VIDEONALE.18

FESTIVAL FOR VIDEO AND TIME-BASED ARTS
FLUID STATES. SOLID MATTER

VIDEONALE.18 DIGITAL

Exhibition: March 4 – April 18, 2021 at Kunstmuseum Bonn

Opening day: March 3, 2021, from 11am CET

Award Ceremony: March 5, 2021, 8pm CET

Check out the exhibition online: From March 3 - 7, 2021, we will stream works of the VIDEONALE.18 (access from 3 March, 11 am via this website; streaming fee 7 euros).
From March 3, 2021 at 11am CET, we will unlock numerous contents on the exhibition for you. Look forward to:

  • Exhibition tours with the artistic director and the exhibition architect
  • Desktop-Selfies, short self-presentations of the exhibited artists
  • Desktop-Interviews, more in-depth conversations between the exhibited artists and the Videonale team/Videonale jury

The themes addressed by the previous Videonale editions, “The Call of the Wild” VIDEONALE.15, “PERFORM!” VIDEONALE.16 and “Refracted Realities” VIDEONALE.17, reflected egocentric and escapist phenomena in society. In which direction do we continue thinking from here? With 31 works selected from around 1,900 submissions, the VIDEONALE.18 entitled “Fluid States. Solid Matter” opens up a space of reference for reflecting on a changing world in which social, political, economic and ecological interrelations are reassessed and orders are newly constituted in complex dynamics.

On what basis do we live, think and act today? And how are we shaping this basis for the future? Common Western anthropocentric concepts that have been applied to large parts of the remaining world over the course of history – from human rights via the notion of private property to the founding of nation states – are based on the assumption of a sovereign individual, a fixed and autonomous body with distinct contours and clear boundaries to its environment. But how does this body, our perception of it and thus its positioning in the world, change when we conceive it as a fluid body engaged in a constant exchange with other bodies and its human, natural and more-than-human surroundings? This idea of “Bodies of Water” (Astrida Neimanis) not only liquefies our conception of a clear separation between humans and nature, it also upends many other hitherto valid hierarchies and boundaries, providing space for thinking about new, more complex reference systems in which we move about together with our bodies.

If we accept this as the basis for a future form of coexistence, how does that alter our perception of the other? What new possibilities of social, political, ecological, and economic cooperation would then be conceivable? Often based on very concrete places, things or autobiographical constellations, the 31 positions of the VIDEONALE.18 consider how liquefying firm constellations – solid matter – to fluid states – new, more permeable conditions – can have an effect on our being-in-the world. With their models and thoughts, they show that the shaping of future utopias is made possible not by exclusion and demarcation, but by forging new alliances and solidarities.

In response to the artistic positions, the VIDEONALE.18 creates fluid spaces in the exhibition as well as in the festival program and the six-week supporting program, making them a forum for exchange and dialog with talks, presentations, workshops, performances, and participatory formats. To this end, we will broadcast live and in color from the Kunstmuseum Bonn, embedded in an exhibition architecture that spatially stages the idea of “Fluid States. Solid Matter.”

Artists VIDEONALE.18:
Paula Ábalos | Tekla Aslanishvili | Cooper Battersby & Emily Vey Duke | Eliane Esther Bots | Viktor Brim | Adam Castle | Eli Cortiñas | Mouaad el Salem Mahdi Fleifel | Ellie Ga | Beatrice Gibson | Russel Hlongwane | Heidrun Holzfeind | Che-Yu Hsu | Sohrab Hura | Ida Kammerloch | Michael Klein & Sasha Pirker | Michelle-Marie Letelier | Dana Levy | Anne Linke | Lukas Marxt & Michael Petri | Bjørn Melhus | Ana María Millán | Morgan Quaintance Úna Quigley | Aykan Safoğlu | P. Staff | Rhea Storr | Ingel Vaikla | Ana Vaz | Gernot Wieland

ROOM A
SOHRAB HURA | ÚNA QUIGLEY | ELIANE ESTHER BOTS | ADAM CASTLE | DANA LEVY | MAHDI FLEIFEL

Humans, bodies, systems in crisis. This room brings together works by six artists who ask how critical conditions — illnesses, pandemics, wars — affect our emotional stability and social coherence. It quickly becomes apparent that not only the individual is at stake.

