European Media Art Festival 2011: This is Media Art

Category

Festival

Year

2011

Institution

EMAF-European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück

Comment

2011 – the year of the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan – but also the year of celebrations to mark 150 years of friendship between Germany and Japan. EMAF joined in the festivities by presenting the programme “Japanese Media Art Now”, reflected not only in the film programme, but also in the exhibition and various performances.The film programme signalled that the era of purely formal experiments seems to be a thing of the past – the films were increasingly of a documentary and narrative nature, the formal aspect merely a means to convey the cinematic content. The retrospective in 2011 was dedicated to the American experimental filmmaker Standish Lawder.The exhibition, entitled “Planet M”, was divided into two areas this year: “Moving Stories”, a collaboration between EMAF and various European art institutions, and “TRANSIT – European Young Talents Forum”, in which, as the name implies, students from European art academies were given the opportunity to present their works.The “Media Art Garden”, an open-air exhibition and workshop project, ‘grew’ in Osnabruck city centre.Interesting information about the history and future of the media and the importance of media archives were presented in lectures and workshops. The Media Campus gave students and lecturers from the art and media academies of Europe the opportunity to network and exchange ideas.