The Competition Jury
The competition jury of the VIDEONALE.18 consisted of six jury members who viewed the total of around 1900 entries from 87 countries and discussed them in detail over several weeks. For the exhibition 31 works were finally selected.
Elke Kania is as a freelance curator and author, an art and film critic, and a lecturer in art and film studies at universities in Aachen, Cologne, Mainz, Siegen, and Düsseldorf. She studied art history, philosophy, sociology, and film studies in Aachen, Berlin, and Rome. From 2004 to 2006 she worked as a curator at the Museum Franz Gertsch, Burgdorf, Switzerland. Elke Kania has worked as a freelance curator for the Julia Stoschek Collection in Düsseldorf since its opening in June 2007, and she has also been a freelance research assistant at the Kunsthaus NRW Kornelimünster since 2016. Elke Kania has developed numerous film series, screenings, and curated exhibitions on time-based art for various institutions.
The focus of her research interest is the connection between visual art and the cinematic moving image in exhibitions, screenings, publications, lectures, and presentations. Elke Kania lives in Cologne.
Tasja Langenbach has been the artistic director of Videonale Bonn since 2012. Since 2004 she has worked as a freelance curator for institutions and festivals such as Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt; ZKM Karlsruhe; Videonale Bonn; SoundTrack_Cologne; and the Folkwang Museum, Essen. Prior to that she studied art history and cultural studies in Erlangen, Leipzig, and Barcelona. She is a regular member of selection, prize, and grant juries, including for the European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück; Kassel Documentary and Film Festival; exground filmfest, Wiesbaden; and the Förderpreis des Landes NRW für Künstlerinnen und Künstler. She writes regularly for exhibition catalogs. Since 2017 she has taught in the MA program Culture, Aesthetics, Media at the University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf. www.tasjalangenbach.de
Viktor Neumann is a curator and art historian. He has curated exhibitions and projects for international institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Bildmuseet Umeå; National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Yekaterinburg; The Kitchen, New York; Künstlerhaus Stuttgart; and the Gdańsk City Gallery. He worked as a curatorial assistant for documenta 14’s Public Programs and as an assistant curator for the III Moscow Biennial for Young Art. He was also a Helena Rubinstein Fellow of the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. Most recently, he was part of the core curatorial team for Bergen Assembly 2019 and, together with Paul B. Preciado, co-curator of the transnational project Parliament of Bodies. He is also currently curating a multi-part exhibition series at the Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart in collaboration with with Hans D. Christ and Iris Dressler, and is the 2019/20 curatorial fellow of the Gebert Stiftung für Kultur in Rapperswil along with Fanny Hauser. He is currently a visiting professor for curatorial studies at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. In 2021 he will co-curate the performance platform REBOOT with Nikola Dietrich and Eva Birkenstock at the Kölnischer Kunstverein and the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf. He lives in Berlin and Zurich.
Stefan Panhans is an artist. In his films, performances, photographs, and installations he explores the growing hypermediatization and digitalization of our world, its effects on our society and our behavior as well as on our mind and body, and negotiates phenomena such as the compulsion for self-optimization, increasing social inequality, everyday racism, stereotypes, and issues of diversity. His works have been shown internationally in exhibitions and at film festivals. Recent examples (2017–2020) include Videonale.17 and Videonale.16, Bonn; the 35th and 34th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival; EMAF—Electronic Media Art Festival #33 and #32, Osnabrück; Transmediale 2018, HKW, Berlin; the 13th Athens Digital Arts Festival; Addis Video Art Festival, Addis Ababa; Deichtorhallen–Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg; MUMOK Cinema, Vienna; Goethe-Institut China, Beijing. He has received numerous awards and prizes, including an honorable mention for HOSTEL at Videonale.17 in 2019 and the Edith Russ Haus Media Art Award in 2017.
He is currently collaborating with the artist Andrea Winkler on DEFENDER, a new film and installation project, as well as on their joint exhibition at HMKV Dortmund, which will open at the end of April 2021. www.stefanpanhans.com
Vanina Saracino is an independent curator and writer. Her work focuses on theories and art practices that explicitly question anthropocentric and binary worldviews from an ecological perspective, with an emphasis on lens-based and time-based art practices. She co-curated the group exhibition Tiger in Space at the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM, Tallinn, 2020) and the Screen City Biennial on the topic Ecologies – lost, found and continued (Stavanger, Norway, 2019), also editing the SCB Journal, Vol. 2. In 2015, she co-founded OLHO, an international project about contemporary art and cinema, initiated in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, also shown at the Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi (2017) and Palais de Tokyo (2018). She has collaborated with Teatrino di Palazzo Grassi (Venice), TBA21–Academy, Cinemateca Brasileira (São Paulo), Cinemateca do MAM (Rio de Janeiro), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Salzburger Kunstverein (Salzburg), The EYE Film Institute (Amsterdam), among others. www.vaninasaracino.com
Florian Wüst is a Berlin based film curator, artist, and publisher. He has curated film programs for international art institutions, cinemas, and festivals. His most recent curatorial projects include: Zin Ex. From Abstraction to Algorithm, Centro Internacional de Cultura Contemporánea Tabakalera, San Sebastián (2020/21), Licht Luft Scheiße. Perspectives on Ecology and Modernity, nGbK, Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum, Nachbarschaftsakademie im Prinzessinnengarten Kreuzberg, Berlin (co-curator, 2019), Werkleitz Festival Modell und Ruine, Dessau (curator film program, 2019), Landscapes of Living, bi'bak, Berlin (2018). From 2016 to 2020 Wüst was the film and video curator of transmediale. He is co-founder of the Berlin Journals—On the History and Present State of the City, an ongoing series of publications that address the social, cultural, and econimic changes in Berlin and other cities. www.fwuest.com