video feature
* Split
International Festival of New Film & Media
* Pula
Pula Film Festival
* Moscow
Moscow International Film Festival
Split
Wilfried visited Split already as a young boy when he was spending his summer holidays 1962 in former Yugoslavia together with a youth group on the island of Brac located in the Adriatic Sea in opposite of Spilt. He likes that kind of places deeply rooted on history – Dioclecian – the Roman emperor had his origin in Split, and there is also a palace wearing his name. Where ever one is walking around the city centre, ancient relicts of palaces or temples show that Spilt was an importance place already before and after the Romans, it belonged to influence of Venice as a sea power. In 2003, Wilfried was participating for the 1st time in International Festival of New Film and Media – so, the proper environment for showing Wilfried’s new media works. In 2003, it was the CD-Rom based media work “Urban.early sunday morning_raw”, and in 2004, Wilfried is invited to attend the festival where he will be showing the installation of “The RRF Project” in one of the ancient palaces forming the location for such media art installations. It is the version like it had been installed earlier in 2004 at MNAC – Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest/Romania (4 March – 30 April 2004). 
During one week Wilfried is residing in a first class hotel outside of the city centre, he has to walk about half an hour along the seaside, time for reflecting and being inspired by the Mediterranean atmosphere. During the opening hours, Wilfried is sitting together with one of the Croatian artists aside his installation and is answering the questions of the visitors, there are many and many questions, because such new media projects, especially when they are globally connected via the net are still quite unusual. Visiting Split belongs to the good experiences, also because the festival direction was caring about him and the other visiting artists and film makers. But finally, the festival remains a film festival, because the final prize and award ceremony is really attracting most people, but Wilfried really cannot complain, because it is most honourable that the festival opened the doors for a new field of using images – in an interactive way!
Here waiting for the visitors, he will also meet Branka Bencic , a Croatian curator who prpeared a contribution including Croatian artists to The RRF Project (version 2003) realized on occasion of its premiere at Interactiva Biennale 2003 in Merida/Mexico (topic of a later article).
8th International Festival of New Film
– Split/Croatia 2003 – Urban.early sunday morning_raw – 2002
Synopsis
Video based on a poetic text by Agricola de Cologne inspired by the Central Station of Milan (Italy).
Metropolis: sunday morning, between open end and twilight, between hope and resignation, between following a dream and returning that night to the home town or village outside.
Coming from the disco, full of the impressions of that juicy girl or that horny boy, doubtful of whether preserving innocence or following the instinct for an outstanding erotic adventure.
It is the moment of not yet knowing, vacillating between yes or no.
It is a same ritual each week-end, even if decisions are made once.
It is a game between identifying and identity.
The work describes the urban landscape as a scenario of a play, where the protagonists are embedded in without any chance to escape.
The RRF Project
09. International Festival of New Film and Media
– Split/Croatia (26 June-2 July)including a curated contribution by Branka Bencic
read more details
enter—> The RRF Project 2004
This ongoing project is a long term experiment starting in March 2004 simultaneously in Internet and at National Museum of Contemporary Art Bucharest/Romania, Bergen Electronic Arts Centre Bergen/Norway and New Media Art Festival Bangkok to be developed further until the end of 2006 and beyond. Many networking instances as artists, curators, institutions, organisations from all parts on the globe will join the project and will form as an ongoing process a unique collection of collected memory of mankind manifested in advanced technological forms of contemporary art, i.e. net based art, an Internet specific form of digital art. The project is a hybrid form of a research, New Media event and an art project.
The basic subject –>“Memory and Identity”
The basic operating aspect –> ”networking as artworking”.
The basic presentation aspect –> physical installation – the exchange/combination of virtual and physical space
and consists of a low-tech administrative body which contains all relevant project related information in a textual form, and an high-tech artistic body based on an interface developed in Flash, which includes all art related components coming from most different online sources.
The highly interactive environment interface refers to the complex networking structures the human brain and reduces the essential nodes of connection to some basic sections , named: “Memory Channels”. Currently, eight of these “Memory Channels are installed , each of them is focussing on different aspects of “memory and identity”
1. RRF Channel, contains versions 1.0 & 2.0 of RRF Festival featuring contributions of these curators: Winston Yang (China), Calin Man/Stefan Tiron/Romania, Raul Ferrera-Balanquet (Cuba), Gita Hashemi (Iran/Canada), Raquel Partnoy (Argentina), Björn Norberg (Sweden), Eva Sjuve (Norway) , Stephanie Bensaquen, (Israel), Faten Nasdas (Palestine), Agricola deCologne (Germany) and others to be nominated later on.
2. “Violence Channel”–>XP version of Violence Online Festival, Memorial for the Victims of Terror and IRAQ – the war and post-war period
3. “Globalization Channel”, containing the modules: “Globalization”, Memorial for the victims of AIDS; and RainForest Memorial
4. “Identity Channel” includes the modules : {self}_representation, Identity and Mariam Ghani – Afghanistan
5. “VideoChannel”, the place where collective memory can manifest itself also in non-interactive works, contains contributions of video works from many countries on the globe, currently by these curators Raluca Velizar/Florin Tudor (Romania), Antonio Alvarado (Spain), Isabel Aranda Yto (Chile), Roopesh Sitharan (Malaysia), Laura Chiari (Italy) etc
6. “SoundLab Channel”, a new Channel is dedicated to soundart in its various forms and contains curatorial contributions form many countries: Canada, USA, Spain, Norway, Germany, Bulgaria, New Zealand etc.
7. Program Channel, contains several modules as History, Surveillance and Online Streaming, but also a number of individual artists’ project which do not fit in any other “Memory Channel”.
