EMAF 23.04-27.04.2003 - Larger than life

[anna balint]

European Media Art Festival
from 23 to 27 April in Osnabrück
Exhibition up to 18 May

Cinema +++ Awards +++ Congress +++ Exhibition +++ Michael Snow Retrospective +++ 
Homage to Egon Monk +++ Electronic Lounge +++ International Student Forum +++ 
Performances

`Larger than Life´ - is the leitmotif of one of Europe's greatest multimedia events, 
taking place in Osnabrück from 23 to 27 April. The European Media Art Festival (EMAF) 
invites not only specialists from the fields of art, culture and commerce but also, 
of course, interested members of the public, to obtain an overview of current trends 
and latest developments in media art over a period of five days. The jury has put 
together an exciting programme, selected from over 1,600 entries, presenting 
innovative artistic ideas and projects. Besides experimental films and videos, there 
will also be performances, multimedia installations and new works from the field of 
digital media, such as CD- ROM, DVD and Internet. 

Larger than Life
Dolly the cloned sheep, fluorescent rabbits and Realian babies are all products of 
new technologies that will change our everyday life and our society forever. Genetic 
engineering has long penetrated art; blurring the borders between technology and art. 
Under the motto "Larger than Life", this year the EMAF has invited film and media 
artists whose works reflect this development.
The cinema programme of the EMAF will contain a wide variety of productions, such as 
the feature Teknolust (with Tilda Swinton playing the leading part) by the American 
director Lynn Hershman Leeson, in which a researcher clones her own DNS via computer. 
Or the short film Optimizer Customizer, a digital collage ? la Monty Python, by the 
Dutch film-maker Jan van Nuenen, who gets to the heart of the issue in just eleven 
minutes.

Congress
The progressive development of the (bio)sciences is also the main subject of the 
congress, which accompanies the festival. Artists and cultural scientists have the 
opportunity to discuss the extent to which biotechnological advances erase the 
borders between art, science and technology, thus creating new artistic forms of 
expression. Prominent participants include Eduardo Kac (Chicago), who achieved fame 
with the public debate about the genetically engineered fluorescent hare called 
"Alba", and Joe Davis (MIT, Boston), a pioneer of the use of genetics in art who made 
his name by encoding messages into the DNA of micro-organisms since the 80ies, and 
Prof. Birgit Richard (Frankfurt a.M.). Other guests include: the Australian bio-
artists from the Tissue Culture & Art project from the art science laboratory 
SymbioticA, who demonstrate how they grow semi-living sculptures out of tissues from 
complex organismes, as well as the Canadian group of artists Bioteknica, whose satire 
brings attention to the commercial exploitation of modern biotechnology. Moderation: 
Jens Hauser

Cinema
A total of 108 new productions in 24 programmes should suffice to convince visitors 
to the EMAF that cinema is definitely "larger than life". Besides features and 
experimental films, there will also be documentaries, art videos, digital clips and 
flash animations.
Among these are the German premiere of Pat O’Neill's new experimental feature 
entitled Decay of Fiction. The American film-maker uses the derelict ruins of the 
famous luxury Ambassador Hotel in L.A. as the backdrop to a hallucinatory remake of 
the classic film noir of the 1940s and 50s. O’Neill's special filming techniques make 
the actors appear like ghostly creatures from another long-lost age.
One example of the trend of experimental cinema towards longer films is the approx. 
50-minute film A Journey to Tarakan by the Dutch film-maker Karel Doing. A 
wonderfully dense collage of archive and personal material which the director uses to 
follow the traces of his uncle who died as a young soldier in 1942 in the Dutch 
colonies in the war against Japan.
A cinematic highlight is also the latest work by the English director and author 
Andrew K?tting. The protagonist in Mapping Perception is his daughter Eden, who was 
born with a genetic defect that makes her perceive the world in an extremely 
different way. His virtuoso use of experimental film techniques and digital film 
processing makes K?tting's film a highly moving, impressive work.
The two short film programmes entitled The Entertainer and The Swing Club also 
provide viewers who are unfamiliar to experimental cinema with a selection of 
visually stimulating experiences. While the first programme deals with artists who 
portray themselves or use others to portray them, the second programme is dedicated 
to short musical films.
Asian cinema – within this programme the EMAF will be presenting a wide selection of 
films from Hong Kong, Korea and Japan, which are gaining popularity in Europe.
Lectures by Lynn Hershman (USA) and Lev Manovich (USA) and the premiere of Europe in 
Shorts complete the programme.
The best German films and videos will be awarded the Preis der Deutschen Filmkritik. 
The Werkleitz Award for exceptional digital media in an international production will 
also be awarded in Osnabrück.

Michael Snow Retrospective
This year's retrospective is dedicated to the Canadian film artist Michael Snow. 
Snow, who was born in Toronto in 1929, is one of the most well-known and the most 
influential international experimental film-maker in the field of structural film. 
Moreover, he has also gained international recognition as a fine artist and avant-
garde musician.
Snow's extensive filmography goes back to the year 1956. He achieved a breakthrough 
in 1967 with his most famous film Wavelength, whose style was to influence whole 
generations of experimental film-makers. His examination of cinematic time and space 
is of central importance to his cinematic oeuvre. Spaces are strode through and 
explored by means of zooming and camera movement, sometimes in such a mechanical way 
that his films appear to have been machine-made. Neither is he afraid of extending a 
real-time action of 30 seconds to a study in movement lasting a total of 18 minutes, 
as can be seen in his 1990 film see you later (au revoir).
Snow's films captivate their audience because of their extreme clarity: they enable 
superficially hidden things to come into view and, when viewers take the time 
prescribed by him through the length of the film, they offer them unusual and unique 
visual experiences. In his films, Snow always puts his view of working with the film 
medium to the foreground without losing his infamous sense of humour by, for example, 
adding little visual 'gimmicks' that, despite their structural stringency, give the 
films a human and playful touch.
While his earlier films often dealt with the exploration of cineatographic processes 
in urban and natural landscapes, Snow's latest films concentrate more strongly on 
humans and their presence with regard to space, as in his current digital feature‚ 
*Corpus Callosum (2002). Snow will be a guest visitor to the EMAF, where he will 
introduce his films and be available for discussions with the audience.
The EMAF will be showing a unique retrospective of Snow's films, the scope of which 
has never before been seen in Europe, as well as his installation entitled 
That/Cela/Dat (2002).

