Vitrine
Atopia’s Vitrine is a project for experimenting with video art in
public space. Using four large projections on the street level Vitrine
offers a possibility for artists to explore the dynamics of multi-screen
video environments in the public domain.
During the winter, when it is dark enough to project outdoors in Oslo, the four screen videoworks are exhibited on Atopia's Vitrine everyday from 15:00 in the afternoon till the next morning. The exhibition is to be viewed from the outside on Sannergata.
Call for Proposals
Video Art in Public Space
Atopia is accepting proposals for the third season of its Vitrine Project. Artists of all lands may apply.
Vitrine is an outdoor project of Atopia specifically designed for its windows on the street level of Sannergata in Oslo. Sannergata is a busy route for traffic moving in and out of the city, and the Vitrine has the potential of reaching thousands of viewers everyday.
Vitrine is a dedicated site for artists’ video works in public space. It investigates multi-screen environments and it is engaged with the development of the discourse of video art in public space. Transience – moving images and moving public is the fundamental concept of Vitrine Project.
We seek proposals from individual artists for site-specific, 4-screen video installations that are innovative in their approach and daring in their exploration. Sound is not an option for Vitrine and we prioritize non-narrative and non-violent imagery.
Proposals should include the following:
-Visual description of the work in the form of DVD or other video files.
-Project description (limited to one A4 page)
-CV of the artist
Selected works will go on exhibition between November 2010 and February 2011, when it is dark enough to project outdoors in Oslo. Vitrine uses rear projection, and we have the capability of synchronizing the four video projections.
Selected proposals will receive € 1.000.
Technical Info:
Screen size: 214 cm x 162 cm (x 4)
Distance between the screens: 120 cm
Video format: All QuickTime movie formats (4:3 and 16:9)
Playback: Four mini-Mac computers
Deadline: 30 June 2010 Extended deadline: 12 July 2010 (Postmarked)
Contact: vitrine(at)atopia.no
Please send your proposals to: Atopia, Sannergata 32, 0557 Oslo, Norway
Video Jam on Atopia’s Vitrine celebrating the end of its second season
Aan evening of projections and discussions about video art in the public space.
Thursday 18.02.2010 from 18:00 to 21:00.
This event aims at investigating the position of video art on public space and the influence of public space on video art. Several artists and art critics will take part in this event. They will play around with different combinations of projections and compositions on the Vitrine and discuss the results of their experiments. This event marks the end of the second season of Atopia’s Vitrine project.
Participants include:
Pierre Chaussy
Bjørn Erik Haugen
Narve Hovdenakk
Haraldur Karlsson
Brede Korsmo
Beate Petersen
Veronika Reichl
Birgitte Sigmundstad
Leif Magne Tangen
stills from works of Veronika Reichl on Vitrine during the Video Jam
The Second Season of Vitrine Project: December 2009 - February 2010
The second season of Atopia's Vitrine project started on Thursday, 19 Novembe 2009 and it ended on Feb18, 2010.
The second season of Vitrine presented the commissioned works of 5 artists from different countries.
For this project we had sent out an open call for artists and we had received 85 applications from 17 different countries.
Artists and Dates:
- Miguel Jara (Colombia) 19.11 - 03.12.2009
- Jonathan Monaghan (USA) 03.12 - 17.12.2009
- Heike Baranowsky (Germany) 07.01 - 21.01.2010
- Andrew Salgado (UK) 21.01 - 04.02.2010
- Michael Wurstbauer (UK) 04.02 - 18.02.2010
Atopia's curator group for Vitrine 2009-10 consisted of:
Samir M'kadmi (artist/curator), Linn Lervik (artist) & Farhad Kalantary (artist/curator/coordinator of Atopia).
Michael Wurstbauer was born in Munich, 1975 and studied Fine Art Photography at the Glasgow School of Art (BA, 2003). He works mainly with time-based media in an investigation of mental states, subjectivity and repetition. His video works have been shown in numerous festivals across Europe, and he lives and works in Glasgow.
Eastbound - Along Bath Lane, Glasgow brings the location of Atopia into a visual confrontation with the alleys leading to downtown Glasgow at night. This is an interaction that makes the Vitrine into a crossroad for two modes of urban spaces and two singular times.
The four video works of Wurstbauer are made with stop-motion animation technique. His camera gradually moves through the alleys and takes us on a silent journey through the hidden paths of Glasgow. Here the vacant backstreets of the city assume a restless movement, and a sense of anxiety fills up their emptiness.
