MEDIA FORUM /Moscow

[MediaArtLab, Moscow]

MEDIA FORUM
Of XXV Moscow International Film Festival
ART-TRASH / At the film industry's backyard
June 25-27, 2003
http://mediaforum.mediaartab.ru

Organizers: MediaArtLab centre for art and culture, Filmmakers Union of RF 
(Youth Board, Digital Screen Arts Comission), Interfest
June 24-26 2003
Location: Filmmakers Union of RF (ul. Vasilievskaya,13) and "Klub na 
Brestskoy" (2th Brestskaya ul., 6)

Support: German Cultural Center Goethe-Institute, Netherlands Royal Embassy in 
Moscow, British Council, CEC International Partners

The program of events

25 June

Filmmakers Union of RF


White Hall

14.00 - 15.00 - "Trash: between hack-work and avant-garde"
Curated by Milena Musina, Russia - filmcritic, specialist in the frame of 
experimental avantguard film
Tod Browning: "Freaks", 1932, USA, 64 mins.
The film monsters are usually created by make-up artists, this time they are 
God's own work. He did a great job: this film features real freaks: a bearded 
woman, a hermaphrodite, a caterpillar man, dwarfs and Siamese twins - shocked 
the audience profoundly and was banned. But it was not only the philistines 
that its director Tod Browning teased. He didn't notice he had insulted the 
cinema as such.

15.00 - 16.30 - "Transference":
A Program of Contemporary Video Works from Art in General
Curated by Jeanine Oleson, Programs Coordinator, Art in General
In this program of experimental short video works, human emotion is explored in 
terms of alienation, both architecturally and through the mediation of 
technology, from both popular and historic perspectives. From the co-optation 
of popular forms such as video games and advertisements to subversive 
encapsulations of performance within a containing frame, the distance between 
the artist and the audience or the Self and the Other are interchangeably 
referenced. 

16.30 - 17.30 - "Carry on Camping: Wit and Subversion in Contemporary British 
Artists' Film and Video"
Curated by Helen de Witt, a film programmer, the British Film Institute.
Camp is always difficult to define. It is not kitsch, which is bad art 
miscalculated with the best of intensions; camp art can be good art created 
with the worst of intentions. It is not the same as gay, but there is a large 
area of overlap. Camp is the taking of irresponsible delight.
This selection is a startling and awe-inspiring display of sparkling wit and 
daring subversion of accepted sexual and social manners and morals. The artists 
in this programme of British experimental film and video dare to crack open the 
hypocrisy and taboos of modern life, cruelly ridiculing its values and 
conventions to hilarious effect.


18.00 - 20.00 - Official opening of Media Forum


¸ Speakers: Kirill Razlogov, Russia, art director of MIFF, Alexei Isaev, 
director of Media Forum, Elena Tschiplakova, chairman of Youth Board 
(Filmmakers Union of RF), Anatoly Prokhorov, chairman of the Digital Screen 
Arts Commission (Filmmakers Union of RF), Olga Shishko, Program Curator of 
Media Forum, Gunter Hasenkamp, Germany, Goethe Institute in Moscow, Kathy Rae 
Huffman, UK, Director of Visual Arts (Cornerhouse), member of "MF" 
international board etc.
¸ Multimedia show
¸ Jack Smith: "Flaming Creatures", 1961, USA, 42 mins.
The trash manifesto of a American underground cinema, screening which could get 
one imprisoned. In contrast to intellectual subtlety of works by Maya Derain or 
Jonas Mekas, Jack Smith has developed his refringent "aesthetic ravings" style 
to perfection in "Flaming creatures"
¸ Furshet (only for accreditation people)

"Club na Brestskoy"

21.30 - 23.00 - Festival program screening: "Art-Trash"
Presentation of jury members of MF - 03: Milena Musina, Russia, Katherine 
Liberovskaya, Canada, Bernhard Zerexhe, Germany, Bart Rutten, the Netherlands, 
Helen de Witt, UK
Art trash or the trash-aesthetics permanently in vogue in the West allows the 
culture to rejuvenate and has on the whole a psychotherapeutic effect. The 
program is structured around major tendencies that we have singled out in 
cinema, video and multimedia experiments. As any other form of freedom, freedom 
of artistic creation has two poles - high and low, beauty and horror. We hope 
our viewer and critic will choose freedom. It's important to mention that the 
international festival program has become noticeably younger this year without 
lowering the level of impact.