Homage
The homage to Egon Monk will involve the presentation of his works. As the director 
of NDR television drama he brought new impulses to TV work in the 1960s and developed 
television dramas between realisation and documentation, that had a lasting influence 
on many editors, producers and authors regarding both form and content.

Exhibition
The exhibition at the EMAF that will be presented in the Kunsthalle Dominikanerkirche 
until 18 May provides an overview of the whole spectrum of media art: from video and 
interactive computer installations to media sculptures.
In the installations the subjects of identity and human representation, the classic 
aspects of the Fine Arts, are taken up and presented in a wide variety of ways. 
Besides the virtual representation of man, we also find works focussing on man's 
approaching biotechnical reproduction. In the exhibition's second focal point well- 
known artists as well as younger talented artists from the international media art 
scene deal with the deconstruction of media characters and codes, and how to turn the 
visual messages surrounding us into irony through the playful use of digital 
technologies.


Peter Bogers (NL) - Shared Moments
Anne Cleary / Denis Connolly (IRL) - Sc?nes Du Boulevard
Christian Ziegler (D) - Dis-Place
Björn Melhus (D) - The Oral Thing
Michael Snow (CDN) - That/Cela/Dat
Daniel Canogar (E) - Obscenity of the Surface
Björn Schülke (D) - Nervous
Dirk Hupe (D) - zeichen_ver
Jan van Nuenen (NL) - Optimizer Customizer
Bea de Visser (NL) - Blow up
Andreas Zelle (D) - Die Windharfe

Electronic Lounge
In the Electronic Lounge, which is also located in the Dominikanerkirche, works from 
the fields of Internet, CD-ROM and DVD will be presented.The British group the phone 
book will demonstrate new possibilities of presentation for WAP and i-mode 
applications for mobile phones. The artists from Remote TV and Streamminister 
(Berlin) will introduce an interactive TV and Internet concept, and will run a 
workshop at the EMAF for those interested.
This is also where the VeeJay Groove will take place between 24 and 26 April. Each 
night from 11 p.m. VeeJays from throughout Europe will create a unique atmosphere by 
linking sound with lavish video projections – time for dancing or just chilling out.

Juan Manuel Echavarría
In co-operation with the Erich Maria Remarque-Peace Centre, the EMAF presents 
Colombian video artist and photographer Juan Manuel Echavarría. In his works he 
reflects upon the everyday violence raging in his home country. A bloody civil war 
between rival guerrilla groups from different political camps, local citizen defence 
groups and the drugs barons' paramilitary private armies has raged Colombia for 
years, taking the whole country hostage. The main income of the rival bands comes 
namely from large-scale mass kidnappings, where the victim's bank balance has long 
failed to be of significance – only the sheer number of people kidnapped matters. In 
three video installations and a series of photographs Echavarría makes the deep- 
seated insecurity of the individual victims and the Colombian population as a whole 
his subject.

Performances
The highlight of the programme is the Swiss Stage TV, which combines circus artistry 
and juggling with the possibilities offered by video technology and computer 
animation in a unique fashion. Fans of interactive film performances are recommended 
Cause and Effect, in which the reactions of the audience directly influence the 
course of the performance.

International Student Forum
In the Student Forum the EMAF presents the current work undertaken at universities 
and colleges throughout the world. This year's collaborative partner is the 
Hochschule für Gestaltung und Buchkunst (HGB) Leipzig. Current works by students from 
Europe, the USA and Australia are presented within two film programmes, reflective 
media and emotica. Furthermore, there will be an exhibition of installations by 
students from Denmark, Karlsruhe, Stuttgart and Leipzig.
On the university open day on 24 April, those interested have the chance to find out 
about the numerous international media-oriented degree programmes. Presentations will 
be made by students and lecturers from the University of Wales Institute Cardiff, the 
Media Centre of Art and Design (MECAD) in Barcelona, the FH Potsdam with their new 
Interface Design degree programme, the Academy of Fine Arts Poznan (Poland), the FH 
Osnabrück (Media Informatics degree programme), Camera Obscura from Tel Aviv 
(Israel), and the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Buchkunst (HGB) Leipzig.

The European Media Art Festival is promoted and sponsored by:
Nord Media Mediengesellschaft Niedersachsen/Bremen mbH
Osnabrück City Council
EU Commission
Foreign Office, Berlin
Federal Ministry of Education and Research
Canadian Embassy
Dutch Embassy
Swiss Post
VGS, Hamburg
UniX Software GmbH

For further information please contact the organisers on +49 (0)541-21658 or Frank 
Terhorst on 0178-8141821
Press contact: presse at emaf.de
A detailed programme containing an exact schedule is available from 2 April.
http://www.emaf.de/english/index.html