With the 15th edition, from 27 February to 19 April 2015, Videonale – Festival for Contemporary Video Art will celebrate its 30th anniversary. The theme is “The Call of the Wild,” and artists all over the world are invited to submit works of experimental moving images on this theme to the VIDEONALE.15 competition. An international jury of experts will select the best entries and these will be presented at the VIDEONALE.15 exhibition in the Kunstmuseum Bonn.
The closing date for submission is June 23, 2014.
Information and application forms can be found at v15.videonale.org.
VIDEONALE
Videonale is the international platform for video art and time-based art forms. In addition to presenting established international artists like Dara Birnbaum, Keren Cytter, Gary Hill, Christian Jankowski, Marcel Odenbach and Bill Viola, Videonale particularly focuses on the promotion of aspiring young artists.
Theme
“The wild and the fantastic enter the frame of visibility in the form of an encounter between the semi-domesticated and the unknown, speech and silence, motion and stillness. Ultimately, the revolutionary is a wild space where temporality is uncertain, relation is improvised, and futurity on hold.” (Jack Halberstam, “Charming for the Revolution: A Gaga Manifesto,” e-flux journal #44, 2013)
With “The Call of the Wild” as its subject, VIDEONALE.15 invites artists from all over the world to submit moving-image-based works which deal with the wild as a space of possibility for new ways of thinking, seeing and perceiving. Hardly any other context has more diversely interpreted the ideas, emotions and concepts which are woven round the term “the wild” than in the visual arts: In images and actions, artists portray it as a place of rebellion and escape, of freedom, joy and independence, but also a place of danger and violence, of demarcation, subjugation and rejection. Which emotional, aesthetic, social and political conditions can nowadays be associated with “the wild”? Does it embody the potential for describing new, still emerging spaces of activity, depiction and thought, which, for example, have their origins in the revision of traditional ideas about sexuality and race, the call for new forms of political and cultural participation, the breakdown of supposedly well regulated systems—as shown by the banking crisis and the monitoring scandals, the development of ever newer digital worlds of images and activities? How does the wilderness inscribe itself in the moving image nowadays? And how do these images express the still unclearly defined state of this awakening?
Requirements
All types of experimental moving-image-based works can be submitted to the competition. There are no restrictions on the duration of the work submitted, on the geographical location of the artist, or on their age. The work submitted may, however, not be more than two years old (i.e. it must have been created after January 1, 2012).
Exhibition
For VIDEONALE.15 an international jury of experts will select some 40 to 50 works and these will be exhibited in the Kunstmuseum Bonn.
Prizes
The works exhibited will compete for the Videonale Prize of KfW Stiftung, worth 5,000 euros, and the Public Prize of KfW Stiftung, worth 3,000 euros.
Festival
A comprehensive festival programme with artist talks, discussion panels, art education programmes and special presentations will enliven both the Kunstmuseum and various locations in the City of Bonn during the exhibition.
VIDEONALE On Tour
VIDEONALE.15 will be presented in other international institutions. Works from previous Videonales could be seen at the Central House of Artists in Moscow, Russia, at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung, Taiwan, at the Insa Art Space in Seoul, Korea and others.
VIDEONALE.15 is supported by (as per April) The City of Bonn; the Ministry for Families, Children, Youth, Culture and Sports of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia; and KfW Stiftung.