23.00 - 00.00 - Microcinema International presents Independent Exposure "All 
Animation Edition 2003"
Curated by Joel S.Bachar, New York


26 June

Filmmakers Union of RF

Conference Hall

10.30 - 14.00 - Round Table "At the film industry's backyard"
Moderator - Anatoly Prokhorov, chairman of the Digital Screen Arts Commission 
(Filmmakers Union of RF)

Participants: Kirill Razlogov, Russia, art director of MIFF, director of 
Russian Institute for Cultural Research, Kathy Rae Huffman, UK, director of 
Visual Arts Cornerhouse, Naum Kleiman, Russia, director of the "Musei Kino", , 
Alexei Isaev, Russia, director of "MeiaArtLab", Katherine Liberovsky, Quebec 
Regional Director, Independent Film & Video Alliance of Canada, Nina 
Zaretskaya, Russia, director of "Art Media Center TV-gallery", Boris 
Yukhananov, Russia, producer, Milena Musina, Russia - film-critic, Bernhard 
Serexhe, Germany, director of Museums Communications, ZKM Center for Art and 
Media, Karlsruhe, Andrei Silvestrov, Russia, producer, Jeanine Oleson and Alix 
Pearlstein, studio "Art in General", ___, Irina Kulik, art-critic, magazine 
"_ommersant", Nikita Alexeev, artist, magazine "Inostranez", Sergei Kuznezov, 
film-critic etc.

Video Hall
14.00 - Closed meeting of jury members

White Hall

14.30 -16.00 - "Heavenly trash"
... the symbols of the divine initially show up at the trash stratum... (Philip 
K. Dick)
Curated by Jan Schuijren, Amsterdam.
A programme that shows videoworks using influences and elements of trash art 
being referred to as style, strategy, fashion statement or being used as 
inspriration.

16.00 - 18.00 -"Trash: between hack-work and avant-garde"
Joel M. Reed: "Blood Sucking Freaks", 1976, USA, 91 mins.
The cult of trash is first and foremost the cult of the Troma independent film-
making company, that for a quarter of a century has been enthusiastically and 
sincerely propagating blood, tastelessness and optimism. According to Lloyd 
Kaufman, the founder of Troma, "Blood sucking Freaks" is not only a cinema 
trash classic and hack-work horror model -this is "the most fucked-up film in 
all Troma collection".
The film of "Other cinema" line supplied by Carmen cinema company.
Evgeny Jufit: "The Spring", 1987, USSR, 12 mins.
Andrei Mertvy: "Corpse-hunting urine killers", 1988, USSR, 11 mins.
Evgeny Jufit loved to drop in regularly at the morgue, Andrei Mertvy was 
moonlighting in a crematorium nevertheless the first film of St. Petersburg's 
necrorealism was shot at a city dump. The session ended with the authors put 
under arrest for disorderly conduct. The decision of the expert commission 
regarding the seized film was close to a trash movie review: "no crime present 
due to extreme idiocy". In "The Spring" and "Corpse-hunting urine killers" the 
idiocy has gone beyond limits and changed into a trash ideology, which easily 
became a domineering one in the postSoviet cultural milieu.
Films of the Cinema Phantom Club collection.

18.00 - 19.00 - Microcinema International presents Independent Exposure "All 
Animation Edition 2003"
Curated by Joel S.Bachar, New York

19.00- 20.00 - "Art-trash from the Video Wasteland in the Film Backyard"
Curated by Torben Soeborg
The Danish Video Art Data Bank a non-profit agency for promoting and 
distribution of Danish video art

"Club na Brestskoy"

14.30 - 16.00 - Alix Pearlstein, Jeanine Oleson, USA. Workshop for filmmakers 
and artists. The screening of Alix Pearlstein's works.

