The World Wide Video Festival takes place in 1998 for the sixteenth time. Over the
years the festival has brought to the public all the trends in video art and media art:
video as a form of media criticism, abstract works, poetic narratives, installations,
Internet projects and multimedia performances. We have seen a change for the better
in the climate for presenting media art over the years with more and more Dutch
museums showing interest in the visual arts. But the art historians, and to a lesser
extent the film historians, have still not truly accepted media art. Little is written or
taught about media art, and scientific research is still at the teething stage. This is one
of the reasons the World Wide Video Festival decided to schedule this three-day
seminar. The lectures will be given by Michael Punt, Yvonne Spielmann, Philip
Pocock, Sean Cubitt, John Hanhardt, Timothy Druckrey, Hans Peter Schwarz and
Elba Benitez. The workshops will be led by Vuk Cosic, Alexander Hahn. The
workshops will go into the artistic aspects of media art, and production and other
professional aspects that are specific to media art.
13.30 15.00
15.30 17.00
17.00 18.00
11.00 - 12.30 Prof. Sean Cubitt, Professor at the Escaping the Playpen
Liverpool John Moores University
13.30 15.00
15.30 17.00
Reconceptualizing Reception
17.00 18.00
The discourse on a
mediamuseum: ZKM
13.30 15.00
17.00 18.00
The lectures are accompanied by film, video and Net fragments. Each of the three
days closes with a roundtable discussion.
SPEAKERS
Elba Benitez
Gallery owner in Madrid. Special to her gallery is that she exhibits rather a lot of works
by media artists, something also quite unusual for the Spanish art world. Artists she
represents are: Francesc Torres, Francisco Ruiz de Infante and Manuel Saiz.
Vuk Cosic http://www.vuk.org
Writer, associated with the media institute in Ljubljana. He was one of the first artists
to become involved with Net art. Cosic sees his Net projects as states of final
incompleteness; and so calls them documents, not art works. At the festival his
Website 'No Land's Man' is presented.
Prof. Sean Cubitt http://www.livjm.ac.uk/~mccscubi
Has written two books on video and electronic media, 'Timeshift' (1991) and
'Videography' (1993), as well as articles for Screen and Third Text, among others. His
latest book, 'Digital Aesthetics', comes out in August. He is associated with Liverpool
Polytech and is active in that city for the media organization Fact, now hosting the
ISEA 98 conference.
Timothy Druckrey
Curator and writer who works with photography, electronic media and theory. He
organizes seminars and exhibitions and is editor of, among others, Electronic Culture,
Aperture 1996. In collaboration with Gretchen Bender he edited 'Culture on the Brink:
Ideologies of Technology' (1994) a book in the famous series from the Dia Center for
the Arts in New York.
Alexander Hahn
Visual artist. He started his career by making video tapes and video installations such
as the four-panelled 'The Kircher Itinerary' (1990-1994). His work is shown regularly at
the World Wide Video Festival and this year we can see a video dance performance
he made in collaboration with Niki Good.
John Hanhardt
As curator of film and video he was associated with the Whitney Museum of American
Art for quite some time where he set up exhibitions with, among others, Yoko Ono,
Nam June Paik and was responsible for the film and video sections of the Whitney
Biennials. He is now associated with the Solomon Guggenheim Museum (also New
York). One of his most recent exhibitions was 'Rooms with a View'. Hanhardt edited
the book 'Video Culture. A critical investigation' (1986).
Philip Pocock http://king.dom.de/equator
Writer and artist. Studied at the New York University Film School, working mainly with
photography. Was associated with the ICP in New York as instructor. Together with
John Zinsser he started the Journal of Contemporary Art. He has lived in Europe
since 1991. In collaboration with Felix S. Huber, Udo Noll, Florian Wenz and others he
set up the Internet project 'A Description of the Equator and Sometherlands'. An
experimental, text-based and cinema-related project that is reworked daily by Website
visitors. This Site was selected for Documenta X.
Michael Punt
Film historian and artist. He is associated with the Centre for Advanced Inquiry into
Interactive Art and head of Postgraduate Studies in Art and Design at the University of
Wales College in Newport. He is also editor-in-chief of Leonardo Digital Reviews. His
recent publications deal with the relationship between early cinema and digital
technology.
Prof. Dr. Hans Schwarz http://www1.zkm.de/d/c/ma/schwarz.html
Director of the Media Kunstmuseum and of the Mediathek of the ZKM in Karlsruhe.
Hans Peter Schwarz contributed hugely to the establishment of this prestigious media
institute. In addition to his work at the ZKM, he lectures at the university.
Prof. Dr. Yvonne Spielmann