Video Kills

Mums may moan that television kills conversation and transforms active communities into fields of couch potatoes. But British artist Tiphaine Shipman, with her Australian and America co-curators Emma Pike and JJ Hurvich, are putting that conventional wisdom to the test with VideoKill's first International Video Art Film festival. The three Berlin-based co-curators are providing 40 video artists, from more than 500 submissions, the opportunity to exhibit their video art, video installations, interactive video projects and live video-audio performances in Stattbad, Berlin's 2,000 square-meter early nineteenth-century swimming complex turned exhibition space. Stattbad´s inherent industrial creepiness (it could be a set of a convincing horror film), combined with the flickering lights of the video screens, cast an eerie aura around the many members of Berlin´s cool kid contingent who were present for the opening performance by Formel Wessen. The videos themselves ranged from abstract or ambient to narrative and played on old-time TVs surrounded by plush sofas or screened on large screens in graffiti covered rooms. The entire festival is funded by the €10 submission fee paid by each artist, plus a little contributed out of the curators' pockets, who created the five-day festival with a budget of only €500. "The ethos is not about the money," explains Shipman. "It's amazing how much stuff we were able to get for free."—Oliver Frank