Seit vier Jahren zeigen Olaf Stüber und Ivo Wessel Videokunst im Kino Babylon in Berlin. Einmal im Monat an einem Freitag, immer um Mitternacht. Im letzten Jahr waren die beiden Documenta-Teilnehmer Omer Fast und Clemens von Wedemeyer zu sehen. Im Januar diesen Jahres ist Harun Farocki zu Gast und im Februar ...
Er ist einer der wichtigsten politischen Essayfilmer: Harun Farocki gastiert bei der Videokunstreihe “Videoart at Midnight” im Babylon und holt damit die Videokunst aus den Ausstellungsräumen. Glockenschlag Mitternacht, aber die pulsierende Hauptstadt möchte nicht schlafen. Ob man in den Cafés oder Bars bei Kerzenschein sitzt oder sich auf traumwandlerische Erkundungsreisen ...
Er ist einer der wichtigsten politischen Essayfilmer: Harun Farocki gastiert bei der Videokunstreihe “Videoart at Midnight” im Babylon und holt damit die Videokunst aus den Ausstellungsräumen. Glockenschlag Mitternacht, aber die pulsierende Hauptstadt möchte nicht schlafen. Ob man in den Cafés oder Bars bei Kerzenschein sitzt oder sich auf traumwandlerische Erkundungsreisen ...
In four film essays Ernste Spiele I-IV Farocki documents training methods at United States military facilities. Farocki juxtaposes footage filmed at the respective trainings centers, with sequences from computer simulations used in the training there.
Rebecca Ann Tess' practice is mainly based in the field of video and found footage imagery. Topics of interest have recently been queer theory as well as film and television history.
Bettina Nürnberg and Dirk Peuker present Flat Roofs for Mussolini, The American Houses and Zement
Armin Linke's Alpi is the result of seven years of research on contemporary perceptions of the landscape of the Alps, juxtaposing places and situations across all eight bordering nations and spanning the territories of four languages.
Clemens von Wedemeyer has developed a sculptural openair cinema at the border of the old city of Mardin, overlooking the Mesopotamian plain. hereas the front of Wedemeyers‘ double sided screen construction serves for film projections at night, the back of the screen functions as a mirror, reflecting the afternoon sun down to valley.
For Vengeance, a seven-part video narrative epic, Keren Cytter takes her own currently changing life situation as inspiration. Having recently moved to New York, Cytter adopted the US TV- platform of the “daily soap” as a structural format to processes classic themes of drama in personal relationships: love, envy, betrayal, and vengeance.
Christian Jankowski's work consists of performative interactions between himself and non-art professionals, between contemporary art and the so-called ‘world outside of art’. During the course of his artistic career, Jankowski has collaborated with magicians, politicians, news anchors, and members of the Vatican, to name just a few. Jankowski registers these performative collaborations using the mass media formats in which he stages his work - film, photography, television, newspapers.
Melanie Manchot’s practice is often looking at the individual in relation to cultural and social conditions as well as to public space. Situated at the threshold between the documentary and staged events the work frequently involves the participation of strangers and articulates modes of individual and collective experiences and relations.
In his computer-animated videos, Manuel Graf presents condensed versions of philosophical stories about time as a nonlinear continuum within which stages of development and innovations can be fast-forwarded and rewound. He camouflages complexity with naïve illustrations and technical perfection with analogue formats, such as his former teacher’s lecture.
Ming Wong presents in a one-night-only screening his "Italian works" shot on location in Venice and Naples: Life & Death in Venice and Devo partire. Domani. Wong is performing life at the grand piano.
In his work as a filmmaker, Omer Fast defines a new relationship between reality and fiction. He is interested in exploring the construction of narratives, in particular how stories change when told from different perspectives. Many of his recent works examine the shifting boundaries of modern conflict through the personal stories of those involved.
In many of his photographs and videos, Niklas Goldbach examines tensions between the individual and society, between architecture and nature. The selection Goldbach presents features a number of major construction projects, their visionary potential, their social implications, but also the failures.
“Matthias” BAADER Holst was one of the GDR’s most interesting underground poets. He worked as a poet, draftsman, filmmaker, publisher and performer. Ultimately, and in retrospect, he was probably the GDR’s only true Punk-Dadaist. His influence on writers, musicians and artists from the former GDR has been a lasting one to date.
Performative play is the essence of Erik Schmidt’s art: he himself acts as the protagonist of his films, passing in almost sleepwalking fashion through hunting scenes, a festive dinner party or a society dance in the aristocratic circles of Eastern Westphalia without stopping even once or giving a clear indication as to the direction the film’s story is to take.
The inspiration for Delia Gonzalez recent film In Rememberance is drawn from a passage by Henry Miller, excerpted in the diary of Anaïs Nin. Anaïs describes an afternoon with Henry Miller and proceeds to quote a passage of his writing at length: a first-person narrative detailing, a poetic process of revelation. The story of the ballet in this work is a loose interpretation of the narrative arch of this passage.
Shifting between documentary, historical reconstruction and melodrama, Anja Kirschner's and David Panos' The Empty Plan interrogates the relationship between theory and practice in the theatre of Bertolt Brecht. The film contrasts scenes from Brecht’s exile in Los Angeles - 1941 to 1947 - with productions of his 1931 play The Mother in the late Weimar Republic, New Deal America and post-war East Germany.
The Chicks studios are the stages, institutes, streets, theaters, shacks & palaces around the world. The High Art has seldom gone so messy & the Low is always high, dressed up or without dress at all, mixed into a Audio with Visual triggering of the loops & cut up performances one could ask " where are the shackles?" So Chicks on Speed are performing live their Butt Smack Bungo at Midnight.