LOOP Festival 2017
“Winding the Clock Back: A contemporary archeology of video”
Festival: May 18–27, 2017
Fair & talks: May 25–26
LOOP Barcelona
C/ Enrique Granados 3, Principal
08007 Barcelona
Spain
T +34 932 155 260
festival [at] loop-barcelona.com
www.loop-barcelona.com
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Festival: May 18–27, 2017
Different venues around Barcelona
Fair & talks: May 25–26
Carrer Pelai, 28
08001 Barcelona
The desire to look back in time always seems to be associated with a certain nostalgia; a feeling of slight pleasure that stems from the recollection of memories. However, from a historical perspective, the act of calling up a bygone past discloses a precise intention that reaches beyond the simple feeling of longing: that of tracing a temporal development that is at once ontological, political and cultural. In a fast-forward society that tends to grow oblivious to the past, a retrospective look hence proves to be necessary. By translating these concerns in the realm of artistic creation, this year’s edition of the LOOP Festival will present a review of early video art, and unfold into a series of key proposals testifying to the medium’s very first steps.
The selection will comprise groundbreaking installations and single-channel projections organized in chronological and thematic routes by reference artists such as Beryl Korot, David Hall, Chip Lord, Mary Lucier, Nam June Paik, Steina and Woody Vasulka and Peter Weibel; group exhibitions dedicated to local practitioners who pioneered the use of video, like Muntadas, Carles Pujols and Eugenia Balcells, as well as monographic retrospectives focusing on the work of internationally renowned creators such as Robert Cahen, Paul McCarthy, Antoni Miralda, Tony Oursler, Martha Rosler and Andy Warhol.
To enrich the agenda, a series of “re-enactments” and film programs marking important stages in the development of the medium: from the screening of Primera Mort (1969), the first video art piece in Spain created by Silvia Gubern, Jordí Galí, Ángel Jove and Antoni Llena, to the winning proposals of the second edition of the Video Festival of San Sebastian, featuring works by Dara Birnbaum, Juan Downey and Marina Abramovic…Among the many proposals, the program will also include the presentation of a documentary that pays homage to video art’s pioneer Wolf Vostell, with the participation of his lifetime collaborators Philip Corner, Ben Patterson, and Willem De Ridder (Malpartida, Fluxus Village, María Pérez, 2015), as well as a selection of videos by women artists Barbara Aronofsky, Lynda Benglis, Hermin Freed, Suzanne Lacy, Linda Montano and Suzanne Mogul, from the Video Data Bank Collection.
With the aim of building bridges with the present and supporting contemporary production, such reference proposals will then be paralleled by more recent creations by artists like Eija-Liisa Ahtila, David Claerbout, Alex Haas, Leila Habibi, Adrià Julià, Joan Morey (winning artist of the 3rd edition of the Co-Production Award), Teresa Serrano, Wael Shawky, and Mario García Torres, among others.
If the edition’s main lines of investigation have been set thanks to the curatorial advice of Eugeni Bonet and Antoni Mercader (both specializing in the study of new media and audiovisual art, and co-authors of Entorno al video, 1980), the program results from the contribution of local and international curators and researchers such as Cristina Agàpito, Albert Alcoz, Jordi Antàs, Tanya Barson, Nimfa Bisbe, Pascale Cassagnau, Irene Calderoni, Guadalupe Echevarría, Enrich Franch, Carles Guerra, Menene Gras, Arnau Horta, Soyoung Lee, Abina Manning, Luis Miñarro, Diana Padrón, Javier Panera, Imma Prieto, Hilde Teerlinck, and Jin-suk Suh.
Coming full-circle, two key projects will then complement the Festival “on-line” and “on-paper”: the digitization and web-display of more than 70 documents on the activities dedicated to video art in Spain between 1973 and 1990, and the publication of a book collecting a series of Video Writings by [pioneer] Artists such as Peter Campus, Hermine Freed, Takahiko Iimura, Ulrike Rosenbach, Francesc Torres and Bill Viola, among others (ed. Eugeni Bonet, LOOP Barcelona, Mousse Publishing, forthcoming May 2017).
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