VIDEO:Video Art Miden-Screenings February 2021
Video Art Miden is an independent organization for the exploration and promotion of video art. Founded by an independent group of Greek artists in 2005, it has been one of the earliest specialized video-art festivals in Greece, setting as basic aims to stimulate the creation of original video art, to help spread it and develop relevant research.
Photo: Video Art Miden Archive
Through collaborations and exchanges with major international festivals and organizations, Video Art Miden has been recognized as one of the most successful and interesting video art platforms internationally and as an important cultural exchange point for Greek and international video art. Video Art Miden in recent months has turned its 13th Festival edition, initially scheduled to be held in Kalamata, into a monthly online meeting, presenting different selections of video art each month, starting in April. Video Art Miden welcomes the new year with 4 new online programs. The programs will remain open 1-31 of February 2021 at Video Art Miden youtube channel. This month Video Art Miden focusing on collaborations: the artistic directors of two very interesting and notable festivals, PROYECTOR from Spain (art director: Mario Gutiérrez Cru) and Over The Real from Italy (art director: Maurizio Marco Tozzi), are invited to present their selections, while Evi Stamou & Pietro Radin are invited to make a videopoetry selection and Olga & Gioula Papadopoulou curate a video tribute to the Balkans.
The selection “Just before the earthquake” consists of 10 videos that bridge the gap between film and literary image. Composing works that successfully mimic the simplicity of the short poetic form, the creators present visual haikus and epigrams, cinematic short stories and imaginative transcriptions of lyric poetry on the screen, while anthologizing aspects of our old and new normality, from the paradoxical magic of everyday life imagery to the moments of existential agony that give birth to the political impasse and oppression. Participating Artists: Vojtěch Domlátil, Markela Kontaratou, Showna Kim, Rossella Nisio, Muriel Montini, Danai Kriki, Sally Waterman, Muriel Montini, Ivo Krankowski and Panos Mazarakis.
Flying over the Balkans: Artists from and artists inspired by Balkan countries meet in a video art selection dedicated to the Balkans: a world full of contradictions, alive and mourning, poetic and historically wounded. A world that has suffered and endured consecutive wars and crises, a world constantly struggling to express its personality in adversity. The selection presents 11 different artists and groups who originate or live (or visited in order to create their works there) in different countries & regions of the Balkan Peninsula: Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Romania, Slovenia, North Macedonia, Bulgaria and Greece. Ghosts, politicians, symbols of power, a woman that talks to the dead, a dancing shaman, traces of memories, war images, a group of people bounded together by duct tape, glitched, grey and colorful everyday life sceneries, a man winning over himself in a game, a woman constructing and deconstructing herself in a mirror, meet in a video art program that challenges us to discover the multiple layers of the present reality of the Balkans. Through a variety of forms and concepts, the selected works create an existential and historical mosaic researching the current conditions, but also the memories and the historical scars that influence the way we think about the Balkans today. Participating Artists: Nenad Nedeljkov, Diana Poput, L.reducta dance project (Xanthippi Papadopoulou-Panos Boudouroglou), Sophie Atkins, Milos Peskir, Alex Faoro & Helena Deda, Alexandra Bouge, Wild Pear Arts, Melina Peña, Nenad Nedeljkov, Silvia De Gennaro and Lea Jazbec.
Over The Real: Hic et nunc is a call on the individual to become aware of our course forward on Earth. The ten women artists awaken through their videos the necessity of an essential change, one that’s stirred from deep within the self, but evolves outward in search of its role to effect. The works raise an unfailing question that starts deep within our consciousness that the artists direct both to themselves and to the spectators. All this is reflected in each of us in different ways having to overcome the difficulties of defining the self while reaching for a more in-depth search. An introspection that reveals a path of change for which, sometimes before looking ahead, we must immerse ourselves in our heart, consciously replacing ourselves in the external environment, focusing on the constant dystonia / harmony between the world of nature and the world of man. Hic et Nunc is a deep and personal journey that invites us to rediscover ourselves through an analysis of the world we share, and how we can contribute to steering it back on course. Participating Artists: ClaRa ApaRicio Yoldi, Angelica Bergamini, Sofia Bersanelli, Rachel Frank, Hope Ginsburg, Erika Lynne Hanson, Eleonora Manca, Alberta Pellacani, Isabel Pérez del Pulgar and Lisi Prada
PROYECTOR is a renowned platform based in Madrid, Spain, destined to spread art emphasizing on its experimental, contemporary, committed nature. PROYECTOR festival has the participation of artists, curators and festivals from around of the world. Its programming is composed of video installations (single-channel, multichannel, interactive), interventions, projections in the public space, performances, talks, meetings, workshops and conferences. The “Best off” of the latest edition of PROYECTOR in 2020 is an one-hour selection of video art, made with great care, given the restrictions of an online streaming and although perhaps the concept of PROYECTOR as a festival is mostly defined by the video installations. Even so, the program serves as an example of works of commitment with very different themes as well as methods, durations or concepts necessary to understand the 2020 video creation. Participating Artists: GLENDA LEÓN, SHIR HANDELSMAN, GREGORIO MÉNDEZ SÁEZ, ANA CAETANO, EDUARDO BALANZA, LUCIANO SCHERER & MAÍRA FLORES, ILARIA DI CARLO, and RICARDO MORENO
Photo: L.reducta dance project (Xanthippi Papadopoulou – Panos Boudouroglou), Prêt a porter, Greece 2014, 3.00
Info: Curators: Evi Stamou & Pietro Radin (Just before the earthquake), Olga & Gioula Papadopoulou (Flying over the Balkans), Maurizio Marco Tozzi (Over The Real: Hic et nunc), Mario Gutiérrez Cru (Best of PROYECTOR 2020), Duration: 1-28/2/2021, Video Art Miden’s youtube channel link: www.youtube.com
More info: www.festivalmiden.gr
