Kunst Film Fest #3, Part II: Digital Video Art

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We look forward to the second part of the Kunst Film Fest #3 where we will be presenting a selection of videos corresponding to the theme ‘Digital Video Art’.

The invasion of digital technologies into daily life has irretrievably transformed social conventions and mainstream media, but has also prompted a radical shift in the creative industries and in art. Artists employ digital tools to facilitate immersive virtual installations and to create second lives, cyborgs and digital landscapes, and visualise post-apocalyptic utopias inhabited by avatars. As technology has enabled a multidimensional cyber-universe, artists working in the so-called digital art are at the forefront of exploring and criticising this influential and unpredictable part of our contemporary culture.

Sandrine Deumier in "Affordable Dreams" (2017) exhibits a series of scenarios in which cybernetic bodies are placed in and interact with alienated, dream-like environments. In twenty fictional variations of state of consciousness the artist reflects on the emotional and subconscious state of humanity and our relationship to affective machines.

In Gregory Kalliche’s The Greatest Arrogance" (2017) computer-generated blocks of wood assembled into architectural formations are violently deconstructed and a mysterious hand game takes place in the dark while a moth chases the light. They all form part of Kalliche's ultraviolet cyber reality, where everything falls into place and then falls apart. Familiar images that seem derived from a collective subconscious are absurdly arranged into anamorphic environments alternating between creation and catastrophe.

Benjamin Magot's "Introduction to I" (2014) takes the form of a digital puppet play whose protagonists, two computer-generated puppets, engage in a philosophical quest during which words and symbols are abruptly deconstructed and reconstructed, thereby constantly evolving into new shapes and meanings.

Davide Mastrangelo & Francesca Leoni's "Simulacro" (2016) shows a man and a woman – both half human and half machine – seeking intimacy via their virtual selves. Simulacrum here stands for the virtual representation of the self constructed as a means to relate to the world and to others, which in reality often turns out to be an impediment to social interaction and real intimacy.

In Constantin Hartenstein‘s "ALPHA" (2014) hallucinatory visuals corresponding to generic instructions read by Siri take us on a sinister journey towards manufactured perfection.

In Lu Yang's Delusional "Crime and Punishment" (2016) the genderless avatar of Lu comes to life through a 3D printer and goes through a multitude of punishments of hell. Yang’s video contrasts synthetic violent imagery with an uncannily familiar yet detached narrative based on ideas of theological determinism, neuroscience and technology.