With the 15th edition, from 27 February to 19 April 2015, Videonale – Festival for Contemporary Video Art will celebrate its 30th anniversary.

For once the dance of the snowflakes in the weak beam of the headlights seems not picturesque, but rather extremely threatening; the male voice in the off describes how the will to survive dwindles, eroded by the inhuman cold of the Siberian night – Christina Picchi’s documentary video “Zima” (Winter) is one of the 38 positions of the VIDEONALE.15 exhibition “The Call of the Wild” in the Kunstmuseum Bonn.

For the first time, with VIDEONALE.15, the Open Call for the Videonale competition featured a theme. With “The Call of the Wild”, Videonale asked what potential the concept of “the Wild” holds for the description and examination of the alien in the sense of unknown or till now unfamiliar fields of activity, image production or conceptual thinking. From the more than 1,200 submissions from 76 countries, 38 positions from 19 countries have been selected.

“What we are looking for with “Call of the Wild” is the exploration of the unstable territories in which the way to deal with new social, political, cultural and aesthetic constellations is being discussed and for which there is currently no adequate vocabulary at our disposal. In the VIDEONALE.15 exhibition, 38 international artistic positions have each found their own way to pose questions on this theme and give us food for thought: They cover a wide range, from the observation of the shifts and realignments within society, to the question about how the flaring up of worldwide trouble spots can affect personal circumstances on a small , and the political situation on a large scale; the question about how to handle the increasingly obvious blanket monitoring of our data- and communication channels and its effects is examined, as are the new aesthetic and artistic forms of using the surface of a digitally generated world”, says Tasja Langenbach, artistic director of VIDEONALE.15.

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Current discussions about gender politics are the subject of works by Renate Lorenz & Pauline Boudry, Janina Arendt, Elin Magnusson and others. The “wild” space internet, and the questions of new aesthetics and their consequences which it gives rise to, are dealt with by artists like Constantin Hartenstein, Amina Handke, NEOZOON, Anna Zett and Christoph Faulhaber, while the works of Christina Picchi, Mahdi Fleifel, Udita Bhargava, or the project Lieux fictifs (diverse artists) with its coverage of the extremely “unsafe spaces” of the global refugee flows, show us the other side of the coin.

As in previous years, VIDEONALE.15 will again take place in the temporary-exhibition spaces of the Kunstmuseum Bonn. The exhibition architecture will be designed by the architect and exhibition designer Ruth M. Lorenz, maaskant Berlin. She realised exhibition architectures for among others the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Berlin Akademie der Künste, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, the ZKM Karlsruhe and the Dortmunder U – there the exhibition “Sounds like Silence” got the AICA critic‘s choice award. www.maaskant.de

JURY VIDEONALE.15

Carla Donauer (curator at Kölnischer Kunstverein), Julia Draganovic (director of Kunsthalle Osnabrück), Jennifer Gassmann (project director&director festival programme of VIDEONALE.15), Sabine Himmelsbach (director of Haus für Elektronische Künste, Basel), Dennis Hochköppeler (director Galerie DREI, Cologne), Tasja Langenbach (artistic director of VIDEONALE.15), Erik Martinson (curator, London/Toronto), Jan Schuijren (curator Basel/ Amsterdam)
ARTISTS VIDEONALE.15

Janina Arendt, Udita Bhargava, Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Jenny Brady, Karolina Bregula, Wim Catrysse, Jos Diegel, Wojtek Doroszuk, Mahdi Fleifel, Christoph Faulhaber, Fabien Giraud & Raphaël Siboni, Shaun Gladwell, Philipp Gufler, Amina Handke, Constantin Hartenstein, Kerstin Honeit, Vika Kirchenbauer, Thomas Kneubühler, Ihra Lill, Lieux fictifs (diverse artists), Elin Magnusson, Rachel Mayeri, Marianna Milhorat, NEOZOON, Shelly Nadashi, Erkka Nissininen, Francois Nouguies, Alan Phelan, Christina Picchi, Florian Pugnaire & David Raffini, Mateusz Sadowski, The Otolith Group, Koen Theys, Gerhard Treml & Leo Calice, Anna Zett, Mikhail Zheleznikov, Tobias Yves Zintel.

EXHIBITION 30 YEARS-30 VOICES, PART 2

Within the framework of VIDEONALE.15, the second part of “30 Years – 30 Voices” – the jubilee exhibition celebrating 30 years of Videonale Bonn – can be seen. Out of the wealth of works presented at the Videonale in the last 30 years, 30 companions, friends, artists and designers of the festival have put together and described a selection of works which they view as ground-breaking.

The artists of “30 Years-30 Voices, Part 2”: Victor Alimpiev, Breda Beban & Hrovje Horvatic, Janet Biggs, Manon de Boer, Ivo Dekovic, Cerith Wyn Evans, Ken Feingold, Jeanne C. Finley, Jaqueline Forzelius, Beate Geissler & Oliver Sann, Jean-Fran?ois Guiton, Astrid Heibach, Annebarbe Kau, Dan Oki, Soc. Raffaello Sanzio, Evamaria Schaller, Herbert Wentscher.

VIDEONALE.15 FESTIVAL AND VIDEONALE.PARCOURS

The VIDEONALE.15 exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive festival programme with artist’s discussions, performances, round tables, retrospectives, conducted tours, workshops and educational programmes. For the second time, VIDEONALE.PARCOURS will take place at various places in the City of Bonn (27.2 – 22.3.2015) – this year featuring works by students of the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design, the State Academy of Fine Arts Saarland, and the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

The VIDEONALE.15 catalogue will document both exhibitions – VIDEONALE.15 and 30 Years – 30 Voices – as well as the festival programme, the VIDEONALE.PARCOURS and the retrospectives.

VIDEONALE PRIZE OF KFW STIFTUNG

At the VIDEONALE.15 opening ceremony on 26 February 2015, the Videonale Prize of KfW Stiftung of 5,000 euros will be awarded for an outstanding artistic work. This is the second time that the KfW Stiftung has sponsored Videonale Bonn. “Videonale offers a platform for the current trends in international media art. We are very happy to support a festival which presents cultural diversity with a mutually understandable artistic language”, says Dr. Bernd Siegfried, managing director of the KfW Stiftung.
DATES FOR VIDEONALE.15

Press conference: Wednesday, 25 February 2015, 11.30 am

Opening ceremony and awarding of the Videonale Award of KfW Stiftung:

Thursday, 26 February 2015, 8 pm

Festival programme: Friday, 27 February – Sunday, 1 March 2015 as well as regular events during the exhibition

VIDEONALE.PARCOURS at various locations throughout the City of Bonn: 27.2.-22.3.2015

Opening: Friday, 27th February, 6-8 pm at all VIDEONALE.PARCOURS stations

Finissage VIDEONALE.15: Saturday, 18 April and Sunday, 19 April 2015, with the announcement of the Videonale

Audience Award of KfW Stiftung, worth 3,000 euros (Sunday, 19 April 2015):

Videonale was founded in 1984 by a group of students at the University of Bonn and is one of the oldest festivals of video art in the world. In its 30 years of existence, Videonale has become one of the most important and well-known festivals of video art in Germany and Europe. Since 2004, Videonale has had its home in the Kunstmuseum Bonn, and the exhibition and the festival have been held there since then.

http://v15.videonale.org/en/