The Filmwinter Stuttgart and Media Space are held and organized by Wand 5 e.V. founded in 1987 as an initiative of filmmakers, architects and art historians. The aim of the organization is to offer an international platform to independent film and media culture.
The 21st Filmwinter Stuttgart - Festival for Short and Experimental Film and Media Art - is taking place from 17.- 20. January 2008. The Filmwinter Stuttgart takes up developments and impulses within the international filmmaking and artistic scene and offers an initial public platform. For the first time Media Space will be an independent section within the overall Filmwinter programme.
In the competition category Media in Space international artists compete for a prize of 2,500 Euros. The spectrum ranges from classic video installations to interactive environments and media sculptures. The 10-day long exhibition, featuring artist such as Peter Bogers and Daniel Aschwanden among others, is held in co-operation with exhibition spaces Kunstbezirk – Galerie im Gustav-Siegle-Haus, fluctuating images e.V., and gez. – Raum für Urheber.
The winner will be chosen by the artists Birgit Brenner (D), Markus Huemer (D), and Szabolcs KissPál (HU).
At fluctuating images the following works will be shown:
50.000.000 can´t be wrong
Germany 2006
Directed by/script/cut: Susanne Bürner, Animation: Julia Pfeiffer, Aleksander Cigale,
music: Steven Trafford
fluctuating images e.V.
The work shows groups of people expressing desire and despair through their facial expression and gestures. However, the object of their affection – their idol – is missing. It is outside the picture, denied to the viewer. All traces referring to him have been removed from the material. What remains is his reflection in their faces, showing his negative depiction and: a great emptiness.
The title of this work is a reference to the absent protagonist. In 1959 Elvis Presley had released a compliation of his music under the title „50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can`t Be Wrong“. Hence he was one of the first musicians to actively use his audience as a justification of his artistic existence. The interconnection of fan and idol is thus doubled.
Concilabule
Canada, 2006
Directed by: Myriam Bessette, Robin Dupuis
For several years,, access to new technologies and the development of image and sound production tools have afforded today’s artists, once called video artists, a closer, more direct and ongoing daily contact with the production process. Emerging from this generation of artists, Myriam Bessette and Robin Dupuis create moving images and sounds in which the support no longer defines the message, where genres proliferate and mingle, and in which filmic structure, vocal sound sampling, and TV aesthetic merge into a compound form. In their studio-turned-lab, Bessette and Dupuis sound out an immersive, visual, and electroacoustic universe
Conciliabule, a work in progress, spotlights manoeuvres that grapple with the interaction between acoustics and the spectator. Vocal elements in the piece then give texture to the emotional and physical encounter. With its auditory architecture, Conciliabule explores the rapport that arises through the positioning of acoustic incidences, a correlation that the artists purposefully examine in their work.
Conciliabule is a multitrack audio installation piped through suspended loudspeakers.
The evolving work is built from voice samples emitted at low frequencies. Loudspeakers don’t actually emit audible sound; one can only see the pulsation, and, when the signal has saturated the vibrating diaphragm, hear some noises. The work explores the nature of the acoustic object and the transmission of a complex vocal message via electric pulse.
Kino
Germany 2005
Directed by/script/animation: Oliver Held, camera: Dimitrios Nicolaos Papoutsis
I selected an exemplary sequence of three minutes from a five hour long video recording showing the traffic in front of a cinema.Its detail screens were analyzed and compared to the residual material with a software developed specifically for this purpose. The programme searched for matching forms in front of a motionless background. All frames of the sequence have been replaced by the respectively most similar picture from the residual material. The result is a three minute street scene that pulsates like a silent movie. The illusion of an ongoing plot sets in, even though the viewer is able to recognize that it has been put together out of different points in time.
A comprehensive Festival catalogue will be published.
more information: www.filmwinter.de
Review: Stuttgart Nachrichten