reaches its limits: A person dressed in black paints a black line on a wall. As a result of lighting conditions the camera cannot differentiate between the black of the person and the black background. Artist and art fuse, the person seems to disappear in front of the camera. In times when we are observed by cameras every minute, “line” seems to be a humorous way to escape surveillance. DLP video projectors often used in recent cinemas reproduce black while sending no light. The black parts of the video turn off the light of the projector –a vanishing image.
15.APRIL - 15.JUNE 2010
William Wegman
TWO DOGS WATCHING
USA 1975, DVD, Loop
Courtesy: Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York
William Wegman is renowned and acclaimed for videos and photographic works with his dogs and their animal friends. With humour and reserved irony, he uses this method to look at friction in everyday human life.
In "Two Dogs Watching", Wegman's Weimaraner "Man Ray" and its friend follow the movements of an object behind the camera in perfect synchrony.
