Looking at the Big Sky

OPENING:
Saturday, May 29, 2015, 6 pm

EXHIBITION DATA:
May 29 to July 3, 2015


An exhibition project of the Goethe-Institut in cooperation with Braunschweig University of Art / Dusseldorf Art Academy / Academy of Media Arts Cologne / Academy of Fine Arts, Munich

Curator: Dr. Renate Buschmann, Stiftung imai, Dusseldorf


The sight of a big sky is closely associated with ideas of freedom and openness. The faraway horizon is synonymous with the vastness of thought; the high blue sky of day and the starry nocturnal firmament are codes for the sublime.

They also remind us of the childlike pastime of looking for pictures in cloud formations or marvelling at the boundlessness of the universe.

The choice of "Looking at the Big Sky" as the title of a contemporary video art programme was associated with the hope that the ideas and illusions would know no boundaries, that the sky would be the limit in all directions. At the same time, it sounded like an appeal to the participating artists to venture a - perhaps naive, but unerring - look at longings, utopias and great aspirations, and to think the existing concepts of authenticity and beauty beyond the present.

Students of four German art academies (Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste Braunschweig / Braunschweig University of Art, Kunstakademie Dusseldorf / Dusseldorf Art Academy, Kunsthochschule fur Medien Koln / Academy of Media Arts Cologne and Akademie der Bildenden Kunste Munchen / Academy of Fine Arts, Munich) were invited to enter recent single-channel videos in the competition "Looking at the Big Sky".

14 films - works which respond to the thematic postulation with an astonishing variety of motifs and practices - were ultimately selected.

The spectrum ranges from fictional narratives and stagings to individual assertions and performances, from found-footage montages to pseudo documentaries. At the same time, two major perspectives crystallize in the works, and were thus formulated in the headings of the two screening blocks: whereas the videos subsumed under "The Beauty of the Familiar" aim towards personal introspection that divines meaning in the inconspicuous and unspectacular, "Departure for Tomorrow" encompasses videos seeking to formulate an outlook on the immeasurable and indeterminate.

From July 2013 to June 2017, the video art project "Looking at the Big Sky" will be available to Goethe Institutes all over the world for exhibitions, screenings, conferences and lectures. In this way, we hope to encourage people abroad to acquaint themselves with contemporary video art production and the media art training programmes offered at German academies.

We are indebted to the members of the jury - Prof Mischa Kuball, Prof Marcel Odenbach, Prof Julian Rosefeldt und Prof Corinna Schnitt - for their qualified assessments of the videos submitted, as well as to the participating artists for their dedicated cooperation.


Renate Buschmann

Leonhard Emmerling