Vertrautes Terrain - Contemporary Art in/about Germany
A collaboration between www.tank.tv and ZKM
21st May 2008 – 30th June 2008 / 14th September - 30th September 2008
Artists on www.tank.tv
include: Bankleer, Com&Com, Danica Dakic, Sven Johne, Dias &
Riedweg, Alexandra Gerbaulet, Laura Horelli, Korpys/Löffler, Macellvs
L., Antje Majewski, Sascha Pohle, Özlem Sulak, Hito Steyerl and Florian
Thalhofer.
tank.tv
is pleased to collaborate with ZKM (Karlsruhe, Germany) to exhibit film
and video work from their forthcoming exhibition 'Vetrautes Terrain'. tank.tv
will open its show simultaneously with ZKM, on May 21st, to become part
of the 'resonance space' of the exhibition. Bringing video work out of
the gallery space and making it available to an international audience
we hope to widen the scope of this timely focus on national identity.
"German
Art" or "Art from Germany", a label that has exhibition tradition, is a
fiction – owing to the fact that, in most cases, national political
determinations have little or anything to do with artistic practice. In
spite of this, country-specific questions relating to the search for
history, genealogies or tendencies represent a constant factor in art
history and the art business: the general exhibition is its most common
format.
Local backgrounds and national events are beginning to be seen as
essential and identity defining whilst national identities appear to be
levelling out. The place of the 'national' is becoming confused and
fraught with tensions in contemporary culture, not least because no
formal, measured thematic-cultural analysis of the idea of 'Germany'
has taken place.
It is against this background that the project 'Vertrautes Terrain –
Contemporary Art in/about Germany' conceives itself, namely, as a
resonance space within which the differentiated examination of works by
international artists, who reflect on Germany in distinctly different
ways as a historical, art, and social sphere can be carried out. The
focus on the German context refers to an "imaginary cartography", which
seeks to trace those concerns dealing with form and content, the
symptoms and the virulent features in art as set against the backdrop
of their socio-political presence.
Questions
of history, memory, cultural location, identity, biographic references,
structures, symbols, references of forms, clichés and the politics of
representation form the basis of the project: what interests artists
among the various nationalities today? In which connection do
references to Germany appear? Does there emerge from an "identity of
doubt" (Hans Belting) an arbitrarily disposed thematic volatility in
works of art? What aesthetic and artistic qualities do those works
possess, which make reference to German culture, history, persons or
places? Which roles do historically established quality seals and
current hypes (from Romanticism to the "Leipziger Schule") play in
international perception?
The exhibition is characterized by shared and changing images of what the concept "Germany" signifies.
Vetrautes Terrain is curated by Gregor Jansen and Thomas Thiel.
www.zkm.de
www.vertrautes-terrain.de
The ATA Film & Video Festival will receive a grant from the 
The 2008 edition of the 
The documentary film festivall 
The 
21. Stuttgarter Filmwinter
From the press release:
1,2,3… Avant-Gardes - Art as Contextual Art is the next stage of an exhibition and research project that explores the “continuous” history of experimentation in film and art and the interaction of both fields. Grounded in the extensive Polish experimental film output of the 1970s, 1,2,3… Avant-Gardes will offer a selection of films mostly produced by Polish artists from that period, whilst including contemporary international artistic proposals that constitute a challenge for the interpretation of the history of experimental cinema. The exhibition follows a schema structured under the following headings: Analytical Strategies. Games and Participation. Political Film and Soc Art (Socialist Art). Image and Sound. Imagination. Consumption. This specific disposition will structure the works with the aim of analysing both formally and conceptually the use of experimental strategies within visual production.