n.b.k. Video-Forum | Window projections
The Goethe-Institut Montreal, in cooperation with the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), presents a screening programme of 20 video works from n.b.k Video-Forum’s extensive video art collection, curated by Anna Lena Seiser (Head of Collection n.b.k. Video-Forum).
The individual films will be shown for a week at a time sunset to 2:00 a.m. on the display windows of the Goethe-Institut at 1626 Boul. St-Laurent, Montréal, Québec, H2X 2T1, Canada and can be viewed on an indoor screen during the Goethe-Institut's opening hours:
S.C.H.A.F.E.
Wolf Kahlen
1975
37:55 min.
In
S.C.H.A.F.E., Wolf Kahlen works with a flock consisting of 106 sheep, that throughout the course of the video describe themselves in monumental fashion by successively forming together the individual letters S, C, H, A, F and E. (The German word for “sheep”.) The shape of the respective letter is pre-drawn by oat flakes on the meadow. In each scene, the sheep stream out hurriedly and move closer and closer together until they finally group together to form the corresponding letter. Slowly the letter dissolves again when the food is eaten and some sheep and finally the whole group move on to the next letter in the following scene. In the process, two sheep dogs make sure that all the sheep join. The video explores the process of the formation and deformation of image and language, putting forms of communication to question as externally controlled, collective programming.
The video art pioneer
Wolf Kahlen (*1940 in Aachen / Germany, lives in Berlin and Bernau / Germany) is a founding member of the
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein’s Video Forum, which opened in 1971 as the
Videothek and featured his work
Reversible Processes (1971). As an artist who creates three-dimensional intermedia works with video, media, and objects, he calls himself a “media sculptor.” As early as the 1960s, Kahlen’s work critically examined the then-newly emerging mass medium of television. In his video sculptures, for example, he placed mirrors on TVs in order to turn the space of the viewer into the content of the device. He co-founded the Aktionen der Avantgarde (1973–1974) in Berlin and, in 1985, founded the Berlin exhibition space for video and sound art, Ruine der Künste. Kahlen is Professor Emeritus of Multimedia Art at the Technische Universität Berlin.
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