ROOM B
MICHELLE-MARIE LETELIER

Is it possible to draw a distinct line between ourselves and the living beings that we breed to eat? How interwoven are our respective bodies, stories and mythologies?

ROOM C1+C2
TEKLA ASLANISHVILI
VIKTOR BRIM
ANA VAZ

Subdue the earth. Humanity has all too often misunderstood this mandate of creation, not in the sense of »to cultivate and preserve« but »to subjugate and shape the world according to your face.« The works by Tekla Aslanishvili and Viktor Brim in this room and the film by Ana Vaz in the adjacent micro-cinema give an account of the consequences of an absolute, exclusive and extractive worldview.

ROOM D
EMILY VEY DUKE & COOPER BATTERSBY | RUSSEL HLONGWANE HEIDRUN HOLZFEIND | MICHAEL KLEIN & SASHA PIRKER | AYKAN SAFOĞLU

How can we enter into a new relationship with our human and more-than-human environment? What would the world be like, if we abandoned the usual con¬stellations of power and hierarchy and lived with each other in solidarity? While Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby address this question by reconsidering the relationship between humans, animals and nature, Russel Hlongwane creates a speculative scenario by drawing on cosmological, folkloristic and techno-scientific knowledge worlds. The protagonists in the works by Heidrun Holzfeind, Michael Klein & Sasha Pirker, and Aykan Safoğlu in turn produce concrete architec¬tures and actions to transfer their ideals to new realities.

ROOM E
MOUAAD EL SALEM | BEATRICE GIBSON | MORGAN QUAINTANCE P. STAFF

In continuation of Room D, four works are gathered here that focus on the body as a political construct and medium. When we speak about the visibility and invisibility of certain bodies within a community, we always simul¬taneously describe an entire social and political system that installs these (in)visibilities as part of its own self-conception. Each of these works tells of self-empowering actions by marginalized, hitherto invisible bodies that aim at changing existing systems.

ROOM F
RHEA STORR | ANA MARÍA MILLÁN | CHE-YU HSU | GERNOT WIELAND | ANNE LINKE | BJØRN MELHUS

The works in this room also take up the narratives of the previous ones. We experience moments of self-empowerment — through the re-appropriation of cultural practices, as with Rhea Storr, or the use of digital technologies to construct new body images of one’s own, as with Che-Yu Hsu and Anna María Millán — as well as moments of human loss of control, like in the works of Bjørn Melhus, Gernot Wieland and Anne Linke that also prompt a change in perspective. How did we get here, where are we now, and how do we proceed?

ROOM G
INGEL VAIKLA | ELI CORTIÑAS | PAULA ÁBALOS

There are numerous compulsions that we subject ourselves to with our bodies. One constellation affecting us all in the same way is the compulsion to be productive in the frame of gainful employment. Using a broad range of artistic narrative modes, the works in this room describe how earning one’s living inscribes itself in our bodies and at the same time coopts us politically.

ROOM K
ELLIE GA | IDA KAMMERLOCH

While Ellie Ga tells stories that drift as global flotsam and jetsam across the oceans, Ida Kammerloch conducts research on her protagonists in the worldwide flood of images on the internet. What new perspectives are provided by this oftentimes associative recombining of traces, objects and bodies?

ROOM H
LUKAS MARXT & MICHAEL PETRI

»I would only give money to a planet that lets us live
longer and not less.
And a good life, I say, a fine life.
And realistic life, too.
We have a new start —
new start goes back to zero, all existing creatures try,
born again, to achieve a better result because —
worse is unwanted.
Worse is not welcome, but it is for competitors.
To be quite honest — I don’t know if I’d want to pursue
this competition if humanity stays like this.
Whether living for ever still works, how nice life is
then, I’ll have to see what happens.«
— RALF Ralfs Farben_Hüllenwerk

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