Irony, nostalgia and much free flotting at the EMAF in Osnabruck
Alexei Shulgin from Moscow carries a T-shirt with the inscription "Not an artist" and has changed his PC keyboard like an electric guitar. The man with the appearance and charm of a mediocratic hipster revival stain music is called "386 DX – The First Cyber Punk Rock Band". Shulgin (more precisely: Text-to-speech and MIDI files of his PC) plays through the coarse hits from the sixties to this day – from "California Dreaming" up to "smells like Teen Spirit". It is a true pleasure to make the old songs with the Russians for an hour. The colorful Lightshow reminiscent of the best Ossi disco times or fragged senior baves does a short. – What should be exciting about it?
Nothing in nothing, did not produce graphics, sound and voice without exception with said 386er with 4 MB of RAM. – Alexei Shulgin was not only the Mood cannon at this year European Media Art Festival in Osnabruck. The man who also his "Thank you"-Announcements in the computer and his artistic authorship, whose self-printing was only limited to Pose and Prasence, delivered the most significant comment on the discourse on the new media for a long time: a technology that is only ten years old, today looks so lovingly anachronistic and mercilessly trashy like a hit or home film from the sixties. Thus, for technological determinariness, for the non-disturbible technical state of things, for the ever-liking "So far"-Character of the media art almost everything said, short: to finality of the preemperate. And more: Although Shulgin does not talk to the audience, he does not sing, he does not compose. But his refusal gesture still has nothing of the liberated "Death of the author" or from the "Crisis of the subject". Shulgin gives the anti-star and anti-artist game the decisiveest speed: his performance is genuine entertainment and technical philosophical comment at the same time; Rarely were disengagement of entertainment and light high of reflection so harmonized. (see. 386dx: The first cyberpunk band of the world and 386DX homepage)
From the techno-nostalgia to the Schlunderphony
"People Like us", Vicki Bennet
Vicki Bennett from London is called "People Like us" and is one of the co-generations of the current Plunder Culture – in the club with acts like u.a. "Barbed", "Muzictoerist", "Tape-Beatles". Vicki maintenance not (only), she does not iron (only), she psychedelizes her audience and subverses Klange and Images in a way of making it since the high blood of Industrial culture – think about the Fruh’s video experiments of "Psychic TV" – has not experienced anymore. By means of audio and video sampling of educational films from the fun fifty, images from Austria and the Alps (a recurring motif) and documentation from the start-season of the computer, Bennett produces a repetitive, in the best moments, transcey tone image flow, the Maintenance and irritated, active-attractive and threatening-off at the same time. "People Like us" As a similar to Shulgin, in relation to postmodernal switches from author and subject – more than blobe non-linearity and the consistent refusal of a narrative. Plunderphonics is an appropriation and found footage with other means and subcultural roots, it is the subversive appropriation of images and sounds in a post-industrial context that allows annually new varieties of composing with existing material.
Looking up superficial, an Act like Bauhaus from Berlin makes exactly the same. Also deconstructed and decoded, repetitated and reconstructed. But it can hardly succeed in the relatively smooth, almost commercial interventions of BauHouse, to be more than beautiful clip-asthetics for the dance floor. And that’s exactly what it was clearly in the final party of the "European Media Art Festival", to the "Veejay Groove 1.3", In addition to Bauhuse, the – also relatively straight – tone / image designers of D-Fuse (London) occurred. At the discussion round "Clicks and Cuts" then also a member of BauHouse the wishes, DJs and VJs finally liked to be recognized as an artist and not only as collectors, so that the right appreciation is given to them. A concern that Alexei Shulgin and Vicki Bennett were not signed: both do not make a commerce flirting with art, but (at least) art cocetted with commerce.
Takeover illustrated in the art system, but hardly discussed
The performances of this annual EMAF have already said a lot for the discussion about technology and human to media and art. The arrested by the Ars Electronica "Takeover" of the art of art by (former) non-artists was already illustrated by the EMAF close up: In the discussions, both online film companies as well as network art initiatives, both gaming programmers and webcasters in the context of Net-Art. Online games and film databases are already European Media kind? This was not the debate, and the contingency of the program was able to perceive depending on the mood and day of daily as a necessary attempt of burrs or as a loveless potpourri. (see. Finally: Ars Electronica creates art!To)
Many topics were briefly torn in the EMAF talking and clearly too little deepened. For example, the question of whether network archives are generally useful or not. The network lives from the escape, undue and ultimately non-locality (in the sense of a non-always guaranteed recovery) of information? The multimedia and webcast artists duo Station Rose, which his lecture by the Art Frankfurt on the EMAF streamed, affirms this. For Station Rose Is it the trailing moment of real time that makes up the kick of the network. The idea of archiving is a relic from the materiality. Wolfgang Strauss and Monika Fleischmann from the project mains voltage, a cartography of network and media art currently under construction, clearly see this very differently. Mains voltage is about a map of the multimedia training, a feasting of student media projects and many other archiving and networking agents. Both initiatives, the webcastings of Station Rose and the network laboratory of Mains voltage Were in the forum Get Connected Although presented in a row, but technical problems prevented a common, deepening discussion.
Congress with content debate and media voyeurism
On the other hand, one in the context of the Student Forum organized discussion titled "Content First?": Two teaching German universities did not manage it rhetorically or contentwise, even only a single connecting thesis to formulate the differentiation of form and content (or even context and content / text). A contested podium discussion ended in Muhsamen individual surveys and in qualifying followers by the over-required discussion guideline. One must not hope that the invited guests were representative of the German high and college education in the multimedia area.
By contrast, the congress offered Media self-contagious Performing high reflexive level: Ulrike Bergermann from the University of Paderborn talked about the de-dualization of man and machine using the example of the Bjork video "All Is Full of Love" and their potential interpretation in the light of the gender difference; The Berlin filmmaker Eva Hiller devoted himself to the discovery of privacy and publicity. Especially impressive: their still almost uncut, directly from the production companies covered recordings of public performances of Hollywood stars. The British Performance Group "Gob Squad" With their interventions beyond all categories, once again, when the congress concludes, art as a construction of identities and contexts can still be the occasion of true and false recovery – and be it just that his own voyeurism is reflected.
It remains a positive impression of this-year Media Art Festival. In the short of this review, the countless movies and web projects and installations can not even be mentioned highly suddenly clarified. Who wants to read: a program book with all participating artists is at info @ emaf.to order.