LICHTER ART AWARD 2015 at blinkvideo.de
The LICHTER Filmfest Frankfurt International has been celebrating local and international filmmaking since its very early days of 2008. Besides a competition in the categories short and feature film the festival presents a qualitative program on contemporary video art.
In the year 2010 Saul Judd curated an exhibition especially for the festival titled "stimulus kino" - "subliminal cinema" which focused on the use of cinematic references as tools in contemporary art. Two of the invited artists were Mike Bouchet, international artist from New York based in Frankfurt and Karen Cytter also a well known international artist from Israel based in New York. Both artists were present at the 53th Venice Biennale in 2009.
In the year 2011 LICHTER decided to create a competition called LICHTER Art Award. And since that it has produced three very successful editions where brilliant video works from artists like Luciana Lamothe (AR), 2011 winner, Oliver Husain (D/C), 2012 winner, and John Skoog (S/D), 2013 winner, were rewarded. The prize is 1000 Euro and a customized LICHTER version of a Bembel, a traditional Apple wine Pitcher from Hessen (the region in Germany where Frankfurt is located).
The LICHTER Art Award is an international competition and curated exhibition aiming to present the most up to date, diversified and qualitative artistic works in the contemporary field of visual arts. Accepted are works which uses film and video as a primary media. The competition is open to all visual artists and film directors, art and film academies students.
For the 5th edition of the LICHTER Art Award more than 120 artists and filmmakers from all over the world applied. Once again the entries were very diversified - from works of Sci-Fi Romance to investigative stories to complex video installation.
The jury composed of Katharina Dohm (Senior Curator at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt), Tasja Langenbach (artistic director of Videonale at the Kunst Museum Bonn) and Saul Judd (curator of LICHTER Art Award) selected the five finalists. The winner of this yearʻs competition is Jonathan Van Essche with the work ’The Second of August’.
LICHTER is very pleased to collaborate once again with blinkvideo.de were we will present a LICHTER Art Award online version of the show featuring some of the works of this years finalists as well as the winner :<
Jonathan Van Essche (B), ’The Second of August’, 2014
Anna Zett (D), ’This Unwieldy Object’, 2014
Mandy Krebs (D), ’Heritage Creek’, 2014
Ayla Pierrot Arendt (D), ’GESPIELIN’, 2014
Alina Vasilchenko (R), ’I Like Going To Pet Stores’, 2014
The selection of the jury will always play a major role in maintaining the quality of the contest. We were honoured to have had Simon Starling, a Turner Prize winner, and Judith Hopf, an internationally known artist and teacher at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, as jury members in the past.
In 2014 the LICHTER Art Award added a roundtable to its programme, the LICHTER Art Talk. This years guests were internationally known and Frankfurt based artist Tamara Grcic, the LICHTER Art Award 2015 winner Jonathan van Essche, an artist and filmmaker based in Antwerp, as well as the LICHTER Art Award curator Saul Judd. The subject we addressed was: the reality of video art in relation to broader audiences in cinema and television.
We wish the blinkvideo.de audience a wonderful time with the LICHTER Art Award 2015 online show.
online addresses
English: www.lichter-filmfest.de/en
German: www.lichter-filmfest.de/de
Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Lichter-Art-Award/170217072995918
Instagram: www.instagram.com/lichter_art_award
Twitter: twitter.com/lichterartaward
JONATHAN VAN ESSCHE’s film ’The Second of August’, 2014 gives us the opportunity to enjoy imagery without any agenda. It is simple in its setting and a delight for our senses. A portraiture of events that could be anywhere, for real or just in our minds. Van Essche is based in Antwerp, Belgium where he graduated in 2014 from the LUCA School of Arts. ’The Second of August’ will have its German premiere at LICHTER Filmfest.
ANNA ZETT’s video work ’This Unwieldy Object’, 2014 takes us on a journey into a world between fiction and facts, theory and practice where dinosaurs still play a major role. It reveals questionable information about history and the present and tries to take a peek into the uncertain future. Zett is a filmmaker and writer who compliments her writings with essay films. She holds a M.A. from the Humboldt University of Berlin. She is a Leipzig native based in Berlin, Germany.
MANDY KREBS’ video installation ’Heritage Creek’, 2014 is a visual note on the reality of residents of Heritage Creek, a small community somewhere in the middle of the U.S. which had to be completely resettled due to the expanding local airport. She graduated in 2012 from the Braunschweig University of Art. She is from Magdeburg, Germany and now based in Berlin.
AYLA PIERROT ARENDT’s performative video work ’GESPIELIN’, 2014 explores the possibilities of video turning reality into fiction using different disciplines. In her practice various subjects like feminism and the gap between process and product are discussed. Arendt graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and is now taking her master's degree in Choreography and Performance at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Gießen. She is a Munich native based in Frankfurt, Germany.
ALINA VASILCHENKO’s mixture of film and video work ’I Like Going To Pet Stores’, 2014 hits the Zeitgeist with a poetic view upon a fictional character which shows us that we arrived in a digital age where fiction and reality are closely connected so there is no need for distinction anymore. Illusions and dreams grant him a perfect escape from the brutal reality of the imperfect world. Vasilchenko is an artist and filmmaker. She studied at the iconic Mosfilm Studios in Moscow. She is based in Moscow, Russia.