VIDEONALE.2

Foreword of the VIDEONALE.2 catalogue (excerpt)

After two years we are holding another Videonale, once again in the form of an international festival and competition. The experiences and success of the first Videonale in 1984 have clearly shown that such an international festival fills an important gap in the West German video scene. Apart from video-installations, videotape production is the medium's most adaequate form of artistic expression. Tapes are pure video, where an artistic idea is realized solely by the means and possibilities inherent in this electronic medium. And only the flexibility of the video medium makes it possible for a festival like Videonale to provide such an international, cultural exchange.

Videonale is intended as an open forum to give an overview of the wide variety of tendencies currently emerging in the field of video, a function the other forms of video presentation are unable to fulfill. A festival is an opportunity for new currents and young artists in particular to receive attention - as we saw at the first Videonale.
Nothing could be more "fatal" at our present point of departure than a handful of names acting as a synonym for video-art. Since the seventies the final frontiers of the phenomena video-art have tended to blur rather than become clearer. Nevertheless, Videonale is designed as a festival for video-art (at least 69% of it). On the other hand the difficulty of establishing criteria remains an undisputed problem; For instance, is it very difficult to draw clear lines between documentations, music-clips or film.

There is a similar problem with the selection of tapes for the festival program; Judgements about quality remain a subjective matter in the final analysis. But a glance at the program itself should make it clearer than searching for definitions.

A very important job, that a festival has to do, is therefore the documentation. This catalog plays an important role in documenting the festival selection. In aranging the festival program we have mainly drawn our entries by means of an open invitation. Furthermore, in collaborating with distribution organizations and curators, as well as selecting artists personally in the U.S., we have markedly widened the spectrum of the festival. We had more than 350 tapes coming from Western Europe, Scandinavia, the Mediterranean region, the U.S., South America, Japan and the Philippines. 146 tapes were selected for the festival. [...]

We will also have a discussion about the problem of relationship between television and video-art. Participants will be: Astrid Heibach (Berlin), Dr. Wulf Herzogenrath (Kunstverein Köln), Dr. Christine Schöpf (ORF, Linz), Michael Stefanowski (ZDF). (Dieter Daniels, Bärbel Moser, Petra Unnützer)

VIDEONALE.2 Artists
Mineo Aayamaguchi, John Adams, Max Almy, Volker Anding, Marie Andre, Friedemann Baader, Hanno Baethe, George Barber, Stephan Barron, Irit Batsry, Thomas Becker, Gerd Belz, Stuart Bender, Dara Birnbaum, Lyn Blumenthal, Gábor Bódy, Hella Böhm, Caterina Borelli, Reimar Brahms, Hans Breder, Jan Bultheel, Marie-Jose Burki, James Byrne, Peter Callas, Maurizio Camerani, Mario Canali, Antonio Cano, Makxs Caspers & Horst Maus, Giorgio Cattani, Maxi Cohen, Andre Colinet, Giorgio Barberi Corsetti, Dennis Day, Ivo Deković, Peter Donebauer, Michael Eikel & Siegfried Nowarra, Theo Eshetu, Ken Feingold, Jeanne C. Finley, Agnes N. Frias & Marcia Eloriaga-Araneta & Sharon V. Cabrera, Monika Funke Stern, Paul Garrin, Ilse Gassinger, François Girard, Shalom Gorewitz, Gorilla Tapes, Inge Graf + ZYX, Bettina Gruber & Maria Vedder, Ingo Günther, Jean-François Guiton, Robert Hamilton, Gusztáv Hámos, Bernar Hebert, Johanna Heer & Werner Schmiedel, Astrid Heibach, Nan Hoover, Sanja Iveković & Dalibor Martinis, Kirsten Johannsen, Annebarbe Kau, Mao Kawaguchi, Dieter Kiessling, Video Kiron, Taeko Kitajima, Axel Klepsch, Paul Knotter, Bernd Kracke, Kurpershoek/Sluik, Tony Labat, Lilly Lack, Eric Lanz, T.W. Li, Henry C. Linhart, Ardele Lister, Llurex, Joan Logue, Maria Loizidou, Niels Lomholt, Paola Luna, Kurt Lundblad, David Lyons, Frits Maats, Lauro Rene R. Manda, Norbert Meissner, Angela Melitopulos, MIDA, Branda Miller, Bruno Mistiaen, Terry Mohre/Schlanger/Linhart, Alan Moore, Steev Morgan, Dorus Nijholt, Marcel Odenbach, Orlan, Rafael Montanez Ortiz, Michel Ouellette, Tony Oursler, Thor Elis Pálsson, Tess Payne, Albert Pepermans, Anne Perin, Alfredo Pirri, Per Fly Plejdrup, Fabrizio Plessi, Patti Podesta, Daniel Poensgen (alias Leinad Negsneop), RA, Dan Reeves, Jean Claude Riga, Stefan Roloff, Douglas Rosenberg, Georg Rosenthal, Tom Rubnitz & Ann Magnuson, Susan C. Rynard, Hiroya Sakurai, Soc. Raffaello Sanzio, Hans Ulrich Sappok, Domingo Sarrey, Ika Schier, Arleen Schloss, Lydia Schouten, Andrea Schweers, Bill Seaman, Ilene Segalove, Servaas, Ayumi Shino, Michael Smith, Torben Søborg, Marty St. James & Anne Wilson, Wolfgang Staehle, Kouichi Tabata, Janice Tanaka, Jordi Torrent, Mark Verabioff, Petr Vrána, Vulture Video, Clea T. Waite, Peter Weibel, Jeremy Welsh, Herbert Wentscher, Uwe Wiesemann, Mark Wilcox, Wonder Products, Keigo Yamamoto, Graham Young

Competition Jury
Philomene Magers (gallery owner, Bonn), Wolfgang Preikschat (art critic, Frankfurt), Dr. Uwe Rüth (Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl), Videonale team.

Award Jury
Alex Graham (The Institute of Contemporary Arts, London), Gisela Eckhardt (Neuer Berliner Kunstverein), Nan Hoover (artist), Regina Wyrwoll (producer), Lori Zippay (Electronic Arts Intermix, New York)

Curators
Dieter Daniels, Bärbel Moser, Petra Unnützer

Festival website
verein.videonale.org

Image:

VIDEONALE.2 catalogue cover, 1987. © Videonale