The 16th Videonale – Festival for Video and Time-Based Arts will run from February 17 – April 2, 2017.
VIDEONALE.16 invites competition entries from around the world on the theme “PERFORM!”. The competition is open to all forms of moving image-based artworks (including single and multi-channel video and video installations). We also welcome performance and virtual reality projects.
Entries selected by our international jury of experts will be presented at the VIDEONALE.16 exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Bonn.
The deadline for entries is 4th July 2016.
THEME
#Performance#Interaction#
PERFORM! is the theme of the competition and festival programme of the VIDEONALE.16 ̶ Festival for Video and Time-Based Arts.
In its earliest forms, performance as an artistic gesture was an act of liberation – a rejection of the role models and expectations of the art establishment. Yet today, performance has increasingly come to stand not for freedom of expression, but rather, for the imperative to act. Be it through our constant interaction with digital devices, within which we leave behind traces of ourselves; or through the relentless demand placed on individuals to present themselves online, and to optimize themselves as economic subjects – in all of these ways, our lives, whether consciously or unconsciously, have become ongoing performances. Our movements increasingly take the form of choreographed displays in public spaces, over which we have only limited control.
This implies, on the one hand, constellations of control and compulsion; and yet on the other hand, it signals entirely new possibilities for participation in social, political and artistic processes, as well as new forms of interaction, communication and manipulation, all of which can be put to creative use. In the process, the borders between real and virtual space, performer and audience, the observer and the observed are becoming increasingly blurred. How does this influence our relationships and communication, our interaction as social and political subjects, our actions in the public sphere?
How does the performative imperative alter our perception of our own bodies and minds? When are we performers, when the audience, when our own choreographers? When is performance simply another word for conformity, control and reaction? And finally: under what circumstances can performance still be an expression of experimental, creative and, occasionally, subversive action?
The VIDEONALE.16 competition invites artists from around the world to submit works which deal with the issue of the performative in art and society in all its facets.
Before the mirror, the subject plays out its own real and its own imaginary. Yet at the level of the object, on screens of all forms and through all kinds of media technology, the world becomes virtual; the object offers itself up as ‘potential’, and plays its own game”. [Jean Baudrillard, Video World and Fractal Subject (1988)]
REQUIREMENTS
All types of experimental moving-image-based works (single and multi-channel video, video installation and Virtual Reality projects) as well as performance projects can be submitted to the competition. There are no restrictions on the duration of the work submitted, nor on the nationality or age of the artist. Works submitted, however, may not be more than two years old (i.e. they must have been produced after 1/1/2014). Artists are not permitted to submit more than one entry.
The VIDEONALE
Established in 1984 in Bonn, the Videonale is an international platform for video and time-based art forms. Featuring both an exhibition of the works submitted for competition and a festival programme, it has now been home to the latest developments in the area of moving image and time-based art for over 30 years. Its central focus is on new international artistic perspectives alongside established representatives of the arts.
EXHIBITION
For VIDEONALE.16, around 40 works will be selected by an international jury of experts to be presented at a six-week exhibition in the Kunstmuseum Bonn.
PRIZE
The works exhibited will compete for the Videonale Prize, worth €5,000.
FESTIVAL
During the exhibition, a diverse festival programme will animate both the Kunstmuseum and various locations around the City of Bonn. Talks by artists, panel discussions, guided tours, workshops, performances, educational events, and the student exhibition project ‘VIDEONALE.Parcours’ in the city centre will all serve to provide a comprehensive perspective on contemporary artistic practice, as well as on current debates surrounding the moving image and the digital arts.
VIDEONALE ON TOUR
Following the exhibition in the Kunstmuseum Bonn, the works displayed at VIDEONALE.16 will be exhibited at a series of further international institutions. In previous years, Videonale works have been exhibited at the Central House of Artists in Moscow, Russia; the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung, Taiwan; the Insa Art Space in Seoul, South Korea; the National Gallery of Bosnia-Herzegovina in Sarajevo; MONA Inner Spaces in Poznań, Poland; CCA/ Freedom Park Lagos, Nigeria; and many other prestigious venues.
You can find further information, as well as the entry forms, at v16.videonale.org