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PLAY gallery for still and motion pictures is pleased to present on December 17, 18 and 19, 2002 the winners of the competition together with a selection of the international program of the 2002 Videoex Festival (May 10-19).Videoex is an experimental film & video festival held every year during the month of May in Zurich. The purpose is to promote experimental film and video works. The festival was first held in 1998. Since 3 years it includes an international and a Swiss competition. More then 1.000 works from 38 countries have been submitted for these competitions in 2002.
The focus of the festival was the international competition including 8 programs with 80 works of renowned artists and also young talents from all over the world.
The main topic of the 2002 edition was the structural film: a selection of 10 films of Michael Snow and his new installation "Couple" (2001); a selection of important structural films from America with works by Tony Conrad, Paul Sharits and Owen Land; a selection of European works by Peter Kubelka, Kurt Kren and Michael Maziere; special programs of Doug Aitken, Peter Mettler and also a selection of Other Cinema S. Francisco where presented.
The Jury Members: Peter Mettler (Swiss-Canadian filmmaker), Mike Hoolboom (Canadian video & filmmaker); Arjon Dunnenwind (Director of Impakt Festival Utrecht)
First Price ex equo: Apple Grown in Wind Tunnel by Steven Matheson (Beta, USA 2001), Du Moteur A Explosion by Dominic Gagnon (16 mm, CAN 2000); Cargo by Laura Waddington (Digibeta, F 2001)The program presented at PLAY gallery for still and motion pictures in Berlin in collaboration with the main sponsor of the first price of the 2002 festival, Fine Arts Unternehmen AG is a small overview of the international festival program and comprehends 20 films and video.
PROGRAM
Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2002, 8.30 pm
Hotel Central, Matt Hulse, UK 2000, 35 mm,
10:00
Allegedly set somewhere 30 miles South West of Leipzig, this eccentric film
does not attempt to narrate a dream, though it exploits the same kind of mechanisms
that dreams utilize. Hold on to your hats.
Camouflage, Jonathan Hodgson, UK 2001, 35
mm, 7:56
Mixed animation and live action techniques tell the stories of those with a
schizophrenic parent, childhood scenes in which everyday events gradually tip
over into idiosyncratic behaviour and finally madness.
The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal,
Matt McCormick, USA 2001, video, 16:00
It is at once a delightful parody of overheated art-history hermeneutics and
an authentic plea for the appreciation of disregarded urban patterns. Patterns
on walls, train cars, and shipping containers are compared to paintings by
Rothko and Malevich and catalogued as ‘symmetrical’, ‘radical’ and ‘ghosting’.
Getting Stronger Every Day, Miranda July,
USA 2001, video, 6:30
This video captures the experience of becoming lost and found, from moment
to moment, and over the course of a lifetime. This is played out in mundanely
poignant tableaux in which the spirit realm manifests in low-tech effects and
remembered tv-movies.
Apple Grown in Wind Tunnel, Steven Matheson,
USA 2000, video, 26:00
(ex quo winner of the international competition
videoex 2002)
This absurd microscopic film noir follows the activities of an underground
network of sick people, desperate to create alternative methods of self-care
in a world where natural resources are disappearing. While examining the meaning
of health, disease, and well-being in post-industrial culture, "Apple" imagines
the development of a culture at the margins, linked by illicit radio broadcasts,
toxic waste sites, the highway, and ultimately by the overwhelming desire to
find a cure.
Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2002 8.30 pm
Du Moteur A Explosion, Dominic Gagnon, CAN
2000, 16 mm, 40:00
with live music by Dominic Gagnon
(ex quo winner of the international competition videoex
2002)
"Full Throttle Engine Component" disturbs the architecture of the world's
largest airports. Hijacks reduces to flames four Boeing 747s and penetrates the
paranoid psyches of traveller strapped inside the international zone. The underlying
tension, an extraordinary visual beauty and a fascinating soundtrack catch the
viewers attention during 40 minutes.
Thursday, Dec. 19, 2002 8.30 pm
The Dead Weight of a Quarrel Hangs, Walid
Ra'ad, USA 1999, video, 16:54
This piece investigates the possibilities and limits of writing a history of
the Lebanese civil wars (1975-1991). The tapes offer accounts of the fantastic
situations that beset a number of individuals, though they do not document
what happened. Rather, the tapes explore what can be imagined, what can be
said, what can be taken for granted, what can appear as rational, sayable,
and thinkable about the wars.
Fade into White # 3, Kazuhiro Goshima, J
2001, video, 14:00
In this "FADE into WHITE" series, I have been tried to stimulate
the imagination of audiences with the minimized visual information. I think
the real existence is with "quality" not with "quantity" of
information.
Variations for Movements, Yoshinao Satho,
J 2001, video, 5:30
A small, animated "symphony of a big city": signs and buildings have
their own life.
Cargo, Laura Waddington, F 2001, video, 29:35
(ex quo winner of the international competition
videoex 2002)
A woman tells the story of a journey she made on a cargo boat to the middle
east. " Lost in space: poetic and exquisitely beautiful, Laura Waddington
dream video diary records the melancholy shadow life of a container ship crew
in perpetual limbo.