Installation view, Eastbound - Along Bath Lane, Glasgow by: Michael Wurstbauer
Andrew Salgado (b. 1982, Regina, Canada) graduated in 2005 from the University of British Columbia. In 2009 he received his MFA from the Chelsea College of Art & Design in London, and he lives and works in Vancouver, Canada and London, England. His works have been shown in numerous international venues and his participation in Atopia’s Vitrine is his first solo exhibition in Norway.
Salgado’s works employ large-scale figurative oil paintings and videos that engage in an intense exploration of the body, identity, and sexuality.
Paint Your Black Heart Red is a video performance acted on 4 public screens of Atopia. These four acts illustrate various attempts at physical transformations and shifts of identity that at times seem to be brutal. The videos explore the uncertain territories of becoming the other and they make visible the fragility of the body and its physical boundaries.
Paint Your Black Heart Red is also the performative act of Atopia’s Vitrine to explore its own persona as a set of public art screens. With this exhibition Atopia introduces a radical shift from the conventional practices of public art. It questions the prevailing notions of public art where all has to be “pleasant to the eye and friendly to the environment”. Once again Atopia foregrounds the questions pertaining to concepts of the public, its construction and the limits of freedom bestowed on the arts in public space.
What are the definitions of public art? Do we draw or do we locate these borders and how far could we (or should we) push these boundaries?
Installation view, Paint Your Black Heart Red by: Andrew Salgado
Heike Baranowsky, 1966 was born in Augsburg, Germany and lives in Berlin. She studied art in Munich, Hamburg and Berlin, and received her MA in Fine Art from Royal College of Art London (1999).
From 2005-8 she was a Professor at Kunsthøgskolen in Bergen, Norway and from 2008 she has been working as Professor at Academy of Fine Art in Nuremberg, Germany.
Baranowsky has exhibited her works extensively in America and Europe with solo exhibitions at Kunstverein Frankfurt (1997), Entwistle London (1999), Kunst-Werke Berlin (2001), Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2005), Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2010), G Fine Art Washington, DC (2006), and Kunstfenster at BDI, Berlin (2008).
She participated in the New Contemporaries ’98 (1998), Berlin Biennale, (1998), Loop - Back to the Beginning, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York / CAC Cinncinati, Ohio (2001), en route, Serpentine Gallery, London (2002), MoMA Reopen, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2004), Convergence at E 116˚/ N 40˚, 789 Dayaolu Workshop, Beijing (2005), 40 Years Video. Video Art in Germany from 1963 until today, ZKM, Karlsruhe and other venues (2006), DESTROY, SHE SAID, Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf (2007), and As Time Goes By, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2009). www.heikebaranowsky.de
Passage opens a seascape on the side of Sannergata. Parallel to the hasty movement of cars, busses and people on the street, we see a container ship appearing on the 4 screens of Atopia’s Vitrine and joining the traffic. With the control of timing the work merges the fast with the slow through the high-speed of the seascape and the ship that seems to slowly move in reverse.
Passage presents a rare instant of poetry as Public Video Art. If poetry relies on the use of language, the poetic imagery is a sole dependent of timing.
Installation view, Passage by Heike Baranowsky
Jonathan Monaghan (New York, 1989) is a young artist working with 3D computer software to create digital sculptures, prints, and animations. He is currently earning his MFA at the University of Maryland, USA.
Calling All Angels is a digital animation work that shows various creatures undergoing transformations in a 3D environment.
Made for Atopia’s four-screen outdoor exhibition space the work attempts to engage the physical space in a dialogue with the virtual. In this setting the creatures appear to signal a physiological distress and uncertainty.
Calling All Angels is visible from the street everyday from 15:00 until the next morning (3 – 17 December 2009).
Atopia is pleased to open the second season of Vitrine project with the work of the Colombian artist Miguel Jara.
Miguel Jara (Bogotá-Colombia -1983) is a young visual artist working with video and animation. He has received his Masters degree in visual arts from the National University of Colombia, 2008, and he is based in Bogotá.
In the Woods is a new animation work of Miguel Jara, which is commissioned for the Vitrine 2009-10. Jara’s gripping compositions are built with the simple act of drawing with pencil on paper. His animations focus on the natural forces and elements and work with the dynamics of the multi-screen setting of Atopia’s Vitrine. Jara portrays the constant battle of life through the gaze of wolves, the rumblings of the skies, and the flight of birds. He attempts to translate powers of the nature into the transient context of a normal street scene. In this process our street becomes the scene of a fairy tale, where the Nordic wolves roam around the neighborhood and once again put their claim on this territory.
