Syndicate: European Media Art Festival, Osnabrueck

[emaf@bionic.zerberus.de]

german text below -- deutscher Text weiter unten
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            EUROPEAN MEDIA ART FESTIVAL
                  6-10 May 1998
                  in Osnabrueck
                http://www.emaf.de
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About this information : 1st part in English, 2nd part in
German!
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INFO 2 '98

Between 6th & 10th May, the 11th European Media Art Festival
(EMAF) will again be presenting innovative works from the
world of film, video, installation, performance, CD-Rom and
the Internet.

This year we have received a total of 845 entries from 33
different countries for the various sections of the
festival. Next to Germany, both the USA and Canada, as well
as Great Britain and the Netherlands are traditionally well
represented. In addition, and among entries from other
countries, productions from Brazil, France and Russia will
be seen, all representing a broad spectrum of creative ideas
and visual aesthetics.

Film & Video
Some 135 productions will be presented in the international
film and video programme; from animation film to video
employing advanced electronic image processing. What is
striking this year are the nearly equal number of films
and videos that have been sent in: compared to former years
where the number of video productions have always been
predominant. This development and the trend towards longer
works is reflected in this year's programme, which
includes no less than eight feature-length productions.

In the tradition of former years, the working circle of film
journalists will be presenting the German Film-Critics'
Prize for the year's best German experimental film or video
production.

Retrospective

Over the course of the last 25 years, Pat O'Neill (USA) has
made a name for himself in Hollywood as a leading specialist
for visual effects and animation techniques (POLTERGEIST,
RETURN OF THE JEDI etc.). However, he sees his own artistic
focus moreso in the development of a personal visual
language, the expressive power of which is created through
the composition and layering of the broadest variety of
image planes. In Osnabrueck, O'Neill will be presenting a
complete show of his artistic works. This extends from his
early films, which he made as a student at the UCLA, to his
most recent piece of work HORIZONTAL BOUNDARIES. Pat O'Neill
will be in Osnabrueck to present his films at the festival.

Electronic Lounge
New CD-Roms, Internet projects and technologically advanced
productions are to be presented in this section of the
festival. With THE LAST COWBOY from Nomad Productions
(Potsdam), one of the first DVD productions will be shown
which impressively demonstrates the artistic potential of
this new medium. A virtual health resort visit is promised
by the CD-Rom KYBERKUR from the Systema-Verlag (Munich). The
Cologne Academy for Media will be presenting the CDs LOKI
and KRYPTIC. With VIBRATORS OF THE HOUSE OF BRODSKY, a CD
from the Australian Suzanne Treister, we set off on a
journey in time into the 21st Century.

David Blair (USA), one of the pioneers of the interactive
media will be presenting his new project THE TELEPATIC
MOTION PICTURE OF THE LAST TRIBES, which tells the bizarre
story of the Manchu Edison Film Studios in Shinkyo
(China), which planned the production of telepathic cinema
films.

2B OR NOT 3D is the title of a new time+motion Production
(Berlin) for the cultural television channel arte. On a trip
through chosen virtual worlds, the innovative 3D
visualisation technique INVISIBLE SHAPE from art+com
(Berlin) is brought into action.

InterNetworks
Faces: grrl power
In an open workshop, Kathy Rae Huffmann (Vienna), Diana
McCarty (Budapest), Sabine Seymore (NY), Margarete Jahrmann
(Vienna) and Vali Djordjevic (Berlin) will be offering
guided technical information, organising Web tours,
initiating Chats and providing information about a wide
variety of female Web environments, including: the
fe.mail.data-set; a server theory in the form of a
SUperFEMper4MANce from Margarete Jahrmann (A), to take place
at the festival as a live event.

Special: Sweden
In a country-specific special, filmmaker and curator Claes
S÷derquist will be presenting experimental Swedish films
from between 1950 and 1990. Recent film and video works will
be presented by Monica Nickels, professor for video at the
Stockholm Art Academy.

Performances
As a way of keeping memories of the dead alive, Buddhist
monks float lanterns out onto water during the Japanese
celebration of Spring. In Floating Memories, the Japanese
woman artist Keiko Ichii carries over this ancient tradition
onto modern media. Memories, impressions and visual
experiences which she collected in her home town of Kobe,
and during her stay in Osnabrueck, are to be stored on
notebooks. In a ceremony these will be given over to the
river, unfolding as a spectacle of softly flowing islands of
light.

The Dante Organ - Hot Hardware

Staged using eleven computer controlled flame-throwers, Eric
Hobijn (NL) will present an optical and acoustic firework
display. The Dante Organ: a martial, seemingly threatening
machinery belches out huge flames with infernal volume.
Hobijn plays with the observer's secret wishes and hidden
desires for spectacular images; his desire for kicks. The
familiar security of the monitor screen is dissolved by the
immediate intensity of the performance. Different than other
media however, where violence and danger is concealed from
the viewer behind the television screen, a form of
technology called HOT HARDWARE has been used here which via
an immediate intensity removes any sense of distance.

Cut to the chase
In the multimedia performance CUT TO THE CHASE, the knob-
twiddler and composer Steve Gibson (CDN) brings a mixture of
hard-core techno, warm ambient and cool classic onto the
stage together with Bert Deivert 's (S) video
animations"performed on MIDI giutar.

Lectures
Net-Culture

In cooperation with the editorial department from TELEPOLIS-
MAGAZINE FOR NETWORK CULTURE (www.heise.de/tp/) a series of
lectures and discussions will take Net culture as their
theme, critically reflecting developments in the area of
networks and AV media from a variety of perspectives.
Moderation: the curator and telepolis editor Armin Medosch
(Munich/London). Participants: the artist Cornelia Sollfrank
(Hamburg), sociologist Frank Hartmann (Vienna), and the
Networkers Rena Tangens and padeluun (Bielefeld) have been
invited.

Media Bodies

The role of the body in a world defined by the media is the
subject of lectures by Gerhard Johann Lischka (CH) and
Hartmut Winkler (D) respectively titled Everybody is a
Mediator and Pain, Perception, Experience, Peasure. Here
they examine developments in a society increasingly governed
by the media in an art historical and media critical manner.

With the presentation of their project 3 ROUBLES AND 62
KOPEKS, Tanya Moguilevska (RUS) and Gilles Morel (F) will
provide us with information on and an insight into the
development of the art and media scene in Russia, the
Ukraine and Moldavia.


International Student Forum

THRUST, TECHNOLOGY, TARTS
The Student Forum has discovered the recipe for life after
death!!
In the programme as well:
In the face of the phantom!
Birth (Day) of horror!
Artificial creatures orbit the world!
Imprisoned in immaterial space...

An artistic menagerie of video, light and sound
installations are to be presented in the Buergergehorsam
Tower and the Haus der Jugend.

The film and video programme at the Student Forum promises
further stimulating high spots: burning hearts, roaring
tigers and an electric panacopia of crashing encounters!

Festival TV

With his programme LOOP UND LITANEI, Egon Bunne - video
artist and professor at the media academy in Cologne - and
his team will be reporting daily from the European Media Art
Festival. His 'paticipatory' TV event will provide up to the
minute insights into the happenings at the festival.

Exhibition