16.00 -20.00 - Conference "Tactical Media Laboratorie"
Moderators: Oleg Kireev, Moscow, art-critic, curator, David Garsia, Amsterdam, 
Professor of Hogeschol Kunst Utrecht, Dept. art media technology

Tactical media are the momentary reaction tools for the artists and activists 
aimed to disseminate information, establish contacts, create images. Tactical 
media prefer low technologies, small communities, private interests, amateurs. 
They use language of communication, intellect, creative participation. They 
don't represent anyone except for themselves but they call for everybody to use 
their low budget, non- professional, local, momentary tools. They think this a 
condition for creating a bright diverse culture, a culture of a civil society.
For now the Tactical Media Laboratories took place at Birmingham, Delhi, New-
York, Cluj (Romania), Barcelona, Singapore, Rio, and are scheduled for Zagreb, 
Dubrovnik, Halifax, Adelaide (Australia) and some other cities.
Since the tactical media agenda is not well known for Moscow we decide to 
represent it in a maximally broad context. Tactical media are the tools of a 
new young culture which talk the languages of non-budget cinema, video-
activism, non-profit publications, leaflets, sites, and even the street actions 
intervening into an urban space.


21.00 - Intermedia evening with Phill Niblock, USA
Multimedia program "Music and Film"
Phill Niblock, New York multi-media artist, has been working since the 1960s 
with music, film, photography, video and computers. As a contemporary of Cage 
and La Monte Young and inspired by artists such as Rothko, Judd and Andre, 
Niblock belongs to the leading representatives of American Minimal Art.
Phill Niblock "Sweet Potato", 2001, 25 mins., for clarinets, Carol Robinson, 
recorded samples
Phill Niblock "Hurdy Hurry", for hurdy gurdy,1999, 15 mins., Jim O'Rourke, 
hurdy gurdy samples
Phill Niblock Guitar two, for four, for electric guitars played with e-bows; 
1996, 30 mins., original samples by: Rafael Toral, Robert Poss, Susan Stenger, 
David First; with added parts by Kevin Drumm, Lee Ranaldo, Thurston Moore, Alan 
Licht, Robert Poss
Playing live: Phill Niblock, computer controlled sampler 
Phill Niblock "EZAZ All Notes", 2002, 25 mins., The Art Zoyd Ensemble, recorded 
samples
Images: Phill Niblock - video from the "Movement of People Working" series, 
Mexico, Peru, Hong Kong, Hungary.

22.30 - Presentation of work "Painting the Painting" (Phill Niblock, Katherine 
Liberovskaya)

23.00 - Programes of: "Videotage" (Hong Kong) _ "Perte de Signal" (Canada)

27 June

Filmmakers Union of RF

Conference Hall

10.30 - 14.00 - Digital arts (presentation)

1) "Future Cinema" exhibition
The presentation of Bernhard Serexhe, Head of ZKM | Museums Communication, will 
be accompanied by a large video documentary of the exhibit.
FUTURE CINEMA was the first major international exhibition (Curated by Peter 
Weiebl and Jeffrey Shaw). of current art practice in the domain of video, film, 
computer and web based installations that embody and anticipate new cinematic 
techniques and modes of expression. These new digital contexts are setting an 
appropriate platform for the further evolution of the traditions of 
independent, experimental and expanded avantgarde cinema. No commercial or 
industrial working teams _ la Hollywood have been presented, but the individual 
efforts of artists who overcome or undermine the global standards of the cinema 
industry. The Future of Cinema can be delineated from two sources. One way is 
the expansion of existing cinematographic methods and codes into new areas. The 
other way is the convergence of cinema, TV and net.

