[aha] Fwd: form VideoArtWorld - VideoArtWorld Talk at Art | Basel 39

[lo|bo]

Jun. 06 2008

Artist Talk | How contemporary art would be without video?, organized by 
VideoArtWorld

Art Basel Lobby


The influence of video in contemporary art and art history has been 
largely confined to a limited circuit of festivals and infrequent 
historical museum surveys, since only in the last 10 years has video 
become the ?art of the present

Art Lobby at the Art Unlimited Hall of Art Basel
Friday, 6th of June from 2pm
+ (34) 647.522.256 / +(41) 79 718 1775

Art | Basel, the world's premier international art show for Modern and 
contemporary works, is proud to present the artist talk organized by 
VideoArtWorld: "How contemporary art would be without video?, that will 
take place on Friday, 6th of June from 2 p.m. - 3 p.m. at the Art Lobby, 
the contact platform in the Art Unlimited Hall of Art | Basel.

| Artist Talk | How contemporary art would be without video?

Moderated by Berta Sichel, Director of the Audiovisual Department at the 
Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, of Madrid, Spain, it will count with 
the participation of the following artists:

Julião Sarmento, Artist, lives & works in Estoril.
Adrian Paci, Artist, lives & works in Milano.
Hans Op de Beeck, Artist, lives & works in Brussels.
Oleg Kulik, Artist, lives & works in Moscow.
Hiraki Sawa, Artist, lives & works in London.

The influence of video in contemporary art and art history has been 
largely confined to a limited circuit of festivals and infrequent 
historical museum surveys, since only in the last 10 years has video 
become the "art of the present."

In 1963, when Vostell exposed the refined New York art audience to his 
environment, Paik, then living in Germany, had his first exhibition: 
11-20 March at Gallery Parnass in Wuppertal, run by architect Rolf 
Jährling in his private residence. The ten-day event, titled Music 
Electronic Television consisted of twelve altered TV sets showing 
unusual images, four adapted pianos in the same spirit of John Cage, and 
in the most genuine Fluxus Spirit, the head of a freshly-slaughtered ox 
hanging above the gallery's entrance. The title of the exhibition, 
according to several articles on the artist, indicated his transition 
from music to the electronic image.

Paik's first gallery exhibition in the US was two years later: 
"Electronic Art" at Galeria Bonino, New York City. The next year 
Marshall McLuhan would publish Understanding Media: The Extensions of 
Man with its radical view of the effects of electronic communications 
upon life in the twentieth century. Paik filled Bonino'?s space with 
screens playing abstract patterns and/or noise. Through manipulation of 
sound track and image Paik made satirical commentaries on the politics 
and content of commercial television. Influenced by the Fluxus 
aesthetics, both artists were the pioneers.

Now 44 years later, video is still called "new media" and in many 
institutions video is still presented in "project rooms." This panel 
will discuss the long trajectory of video as an art medium as well as 
how it has changed contemporary art and how moving images took over 
two-dimensional images reflecting on the stage of contemporary media 
society.

Berta Sichel

Director of the Department of Audiovisuals (since March 2000) at the 
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid and Chief-Curator Film 
and Video, Berta Sichel is a renown international art curator and 
consultant, researcher, art and cultural writer, lecturer and instructor 
in the area of contemporary art, specialized in Media Arts, with an 
extensive knowledge of trends in art and art issues and sensitivity to 
diverse audiences. She has a very large trajectory in the field, as a 
writer for numerous art publications and as advisor to different 
foundations, cultural institutions, and other private and public 
collections on art acquisitions and exhibitions.

Julião Sarmento

Born in Lisbon, Portugal (1948), studied painting and architecture at 
the Lisbon School of Fine Arts. Began exhibiting film, video, sound, 
painting, sculpture, installation and multimedia in the seventies, but 
developed also several significant site-specific projects.

Has exhibited his work extensively in one-man and group shows. Julião 
Sarmento represented Portugal at the Venice Biennial in 1997. His work 
is represented in several museums and private collections.

Adrian Paci

Using a media such as video, installation, painting and photography 
Adrian Paci reflects upon an existential condition -- dislocation, loss 
and the rediscovery of one's origins with a sense immediacy and irony. 
His investigations lead him to question the role of the artist and the 
very nature of the work of art, in an ongoing, subtle celebration of 
everyday life.

Paci studied at the Academy of Arts in Tirana, Albania. He has had 
numerous solo-exhibition in different countries such Germany, England, 
Italy and USA. Furthermore, Paci represented Albania in the first 
Albanian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and participated in the 
Venice Biennale in 2005.

Hans Op de Beeck

The multi-disciplinary visual artist Hans Op de Beeck (1969, Belgium) 
builds and stages contemporary, fictive urban and household locations, 
situations and characters that seem very familiar to the viewer. These 
include both lonely spots for reflection and crowded spaces, populated 
at times by bungling characters who tell us something about the way we 
live today, the paths we follow and how we attempt-with great ineptitude 
- to deal with time, space and each other.

In recent years his work has been exhibited on numerous occasions in 
cities including New York, London, Venice, Basel, Vienna, Shanghai, 
Paris, Amsterdam and Antwerp. From September 11 through November 16, his 
most recent installation, the monumental 'Location (6)', will be part of 
the Singapore Biennale 2008.

Oleg Kulik

Ukranian performance artist, sculptor, photographer and curator. Kulik 
creates a symbolic set of parameters, which define the environment the 
dog-personae will inhabit and then devise a series of actions that 
unfold as a response. The artist describes the dialogue within his 
practice as "a conscious falling out of the human horizon" which places 
him on hands and knees. His intention is to describe what he sees as a 
crisis of contemporary culture, a result of an overly refined cultural 
language that leads to barriers between individuals. Thus, he simplifies 
his performance language to the basic emotive of a domestic animal.

At the Interpol group exhibition in Stockholm in 1996, he performed in 
the gallery chained next to a sign labelled 'dangerous'. An 
international scandal occurred when he not only attacked members of the 
public who chose to ignore the sign, in one case biting a man, but also 
attacked other artworks within the exhibition, partially destroying some 
pieces. For Kulik this was an excusable act, as there was a warning 
label attached to his performance that people chose to disregard. His 
intention was to divulge his angst of the current cultural crisis 
through the violent anger of a dog.

Hiraki Sawa

Born in 1977, Ishikawa, Japan, moved to England at the age of 18 years 
old to study fine art, focusing on sculpture. Since then he has been 
interested in the production of time based installations using 
electronics, lights, multiple media. In the MFA at the Slade School of 
Fine Art he started using video in his work, still influenced by his 
background in sculpture, his work in audiovisual interestingly seems to 
capture 2D images from 3D spaces and objects, rather than 
cinematographic time and sequence. "Since I think of working in video in 
sculptural terms, I make the video image as I would a tangible object."

His dreams of fantastic domestic situations, produced in his charming 
Londinense apartment resemble lucid dreams narrated in a codified 
language, based in a pictographic alphabet often repeated in his works. 
Hiraki exhibiting his works worldwide including UK, Japan, USA, Mexico, 
France and Germany.