November 07, 2006
transmediale.07 Award
Unfinish!
Nominated for the transmediale.07 Award: Herman Asselberghs (be): Proof of Life ; Tim Shore (uk): Cabinet ; Antoins Schmitt (fr): Still Living :: Honourable Mentions: Aram Bartholl (de): Random Screen ; Richard Chartier / Taylor Deupree (us): Specification.Fifteen ; Kurt D'Haeseleer (be): Scripted Emotions ; Liu Wei (cn): A Day to Remember ; Stefan Zlamal (at): Heinrich und Mary-Jane.
transmediale.07 Award Jury: Inke Arns (Dortmund), Eva de Groote (Ghent), Miguel Leal (Porto), Ellen Pau (Hongkong) und Mike Stubbs (Melbourne).
The 20th transmediale festival for art and digital culture runs under the motto Unfinish!, and takes place from January 31 through February 4, 2007, at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.
unfinish! demands the re-opening of processes that are deemed closed.
unfinish! questions finality and claims that any given situation is full of potential.
unfinish! investigates artistic processes that are open to change and reversal of decisions.
unfinish! is the battle cry and the curse of digital work that knows no conclusion, but only consecutive versions.
Proof of Life is a 30-minute audio-visual work by the Belgian cultural philosopher and filmmaker Herman Asselberghs. Its images show the interior of a deserted space, while the viewer's attention is directed to the sound track. Spoken words reflect on hostage-taking, and sounds of imprisoned life create a claustrophobic atmosphere, inspiring an intense reflexion about the human condition in the age of migration and global media.
Cabinet, a film by Tim Shore (UK), was shot in the US-States of Montana and Wyoming, a sparsely populated and wild natural environment in which Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski wrote his 'Manifesto' against the industrial society. The sound track uses historical material from newsreels and educational features, even Edison's recording of 'Oh Tannenbaum'. This freely associating film essay reflects on the relationship between nature, culture and power, and on the imaginary space between words and memory.
A thoroughly 'unfinished' work is Still Living, by French artist and programmer Antoine Schmitt: Animated diagrams, similar to the well known graphics used for election analysis and stock exchange rates, are in constant movement - showing autonomously and eternally fluctuating statistics and ratios. While such graphical charts usually promise exact information, in this work they are caught in a nervous game of indecision and permanent alteration.
transmediale.07 - 31 january - 4 february 2007 - festival for art and digital culture berlin.
transmediale - Klosterstr. 68 - 10179 Berlin
tel. +49 (0)30.24749-761 fax. +49 (0)30.24749-814 info[at]transmediale.de - http://www.transmediale.de
Posted by jo at November 7, 2006 10:51 AM
