Syndicate: Video Positive 2000, Liverpool/UK, 8 - 12 March

[Andreas Broeckmann <abroeck@v2.nl>]

Video Positive 2000: A New Image, A New Identity

Over the last ten years, the biennial Video Positive festival has
established itself as
Britain's premier showcase for artists' work with video and new technologies.

Video Positive 2000: The Other Side of Zero features an international
exhibition
programme including several new commissions, film and video screenings, a
two day
student conference, a specialist symposia, special events, and a major
publication mapping the first ten years of FACT and Video Positive.

Video Positive has developed and expanded to the point where its last
manifestation, Video Positive '97: Escaping Gravity, encompassed works by
200 artists in 12 venues across two cities. Although a considerable curatorial
and organisational achievement,VP97 and its equally impressive follow-up,
revolution98 (the exhibition programme for ISEA in Liverpool and
Manchester) may
come to reflect both the zenith and the limit of this type of blockbuster
mega-event.

The breathing space afforded by the gap between ISEA98 and VP2000 has provided
an ideal opportunity for the festival to re-think its purpose and identity.
Furthermore,Video Positive's re-emergence in the first few months of the year
2000 provides a highly appropriate context to signal a change of direction and
underline a break with the past. This is echoed in the parallel
transformation of FACT itself - from agency to
centre (see News; The FACT Centre ).

VIDEO POSITIVE 2000: THE OTHER SIDE OF ZERO 10 March - 1 May 2000

Video Positive 2000 scales down and asserts that Less Is More. Venues include
Tate Liverpool, Bluecoat Gallery, Open Eye and Unity Theatre plus several
newly
available spaces. This streamlining of activities is a deliberate and positive
curatorial decision that echoes and reinforces the minimalist theme of this
year's festival.
Exploring the post-millennial mood of Y2K and beyond, Video Positive 2000
presents an overall programme of work that stresses its artworld
credentials as
much as its underlying links to the provinces of media, techno and cyber
cultures.

Tate Liverpool is staging new large scale video works by Monika Oechsler, Anne
Katrine Dolven, Dryden Goodwin and Monika Oechsler's 'Johari's Window' is a
four-screen projection of an all-female poker game, emphasising the
psychological
dynamic between eight women players. Anne Katrine Dolven, recently awarded
Artist of the Year at the Norwegian International Film Festival, presents
'Looking Back', a new three-screen work filmed in the extreme North of Norway,
above the Arctic Circle.

Dryden Goodwin's multi-screened video 'Wait' is constructed around a series of
video fragments from real-life situations in which people are found waiting in
anticipation for different events, the nature of which the viewer can only
guess.

The Bluecoat Gallery programme has been developed in contrast to the large
scale
projection pieces at the Tate. The exhibition involves a number of newly
commissioned and existing works which present a different slant on the
minimalist
theme at the core of The Other Side of Zero, using low-tech media to comment on
our increasingly hi-tech world. Projects will include a Collaboration Programme
commission from the Danish artist collective Superflex, working in partnership
with residents from Liverpool's oldest tower block, Coronation Court.

The Open Eye Gallery hosts new work by Michael Curran and Imogen Stidworthy,
commissioned by the Film and Video Umbrella. 'A Film Script Closing / Close
By'
has originated from earlier experiments videoing 'actions' set in public and
domestic spaces.

Amongst the events presented in public spaces, Slovenian artist Vuk Cosic
transforms the exterior of St. George's Hall in Liverpool City Centre with
projections of computer generated ASCII - a computer coding system.
Cosic is something of a Net pioneer with a strong archeological bent to his
work. This project is his most ambitious to date. For more information
visit www.vuk.org

Video Positive 2000 also features a programme of screenings, artist talks and
presentations, premieres and special events at Unity Theatre including the
launch of
'The Right One' cd-rom publication by Bulgarian artist Nedko Solakov.

check: http://www.fact.co.uk


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