Press Release 28 April 2019
More than 2,000 people visited the opening of the 32nd European Media Art Festival at the Kunsthalle Osnabrück on Wednesday. That's about 8oo more than last year. We are delighted about the great response. The EMAF is showing a total of more than 140 short and feature films and almost 40 installations on the five festival days that come to an end today. The festival programme also included numerous performances and talks as well as a large student section.
Yesterday evening, the prizes were awarded in the Osnabrück Kunsthalle. The main prize, worth 3,000 euros, the EMAF Award for a pioneering work in media art, went to two artists this year: Dora García was awarded for her work "Segunda Vez / Second Time Around" (BE/NO 2018); Jaakko Pallasvuo, Antti Jussila and Jari Kallio for their film "Fruits of the Loom" (FI 2019). "Segunda Vez" revolves around the figure of the Argentinean psychoanalyst Oscar Masotta, whose thinking and artistic practice had a lasting influence on the cultural life of his country in the 1960s until the Perón dictatorship forced him into exile. The International Jury - consisting of Graeme Arnfield (London), Branka Benčić (Zagreb) and Nicolas Feodoroff (Marseille) - gave the following reasons for their decision: "We are honoring the first work for its authentic way of winning over audiences in order to address the violent history of Argentina, which echoes in the contemporary moment, conceptually and politically. The film reconstructs and reproduces historical performances and leads us through a cinematic labyrinth of critical complicity".
Jaakko Pallasvuo received the prize for "Fruits of the Loom" in Osnabrück. A communist and a capitalist fall in love. Together they try to escape society. Their child later questions their escapades. Here the jury judged: "In addition, we distinguish a sincere and humorous mixture of dry performance, theatrical dramaturgy, serious socio-political discourse, cinematic narrative trophies - dealing with optimism, despair, puppet play and wild originality".
The Dialogue Award of the Federal Foreign Office, endowed with 2,000 euros, is awarded annually at the EMAF to a work that promotes intercultural exchange. This year it went to Vincent Meessen for "Ultramarine". The film sends the spoken word performance of the Afro-American poet Kain through the chromatic, historical and discursive filter of the color blue. The jury calls "Ultramarine" a "powerful and complex constellation of different positions, references and contexts that unfold in a variety of ways - as performance, music, poetry, text, museum and archive. Vincent Meessen explores the interweaving of social and aesthetic interests, transcending the boundaries of various artistic practices. The work combines history and culture to give a voice to the visible and the invisible".
This year, the EMAF Media Art Award of the German Filmcritics (VDFK), endowed with 1,000 euros, went to Gernot Wieland for his work "Ink in Milk" (AT 2018). The jury consisted of the film journalists Jürgen Kiontke (Berlin), Julia Gwendolyn Schneider (Berlin) and Morticia Zschiesche (Heidelberg). Gernot Wieland was present when the jury explained its decision: "In twelve minutes director Gernot Wieland unfolds a whole life: In his own sketches, metaphor-rich image sequences, drawings and sculptures, he resurrects the disturbing world of a childhood, tells of the dark in the light, of the illness schizophrenia, which is the creative principle here, splits up experienced realities and reassembles them anew. Ink in Milk´ is a narrative whose dramaturgy is convincing from the first to the last minute - and inspires us to find answers to how to escape the Kafkaesque thornbush, the universal hopelessness. Wieland succeeds in making the hidden ruins of the psyche visible without evaluating their madness. No film fits better to the festival mottoWild Grammar´. Wild Grammar´ means: wild thinking, means world narration, is concentrated visual narration. `Ink in Milk´ is a homage to each of the individual film images, which in sum form an artistic narration."
We would like to thank everyone who contributed to this great festival: the artists and curators, the many helpers and above all our great audience.
The exhibition "Wild Wild Grammar" in the Kunsthalle Osnabrück can be seen until 26 May. On International Museum Day on 19 May, Belgian artist Jo Caimo will repeat his collective performance "Koorvorming" at 14:30. Those who would like to take part are cordially invited.