8. “InfoChannel” which distributes some basic info of the administrative body.
The dynamic of [R][R][F] 2004 —>XP becomes perceivable only through the activity of at least one single user, not restricted to using a mouse or keyboard for exploring this net based art environment, but as the result of it the activity which is provoked by using the senses and initiating processes through associating.
Internet specific as it is, [R][R][F] 2004–>XP does not represent a complete, but an ongoing art project, a framework for options to start processes, corresponding to the collage principle the brain is using for its associative system.
And it is the “creator” Agricola de Cologne who is preparing the conditions for building an Universe of hisown in which most different networking instances are acting, a specific system, which is based on filtering, associating and linking on different level. Starting from his personal view based on specific filters, by inviting curators, who select artists of their choice, the next filtering and networking level, the artists who are selected via curating form the next following level. As they may come from different cultural, religious, political and social backgrounds and more than 45 countries on the globe, they are installing a complex filtering system of their own via the specific view the art work is based on.
The active user anywhere on the globe, finally, forms another level by contributing his personal filtering system via associating and reflecting.
The term “global” gets generally a fundamental relevance, particularly as the creator is installing complex networking structures in the global context of this “one” world we all are living in, by inviting/involving/incorporating physical networking instances as curators, artists, institutions, organisations etc, which can form the basis for external/affiliated local networks consisting optionally again of a variety of virtual and physical components.
Only the new (and affordable) communicating technologies, their rapid development and the Internet which allow communicating in real time to any place on the globe, made a project like [R][R][F] 2004 —>XP possible. .Agricola de Cologne is using these technologies in most different ways, i.e. the Internet as a whole not only as a database, but as an environment for creating art, for distributing net based art in its various forms and its specific content .
“Networking” in terms of “ artworking” is not reduced to a certain aspect of artistic creating, but includes all available options and their mutual relation and dependence the actively involved networking instances are producing .
Communicating and networking as a specific form of communicating, form the fundament of the project. Consequently, an essential part of the project consist of components which may become visible only via certain results of communicating processes, but are actually acting entirely in the background .
The exchange/communication between physical and virtual space represents the basic presentation aspect, which may manifest itself at suitable, most different locations on the globe, whereby each single installation is unique not only concerning space, dimension and technical equipment, but also due to new aspects and components to be included on this occasion.
[R][R][F] 2004 —>XP is an open system, not in the sense of “open source”, but, independently from any restricting ideology, it is open for all developments which might come .
Pula
Participating in the film festival in Pula, is connected with the person of Branka Bencic, who it the curator of a parallel event organised in the context of the “traditional” film festival – dedicated to new moving images, called “Cinemania(c)”. Wilfried is participating in 2003 and 2004, and in 2004 the same exhibition is shown in Zagreb at “Galerija Ulupuh”, unfortunately Wilfried will not attend personally any of these curated events, retrospectively seen a pity, but in 2003 and 2004 Wilfried was so busy with realising his extraordinary complex and complicated works, that he is actually glad, when he does not need to travel and “waste” his time.
50th Pula Filmfestival 2003
– *Pula off – Cinemania(c) curated by branca BencicTrash & 138 seconds of peace? 2003 – Flash film – 2:20 – read more details
enter—> 138 seconds of Peace
138 seconds of peace?
What is peace? An illusion or just a pipe-dream?
Is it only the state of non-war, the state of non-conflict?
Is the state of peace not against the animal nature of the human being?
Doesn’t represent peace (like harmony) an essential human desire on one
hand, but the most instabile one, and having it, who can stand it?
Aren’t peace and war not degraded to mere consuming good of humans
who have lost any sense for humanity?
The human evolution is a history of war, not the history of peace. Isn’t it??
138 seconds of peace?
a net based art work by Agricola de Cologne,
was launched online on 19 March 2003 when the Iraq war began,
and points to these and other questions not only in times of war.
49th Pula Filmfestival
– Pula (Croatia) 2002 – *Cinemania(c) curated by Braca Bencic – read more details* Galerija ULUPUH Zagreb/Croatia 2003 – read more details
Synopsis
Video based on a poetic text by Agricola de Cologne inspired by the Central Station of Milan (Italy).
Metropolis: sunday morning, between open end and twilight, between hope and resignation, between following a dream and returning that night to the home town or village outside.
Coming from the disco, full of the impressions of that juicy girl or that horny boy, doubtful of whether preserving innocence or following the instinct for an outstanding erotic adventure.
It is the moment of not yet knowing, vacillating between yes or no.
It is a same ritual each week-end, even if decisions are made once.
It is a game between identifying and identity.
The work describes the urban landscape as a scenario of a play, where the protagonists are embedded in without any chance to escape.
Moscow
Participating in the Media Art Forum @ Moscow International Film Festival, has a special meaning, because his video “House of Tomorrow” has been selected. This video is dealing with the questions of gay identity and Russia was always famous for both, the gay males and the same time the persecution of homosexuals in society. The selection shows that the topic is possible as kind of exotic in the framework of the festival – but, because Wilfried does not attend the festival, he does not know how the audience is reacting. Another aspect is, that his video is standing in the selection together with other artists, Wilfried is collaborating with in the field of netart, so Moscow is representing a kind of virtual meeting place of people who will not meet as physical persons.
Moskow International Film Festival
– 28 June – 02 July 2006Media Art Forum – read more details
The house of tomorrow is the house of one’s identity, it does not need to be a concrete house or building, but represents a secure and protected place where people can stand for what they are and represent, a human being. And this human may have many identities in different fields, the sexual identity represents only one among many others.
