Videum, reality and fiction in later day video

28 October - November 4


Cinemaztlán 3rd edition

The Mexican Film Festival, 'Cinemaztlán 3rd edition': October 28 – November 4, has organized a special presentation of Mexican video art. The guest curator of the program, José Springer, has made a challenging video art programme titled Videum, which will address the blurring frontier between fiction and reality in Mexico. The name evokes the relation between God and Video, as a reference to the increasing presence of video in our lives and the loss of limits formerly associated with movies, open TV, and virtual reality games.

Artists selected are: Artemio, Francis Alÿs, Carlos Amorales, Julieta Aranda, Miguel Calderon, Verena Grimm, Teresa Margolles, Yoshua Okon, and Marcos Ramírez ERRE.

The program with videos from 10 artists will be running continuously in a screening at NIMk, from October 28 till November 4, 2009 in the project space: 11-18.00 (Sunday 13-18.00).

LECTURE:
José Springer will lecture on topics and meta tags associated with reality and fiction in video art production of these artists. Verena Grimm, whose video Tracing my footsteps is included, will be in attendance.
The lecture will be held on Saturday, October 31st, from 17.00 till 19.00.

Ever since video extended its ubiquitous eye on reality, making a peeping tom out of most of us, artists explored the limits of reality and fiction. For some, the question of time became relevant, since the specific relation of existence and life was based on the measuring of periods (an hour, a day, a month, etc). For others, categories of experience, such as space and speed became the subject of further investigation.

But the fun part started when traditional formats from TV shows and media culture were adopted as strategies to show the perverse nature of our fictional household entertainment: the VHS video recorder and the DVD spinning devices.

Think about the news broadcast, the camera-watching-you at every moment, reenactment and replay as ways of re-ordering and transforming lived experience; all these became in their own right sub genres of video art. Even the term video art deteriorated quickly into a broader concept: time based arts.

The selection of video art Videum is part of a larger program of the mexican film festival:

Cinemaztlán 3rd edition,
28 oktober - 4 november 2009
Cinema De Balie, Filmmuseum, Studio K, Paradiso, NIMK, UvA, Binger Filmlab
The Mexican film fastival Cinemazthán celebrates its 3rd edition with a rich and diverse program of contemporary and classical films, cinema with live music with the band Nine Rain (Steven Brown-Tuxeedomoon) to celebrate the Day of the Dead, debates with special guests, a script-production and
a photo contests. Further information can be found on: www.cinemaztlan.net

Join us to the Cinemaztlán opening at Studio K on Wednesday 28 October. The festival will be proudly inaugurated with the Dutch première of the film Voy a Explotar (2008), by maverick filmmaker Gerardo Naranjo. A limited amount of tickets for this special evening will be available to the public with film, music, cocktails, and Mexican snacks for €15.

A special thanks to The Coppel Collection (Mexico City) and the Peter Kilchman Gallery (Zurich).