12-12-2007
The Netherlands Media Art Institute is going public with video installations from its own collection. The series consists of three DVDs that each focus on a different period: the obscure closed-circuit installations of the 1980s, the early interactive installations from the first years of the 1990s, and site-specific installations from the second half of the 1990s and early 21st century.
Netherlands Media Art Institute issues DVD series with works from its own collection
The Netherlands Media Art Institute is going public with video installations from its own collection. The series consists of three DVDs that each focus on a different period: the obscure closed-circuit installations of the 1980s, the early interactive installations from the first years of the 1990s, and site-specific installations from the second half of the 1990s and early 21st century. In this way one gets a survey of the whole history of media installation art in The Netherlands.
The DVDs include work by Peter Bogers, Ken Feingold, Hooykaas/Stansfield, Bert Schutter, Jeffrey Shaw, Boris Gerrets, Studio Azurro, Gerald van der Kaap/Peter Giele, Sonia Cillari, Fiona Tan, Steina, Servie Janssen, Miguel-Angel Cardenas, Martijn Veldhoen, Nol de Koning, Marina Abramovic, Giny Vos and many others.
The tapes have been edited so that the DVDs form one whole, despite the variety of artworks, and in some cases the differences in the approach to the recording process. The DVDs will familiarize new generations of media art lovers with over three decades of media art installations, and are accessible for both educational use and the general public.
The DVDs cost € 25,- apiece, and € 65,- for the whole series.
Concept: Gaby Wijers, Ramon Coelho
Production: Gaby Wijers
Video editor and authoring: Ramon Coelho
Design: Floor Koomen
Selections:
Gaby Wijers (1975 - 1990)
Ramon Coelho (1990 - 1995)
Annet Dekker (1995 - 2006)
Installations 1975-2006 With websites like youtube.com, the short video film is the hottest thing going at the moment. Making your own short films is popular – and that is true for the art world too. The Museum of Modern Art in New York and Toneelgroep Amsterdam, among others, have put videos on internet to promote their projects. The Netherlands Media Art Institute is going public with video installations from its own collection.
DVD 1 Installations 1975-1990
From the collection of De Appel, Montevideo, Time Based Arts
The term ‘installation’ was introduced in the mid-1970s1 Along with ‘environment’, ‘project’ and/or ‘performance’, it was employed for three-dimensional experiences in which there is an artist’s intervention, and possibly public participation. The works vary and evolve “from the concrete, material situation that an artist creates and which can be experienced by the public, to the (conceptual) process of research.”2 All were alike however in creating unique and temporary situations, which in this form today perhaps would no longer be directly characterized as installations, but which were essential for the development of the installation as an art form.
After installations of this nature, the accent shifts to video and computer-based installations which make it possible to construct spaces with audio-visual relations.
For as long as performances and installations have existed, recordings have been made of these works. Photography, film and video have all been used to leave behind something permanent, to make something which reflects or documents the work. These media were employed to be able to analyze the acts, to promote the work, or to place it in an historical context.
DVD 2 Installations 1990-1995
Production and distribution by Montevideo
While still a new technological art form, media art found its rostrum for production, presentation and distribution at Montevideo. Artists quickly wanted more than just to play a tape on a monitor, and, logically, that soon led to spatial work. One moved on from painting to sculpture, and, if one can make that comparison, from video tape to installation. On the eve of the 1990s, Imago: Fin de Siècle in Dutch Contemporary Art was a traveling exhibition funded by the Rijksdienst Beeldende Kunst (nowadays the ICN, The Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage) and organized by Montevideo. Opening in Amsterdam during the 6th edition of KunstRai, Imago showed thirteen Dutch artworks ranging from mediative video installations to computer-driven art works. The main idea behind Imago's concept was to introduce a wider public to the different ways in which artists in the Netherlands were incorporating new technological advances. The fin de siècle part of the title refers to the closing years of the 20th century in which Rene Coelho, director of Montevideo and the curator of this exhibition, saw the emergence of more technologically oriented art forms. Montevideo’s philosophy has always been that media art must be supported in all areas. To attract a large audience, and stimulate a scientific and theoretical reflection Montevideo distributes work in the Netherlands and abroad, and holds exhibitions at their gallery and contribute to research and development in the form of a 'laboratory for the arts'. To promote the media art installations special distribution tapes with selections of installation registrations have been made since the early 1980s. The high point came in 1990-95, during which 10 to 20 installations were being presented world-wide every year. The design of the menu of this dvd is like the design of the distribution tapes from Montevideo in those years.
DVD 3 Installations 1995-2006
Presented by the Netherlands Media Art Institute
Seven years after Imago, Fin de Siècle in Dutch Contemporary Art, in 1997 Montevideo/TBA produced the travelling exhibition 'The Second: Time Based Art from the Netherlands”. René Coelho once again seized the opportunity to show the continuing developments in the work of contemporary artists who gave form to their ideas with the aid of technological media. Today the video installation has taken its place alongside other art forms and has a niche of its own among the other tasks and activities of the Netherlands Media Art Institute. The change in its name points to the new direction that the organization has taken: from video art to media art. In the meantime technology has become ever more integrated into current artistic creativity and the wide variety of forms of expression is ubiquitous. The diversity in installations is striking, from multichannel projections to immersive environments. References to theater, film, performance art and architecture are also increasingly clearly visible. But the most important influence in the 1990s was the application of interactivity. As a result, installations are frequently presented in exhibitions. On a smaller scale, interactive and other media art installations are produced and distributed through the Netherlands Media Art Institute.
