exhibition

EMAF-exhibition 2010
"Kunsthalle Dominikanerkirche" and other places around Osnabrück

The exhibition at the European Media Art Festival gives visitors an overview of the latest array of creations by international media artists. In addition to current works containing various mixed-media sculptures, the subject of the festival will focus on MASH UP works, which will be on show until 24 May. These works advance the ironic game involving the reuse of found material. After all, re-mixing boulders from the quarry of the media has evolved into a widespread cultural technique of creative adaptation and the fundamental principle of culture in the digital age.

Jens Wunderling
„default to public - tweetleak“
Germany, 2009

In "default to public - tweetleak", Jens Wunderling publishes twitter messages written by people he doesn't know on stickers. Most of the senders are quite distraught when they realise they've completely disregarded the public status of their messages.

David Sarno & Tobias Herman
„Wie ich lernte, den Grossen Augenblick der Erkenntnis durch ein schlichtes ‚ach so!‘ aufzuwerten“
(How I learned to enhance the big moment of realisation by a simple 'Oh, I see!’)
Germany, 2009

David Sarno plays with the perception of visitors to the exhibition, who believe they are within the range of a surveillance camera. However, they are constantly disoriented by inexplicable events and extraordinary encounters within the video sequence.

BitteBitteJaJa (Ulu Braun & Roland Rauschmeier)
„Cadavre Exquises Vivantes“
Germany, 2010

The artist duo BitteBitteJaJa merges digital physical shapes from feature films and TV documentaries into collage portraits, which they present in a quintuple video altar. The "Cadavre Exquises Vivantes" can be detected as Frankensteinish monsters floating just above the ground or as hybrid prophets of the modern digital world.

Geoffrey Alan Rhodes
„The 52 Card Psycho“
USA 2008

As in a game of patience, the visitor places cards on a gambling table in alternating combinations. Depending on the composition and the selected sequence, the individual settings of the famous shower scene from Hitchcock's "Psycho" are projected onto the screen. These can then be reassembled to make one's own video.

Caspar Stracke
„Proximity 2009 (Bubble Version)“
USA 2010

Caspar Stracke shows one of the first abstract 3D films. His installation is based on found footage material from feature films. On a matrix of 80 panels (originally the panes from an industrial window in his New York gallery), he has projected situations from eight Hollywood film in very low resolution. The themes of blindness and the restriction of the sense of vision are explored in the scenes, whose sound tracks remain audible.

Matthias Fritsch
„Music From The Masses“
Germany 2002 - 2010

Matthias Fritsch posts videos without sound tracks on the web with the request to produce music for these films and to republish it together with the video. Numerous examples of interesting video tracks, which he received from all over the world, can be seen and heard in his interactive installation. M. Fritsch will also give a talk at the Congress on collective art and artistic strategies within social networks.

Susanne Schuda
"The Bir(d)th, a.k.a. die schudas reloaded, ich laß die Betten runter"
Austria 2009

The computer-animated interactive “web grotesque” is presented as a video. The story of the Schudas and their neighbours is based on the soap opera format. The intentionally over-the-top poses of the visually collaged figures reflect a medialised society. Disastrous relationships, depression, anxieties, repression and sex as the last (web) refuge are visually and linguistically intertwined by Susanne Schuda in a ruthless yet humorous manner.

Chen Yun-Ju
„Starry Starry Night
Taiwan 2010
In cooperation with: Edith Russ Site for Media Art ,Oldenburg

With her installation "Starry, Starry Night", the Taiwanese artist aims to steer the public's attention towards environmental problems. The five spherical objects symbolise the five continents. Fed by blogs, forums and other Web 2.0 sites, the objects either increase or diminish in size, depending on whether more positive or negative news regarding the environment is published there.

Tobias Rosenberger
„The Grand Defender“
Germany 2010

Mash Up as corporate philosophy. To meet the 21st century challenges, a security enterprise uses a mixture of old methods and tools. Tobias Rosenberger presents a trade fair booth by the company THE GRAND DEFENDER. The corporate group claims to be the world's leading security consulting company and a generalist among the defenders. Not only small and medium-sized municipalities but also large cities and metropolitan regions are amongst its clients. In addition, he also claims to advise private persons and to offer public presentations and workshops. The company's security concept is allegedly based on the teachings of the Chinese philosopher, engineer and military adviser Mo Zi (of the late 5th century B.C.).

