Videoforma IV, an international video art festival curated by Olesya Turkina and CYLAND’s Victroriya Ilyushkina, opens November 9, 2016 in St. Petersburg.
The mission of the 4th International Video Art Festival VIDEOFORMA and Colour Vision exhibition is to throw a bridge between classic avant-garde of the 1960s and the experiments of the 1990-2000s, as well as the searches of contemporary artists in different genres: animation, video performance, documentary. For the first time Saint Petersburg will see the retrospective of video art pioneers, Steina and Woody Vasulka. The programme will be presented by Kristin Scheving, curator of Electronic and Digital Art Centre of Island and director of Vasulka Chamber Fund. It is the first time when The Orchard Street documentary by Ken Jacobs, independent filmmaker and classic of American avant-garde, will be screened in St-Petersburg. It was originally shot on 16mm in 1955 and edited in 2014, and now the film belongs to the Arsenal archive collection. Experiments with found tape are presented in films by Boris Kazakov, Leningrad underground filmmaker of 1990-2000s. He was one of the first artists who started scraping old celluloid 35mm films and writing on them with aniline dye, creating unusually colourful, light, and rhythmical images. His animation works Titan’s Sirens, Dog, Eye can be defined as moving paintings.
Colour Vision exhibition will show the works of Russian classics of contemporary video art. Famous “Pirate Television” by Yuris Lesnik and Vladislav Mamyashev-Monroe produssed by Timur Novikov. Films of Olga Tobreluts, New Academia artist. Project of “Eros Arrow” full-length film (1993) by Engineers of Arts Group: Inal Savchenkov and Franz Rodwalt was designed in cooperation with Sergey Kuryokhin, set to his music, and shot on 35mm film. The Speed of Disappearance (2015) video by Ludmila Belova is a reflection on disappearance of tangible forms and their transformation into a digital stream of reality images, where colour can be transformed and adjusted until it disappears completely Works of young artists, stars of national video art: Maxim Svishёv, winner of Innovation prize, Tatyana Akhmetgalieva, winner of Kuryokhin prize. Key feature of their works is colour. Maxim Svishёv creates collages in the form of 3-4D animation and interactive installations. Tatyana Akhmetgalieva experiments with layers and computer effects in video.
Angelika Ramlow will present the programme of Arsenal / Institute for Film and Video Art/ Berlin/ video archive. Arsenal is one of the biggest international archive of independent and experimental films and video art. Its collection consists of more than 10 000 works and 3000 are in active distribution. The programme includes documentaries, first shown at Forum Expanded (Berlin) and at Oberhausen-62 Festival in 2016 and belonging to contemporary filmmakers: Ayman Nahle, Assaf Gruber, Volker Sattel.
Videoforma’s program includes screenings, lectures and workshops by participating artists: Angelika Ramlow, Pim Zwier, Boris Kazakov, among others. Works by artists from CYLAND Video Archive: Yuri Vasiliev, Maxim Svishev, Tatiana Akhmetgalieva, and Ludmila Belova, will be presented to the public at the festival.
The festival will continue as exhibition Color Visions on display until November 25, 2016 at the Sergey Kuryokhin Centre for Contemporary Art. Join the dedicated Facebook event for updates and information.