The Call of the Wild
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.
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, O.N.L.S.D., Shelly Nadashi, Erkka Nissininen, Francois Nouguies, Alan Phelan, Christina Picchi, Florian Pugnaire & David Raffini, Mateusz Sadowski, The Otolith Group, Koen Theys, Anna Zett, Mikhail Zheleznikov, Tobias Yves Zintel.
VIDEONALE.15
27.02 – 19.04.2015
www.videonale.org