In the Woods could be viewed from the street everyday from 15:00 until the next morning (19 Nov – 3 Dec. 2009).
Installation view, In the Woods by Miguel Jara
The first season of Vitrine project: December 2008 – March 2009:
For the first season of Vitrine five artists were invited to produce new works for exhibition in the period of November 2008 to March 2009. Working with the ideas of transience and the encounter of moving images with the moving public, the invited artists created exciting works that were on display throughout the winter.
Liberating the Multi-Voiced Bodies
by Samir M'Kadmi
Exhibition period 21 Feb - 7 March 2009
"Liberating the Multi-Voiced Bodies" is a new video installation by Samir M'Kadmi made for Atopia's Vitrine. This is a multi-screen video installation that addresses several issues pertaining to the art in public space. Using double standards and gates of accessibility it questions the Legitimacy of the public itself. Who do we call public? What is the public comprised of?
On the other hand the work is concerned with the issues of human rights and the freedom of expression from a global perspective. "Freedom of expression can no longer be conceived as a regional or national matter but a global issue. Societies all around the world are interdependent and so are the rights of their inhabitants" from such a perspective Samir M'Kadmi's work foregrounds the repressive regimes of North Africa and wonders about their impact on the freedom of an individual passerby on the streets of Oslo.
Samir M'kadmi is an artist and curator, working in the field between art and technology. He places his research on the interaction between fine arts and socio-political and environmental issues. He perceives the artist as a social actor and a critical power. His work calls into question the traditional and persisting definitions that detain the artists to the role of commodity producers only.
Klöckner Track Variations
by Greg Pope
Opening: Saturday, 7, 02, 2009 at 18:00
(7 – 20 Feb. 2009)
Greg Pope was born in UK, 1960 and studied art at Brighton Art College, 1985.
After exploring punk rock bands and absurdist performance, he founded Brighton based Super 8 film collective Situation Cinema in 1986. From this group came Loophole Cinema (London 1989)—using 16mm multi-projection techniques, performing numerous events around Europe until 1999. They also
produced “The International Symposium of Shadows” in London in 1996. Working collaboratively and individually, Pope has made video installations, live
art pieces and single screen film works since 1997.
“Klöckner Track Variations” was shot on 16mm film in a deserted industrial zone in Germany in 1993. This four screen video installation is a reinterpretation of the original footage and it brings the site of Atopia’s Vitrine into a dialogue with a distant place in time.
WATER AND GLASS
by Jeremy Welsh
Opening: Saturday, 24, 01, 2009 at 18:00
(24 Jan – 6 Feb 2009)
WATER AND GLASS is a four screen video installation made for Atopia’s Vitrine project. The imagery of the four videos are combined of panoramic shots of landscapes, images of water drops in close up, and reflected urban landscape seen in the glass surfaces of modern architecture. This work continues the investigation of space, time and image that has characterized many of Jeremy Welsh’s recent works.
Jeremy Welsh (UK, 1954) is an artist, writer and curator who is a Professor in Fine Art at Kunsthogskolen in Bergen, Norway. Welsh has been working with video and electronic media since 1980 and his works have been exhibited widely around the globe. He has also written extensively on art and electronic media in various magazines, catalogues and books.
In the Middle of the End
A video installation by Bull.Miletic:
Opening Thursday, 18, December 2008 at 18:00
(18 – 31 December 2008)
BULL.MILETIC is Synne Bull (Norway, 1973) and Dragan Miletic (Serbia, 1970). They have studied art at San Francisco Art Institute (MFA 2003, 2000), and they live and work in Oslo, Norway. Their works have been exhibited in various venues in the US as well as in Europe.
“In the Middle of the End” is a four screen video installation produced by Bull.Miletic for Atopia’s Vitrine project. It shows black & white images of glowing light bulbs as they swing in the darkness. In these carefully timed sequences the moving light bulbs appear to successively crash against the glass of Atopia’s projection window and explode.
Prelude
A video installation by Farhad Kalantary
Opening: Sunday 14.12.2008 at 18:00
(14 - 18 December 2008)
“Prelude” is a video work by Farhad Kalantary that will start the new season of Atopia’s Vitrine Project.