Tobias Rosenberger
“An archic device"
Mexico/Germany 2009

The An-Archic Device is something between toy theatre, street altar and peepshow: a small-scale stage model, a blinking automata, an audio-visual machine, that produces physical and anarchic dissociation by means of laughter. Based on Antonin Artauds theater manifesto „The Conquest of Mexico“, The An-Archic Device deals with Mexico as a space of otherness and as a subjective heterotopia. Following Artaud, Mexico becomes the playground for an examination of danger and fear along the site, where each subject is set back to its self in its relation to the world. A coin starts the device.

Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag
„Warden Sprites“
Germany 2009/2010

In his work "Warden Sprites", Jan Peter Sonntag recalls a myth passed down by First Nation peoples. The Inuit claim to be able to hear the northern lights (aurora borealis) when the ancestral spirits establish contact with humans. In an otherwise empty room, Sonntag gives a brief textual reference to this faculty, and emits an audiobeam that makes the spherical crackling of the solar wind audible.

Eitan Efrat & Sirah Foighel Brutmann
„Tri-ger“
Israel/NL 2009

The triptych shows a video trilogy on three monitors with three stories about three men from three generations of one family. In a puppet show, a performance and a march, moral issues are explored that unite the three characters.

Ruben Bellinkx
„The Table Turning“
Belgium, 2009

Ruben Bellinkx's 16mm film installation "The Table Turning" shows a table bearing four tortoises on three screens. With joint, mutual forces, they manage to set the furniture in motion.

Anna Sokolova
„Ornament“
Germany 2010

In her video sculpture "Ornament", Anna Sokolova refers to the "Dominican Church" exhibition space. Her video column, consisting of 16 monitors with linear patterns that absorb the rhythm and upward trend of the church's architecture, and congenially transform them into motion, is located in the former chancel of the Kunsthalle. In the empire of Ancient Egypt, obelisks were erected to portray the sun's rays which, in turn, symbolised the connection between the sun-god Re and the terrestrial ruler. By placing the light-emitting sculpture in the chancel of the former church, the artist takes up this reference. At the same time, the playfulness of the bar-like structure of her images also allude to momentum and to the potential shifts in direction of processes between above and below, between the physical and the metaphysical sphere.

Stefan Demming
„Greenhouse“
Germany 2008

With his greenhouse installation, Stefan Demming interprets industrialised vegetable production as choreography of artificial plants. Leaf blowers make trees and fruit grow in a matter of seconds; they look lovely for a short while, and then collapse. Giant courgettes and plastic palm trees become rivals in the growth race.

gold extra
"Frotiers"
Frontiers is a computer game that enables its players to experience life of both sides of the border. Race for the Moroccan-Spanish fenceline in Ceuta and make it safely to the other side. Should you fail, you'll find yourself back in the Saharan desert with 600 km to go until you make it back to the border.

Heiko Beck
„Dies ist keine Übung“
Germany 2010

„"This is not an exercise, because now that's that with the self-pity, the whinging and the excuses." Heiko Beck portrays text installations in public spaces, on railroad bridges and on the central municipal library in Osnabrück. In addition, he will present a multimedia work comprising texts, cut-outs, photographs and videos in the Kunsthalle.

Luc Coeckelberghs
„LightHouse“
Belgium, 2009

For his light installation, the artist replaced the walls of a container with frosted glass that radiates strong white light. Inside the closed space of the light installation, visitors can experience an intense display of coloured light.

Jens Wunderling
„default to public - tweetscreen“
Germany, 2009

“tweetscreen” is a networked projection/installation in public space showing tweets which have been written near it’s own physical location on a large projection screen. The twitter users whose tweets have been chosen receive a reply message aling with the photo taken by a webcam.

William Wegman
„Two Dogs Watching“
USA 1975, DVD, Loop,
Courtesy: Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York

William Wegman is renowned and acclaimed for videos and photographic works with his dogs and their animal friends. With humour and reserved irony, he uses this method to look at friction in everyday human life. In "Two Dogs Watching", Wegman's Weimaraner "Man Ray" and its friend follow the movements of an object behind the camera in perfect synchrony.

Tilman Küntzel
„NEOPHONIE“
Germany 2009

In the windows of the gallery, 15 fluorescent tubes that have become stuck in the lighting process are flickering. Light sensors transmit the flickering of the tubes to 15 radios that receive the individual rhythm of the light. Each radio reproduces the rhythm from one tube.