2) New Media at Cornerhouse, Manchester
Kathy Rae Huffman, UK, Director of Visual Arts (Cornerhouse)
Cornerhouse is Greater Manchester's international centre for contemporary 
visual arts and the moving image since 1985. Kathy Rae Huffman, Director of 
Visual Arts, will discuss two recent new media commissions at Cornerhouse which 
emphasize the links between the real and the virtual.
Balkan Matrix (2003), a residency, website and gallery installation by Mihael 
Milunavic and Stefan Vukovic (Belgrade) explores specific spatial 
configurations of social life as filtered through collective perceptive and 
evaluative schemes. http://www.balkanmatrix.com
Altzero5 (2003), a commission to Squidsoup and Icarus (UK) explores the 
possibilities of using space in sound composition. It deconstructs everything 
about the sounds we listen to , and questions the way we listen. 
http://www.altzero.com

Altzero5 was part of the first on-line, interactive exhibition of 3D works: 
Lab3D - the dimensionalised internet, 17 May - 22 June, 2003. Web3D Art 
(presented at MediaForum in 2000) was a successful international juried 
programme included in the gallery, that can seen at http://www.web3dart.org.

14.00 - 15.30 -"Body Arts: Insides, outsides and sidesteps" 
Curated by Katherine Liberovskaya, Montreal
The body - from its outside surfaces to its insides and waste - as art subject 
and object.
The works were selected from the collections of Videographe and GIV video 
production and distribution centers in Montreal, Canada. Katherine Liberovskaya 
wishes to thank the organizations and the artists for the loan of their works 
for this program.

16.00 - 18.00 Festival program screening: "Art-Trash"

"Club na Brestskoy"

20.00 - 21.00 - Closing of MF - 03, screening of prize -winners and nominated 
works, presentation of the wards.

21.00 - Multimedia Show " Sequences" a computer interactive stage installation
Computer graphics and scenography Olga Kumeger
Flute solo Maria Fedotova
Guitar solo Maria Prilezhayeva
It is a computer-based performance of real-time interactive videoart and 
computer-painting/animation on musicians and moving bodies of dancers and other 
objects.
Unique mechanisms of image creation, special optic lighting effects are used in 
the performance. Author's method constructs interactive spatial fine-arts 
stories, painting environment for artist improvisation and it is unique 
situation when environment became initial core and connecting-link of 
performance.
The person contacts with symbols and produces new symbols and his actions on 
the stage are connected with eternal themes of human state: lying, moving, 
traveling, touching here in a context of city.

22.00 - 23.00 "Russian Low-Tech"
Curated by Oleg Kireev, a Moscow-based art critic, curator, activist
A program of non-commercial and amateur cinema is compiled of the works of 
young authors who are an "another culture" in contemporary Russia. They're 
being created outside of the cinema industry, they have no chance for the broad 
distribution, and they show a hidden side of a luxurious consumerist reality. 
As the Free and Anonymous Art partisans used to say about seven years ago, "No 
money and no need!" Gratitudes for an assistance in compiling the program to a 
director of an over-amateur cinema festival "Styk" Sergey Salnikov and to 
creative-experimental group "Svoi 2000".

23.00 - 00.00 - "Video na kolenke" (Home-made video)
Viacheslav Mizin, Alexander Shaburov (The Blue Noses Group)
The non-conformist art in the Soviet Union had to take the path of 
exclusiveness and coding. Underground artists created works, using "Aesopian 
language", and distributed them only within the circle of like-minded persons 
and sympathizers, belonging to the diplomatic corps. The subsequent generations 
of Russian artists inherited this tradition of self-preservation. The present 
video programme demonstrates the latest tendencies in contemporary art of 
Russia - approachable, spectacular and funny. These tendencies have ripened not 
in Moscow, but in the depth of the country, in Siberia and the Urals.
The remoteness from the world cultural centres and the absence of comparatively 
large receptive groups (like that existing in the metropolis) determined the 
creative method of The Blue Noses Group. Hence the populism of expressive means 
and the artists' striving to make their works universally comprehensible. The 
main genre - short, brutally humorous films.

Contacts:
2076629, 89104232042, mediaforum at danet.ru
(Alexei Isaev, art-director of MF, Olga Shishko, curator of program)