Bremen Video Art Award 2003 (ENG) Filmbüro commends video art
Filmbüro Bremen has held its competition for the Video Art Award for the 12th time. Some 200 media artists submitted their work. A three-strong jury selected two projects and awarded prize money totalling 6,500 euros.
The Jury 2003
Prof. Dr. Ursula Frohne, Professor of Art and Art History, International University of Bremen
Prof. Birgit Hein, Media Artist and Professor at Braunschweig University of Fine Arts
Thomas Pätzold, Co-Founder of the medienwerkstatt rostock and Director of the institut für neue medien in Rostock since 1993.
The Curator of the Bremen Video Art Awards 2002 and 2003 was Conny E. Voester (Berlin and Basel). )
Organizer
Filmbüro Bremen e.V.
In cooperation with:
Senator für Kultur
Bremische Landesmedienanstalt,
Radio Bremen,
Künstlerinnenverband Bremen (Gedok),
Statement of the Jury on the 12th competition for the Bremen Video Art Award,
13th November 2003
With almost 200 entries to the Video Art Award, Filmbüro Bremen has this year recorded a marked increase in international participation in the competition. In terms of presentation standard and artistic approach, the Jury has also noted an improvement in the qualitative potential of the submitted project ideas. It was surprised, on the other hand, by the unchanged low level of participation by Bremen's own artists. More vigorous involvement of Bremen's twin towns - Bratislava, Cherbourg-Octeville, Corinto, Dalian, Frederikshaven, Gdansk, Grimsby, Haifa, Izmir, Kaliningrad, Pori, Riga, Rostock and Szczecin - would be desirable as a means of underlining the basic international outlook of the art award; targeted contacts with art academies and other cultural institutions in these cities would be a source of new inspiration. However, despite the many participants, the nomination of the award winners by the members of the Jury went clearly in favour of the following entries.
The main prize of the 12th Video Art Award (EUR 5,000) goes to:
Caspar Stracke for
Doppel
Video installation project
Caspar Stracke's strategy for a complex video installation is based on documentary footage of historic monumental buildings like the Acropolis in Athens, the Capitol in Washington and St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome. These emblematic buildings also exist in miniature in other parts in the world, transferring the styles of these cultural monuments into a "foreign" context. Stracke's spatially designed presentation of video recordings of these pairs of buildings investigates the architectural, cultural and urban double lives of such popular tourist snapshot motifs at their original locations. The clear structure of the project firstly underlines the documentary potential of video as an information and presentation medium. Secondly, the selection of motifs for comparison refers to the transcultural significance of "images" in the global exchange of values and identities. In the comparison of original and replica, Stracke brings different cultural systems into visual dialogue and thus precipitates the question of cultural heritage into a paradox mirror relationship. Video is employed here as a translation medium that manifests its own rules in the context of communication and cultural difference.
more on www.videokasbah.net
Contact: Caspar Stracke
e-mail: (Email-Adresse)
The regional prize of the 12th Video Art Award (EUR 1,500) goes to:
Karina Smigla-Bobinski for
Untitled
Room-based slide and video installation
Karina Smigla-Bobinski's multimedia installation combines different projection techniques that react directly to the presence of visitors. With a sophisticated lighting scheme, she creates an interaction field in which projected video images of strangers merge with the shadow of the exhibition visitor. In this spatial set-up, Karina Smigla-Bobinski employs video as a means of encounter with one's own image, which oscillates with the aspect of "strangeness" due to the faded-over image. With this strategy, the artist engages in self-questioning, which is one of the traditional themes of video art. However, she transcends this approach by extending the narcissistic constellation of the usual use of video to include confrontation with the "other" in the shadow of one's own appearance. In this way, she creates a room of "self-encounter", which only comes into being through the encounter with the "other's" image.
Contact: Karina Smigla-Bobinski
e-mail: (Email-Adresse)
Bilder von der Preisverleihung am 28.11.2003
