video feature
Videoformes Clermont-Ferrand
Today. the article would like to honour one of the few, after so many years (founded in 1986!) still relevant festivals in the field of art & moving images – Videoformes – International Festival of Video and New Media Clermont-Ferrand/France and the typical event dates in March each year. This year, it is the 9th time in sequence since 2001, that Wilfried is participating in Videoformes, surely a personal record – presenting in total 12 individual projects.
2001, 16-21 March – Identity of Colour, Never Wake UpA Virtual Memorial
2002, 19-23 March – Identity of Colour, Never Wake Up
2003, 18-22 March – Violence Online Festival
2005, 15-19 March – En [code]ed, 138 Seconds of Peace
2006, 14-18 March – Message from Behind A Wall
2007, 13-17 March – House of Tomorrow
2008, 12-15 March – Bareback- serial DIScharge
2009, 11-14 March – CologneOFF – Women Directors Cut- Videoart from Ukraine
2010, 10-28 March – Silent Cry
By looking at the biography, it becomes obvious, that the year 2010 is representing a kind of caesura, the end of a certain era, the era that Wilfried is submitting his individual art works to open calls for participating in festivals or exhibitions.
Like no other event, besides probaly FILE -Electronic Language Festival Sao Paulo, Videoformes is standing for that past era – marked by Wilfried emancipation as an artist after his re-birth in 2000, because already in 2001 Wilfried was submitting and accepted for participating in Videoformes with “A Virtual Memorial”. Wilfried’s project about “memory” was looking differently than today, because it’s basis was a kind of diary releasing at first daily, later weekly and monthly “articles” on topics relevant to human existence, including smaller individual artworks created in “Flash by Macromedia”. Today, this diary is unfortunately out of date, because most of linked sources are dead links, but the empty shell can be still accessed as a kind historical document.
In 2009, there was a certain highlight, because Wilfried was involved as a curator of CologneOFF – presenting two selections – the 1st one entitled – Women Directors Cut 13:13:13 and Videoart from Ukraine curated by Yarina Butkovska.
After 2010, it won’t be like that that Wilfried will be breaking the contacts, but it will be new path he has to follow – working seriously on his own videos and at the same time getting captured completely by engaging in videoart as a curator will be not possible any longer, and at that time, he will decide to follow the path of experimenting as a curator.
Being honest, as a privat person, Wilfried had very hard times beginning already in March 2008, when Micha, his partner died in a plane crash and his mother got a stroke at the same day, later in 2008 while visiting Venezuela in October 2008, he was physically attacked on the street by criminals which were Wilfried nearly killing and only a few months later on 1 April 2009, another attack was Wilfried again nearly killing in Casablanca/Morocco, and returned to Cologne the traumatizations on different levels were so profound, that Wilfried was set into an artifial coma in order to reactivate his self-healing powers, and afterwards he had to decide how to continue. Curating was requiring another kind of creativity and this was promissing to be a bigger challenge.
So, after his decision, therefore some people felt probably offended when he was not submitting any longer, and became a festival director himself.
Wilfried was attending Videoformes just once in 2003. Clermont-Ferrand – a nice and proper clean city is located in the middle of nowhere in the centre of France, the festival activities are bringing external life to the provincial town. While the festival program running during the day time was excellent, Wilfried was looking in the evening for a place to meet other festival participants, 
but the three bars which were said to be meeting places remained empty and during the days Wilfried was spending in the city, he never met any foreign or local participant. Completely frustrated, that after the screening obviously the festival and the city were dead, on the day when Wilfried wanted to leave Clermont-Ferrand he was entering the breakfast room which was crowded with people he had never seen before, and by starting communicating he found out out that all the people sitting in the breakfast room were festival participants and nobody knew that the other was attending, as well. Not only Wilfried was really angry.
