Videorama assembles Austrian single channel video and film works most of which date from the past ten years. Relying on both sophisticated and simple means, the artists, often working with existing pictures from the field of art or the everyday world, included short film, animated film and documentary pieces. While Nicolas Jasmin appropriates, abstracts, and develops his conceptual film works by using fragments from movies, the candle of Franz Schubert’s animation recalls Gerhard Richter’s great art and Sonic Youth’s realm of pop culture.

The screening version of the exhibition Videorama, which might be divided into the sub-categories “Narrations,” “Extensions,” and “Clips,” comprises short films which not only lure us into fictitious creative and surrealist worlds like Markus Schinwald’s work, but also allow us to experience the artists’ pleasure in their act of story-telling like in the case of Josh Müller’s contribution. Based on dolly drives, stationary camera set-ups, and documentary strategies, the videos by Paul Divjak, Leopold Kessler, Dariusz Kowalski, and others reveal unusual locations as well as socio-political content and, above all, atmospheric conditions. Here we are being confronted with contemplative pictorial epics alongside images that are exciting and full of suspense. This languid lingering on images provides a marked contrast to the main focus of the program on clip-like videos by such artists as Tina Frank/Peter Rehberg, Thomas Draschan, Susi Jirkuff, or Axel Stockburger that promise amusing entertainment while displaying structural similarities to music videos and advertising clips. Thomas Draschan, BitteBitteJaJa, and Axel Stockburger sample fragments to arrive at a new whole that unfolds as a digital montage in orchestral juxtapositions or sequences.

The pictures shown in Videorama go against the tide of the times in a sometimes perfectionist, sometimes trashy way. While Rudolf Polanszky may sometimes reveal absurdities far beyond the accepted and draw on the eccentric and the world of outsiders, Erwin Wurm’s filmic One Minute Sculptures and Anna Jermolaewa’s Affentheater, for example, evince a definite sense of humor that hits the nail on the head.

Videorama comes to Hong Kong as the result of an exhibition exchange between Para/Site Art Space and Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna).

Artists: Renate Bertlmann, BitteBitteJaJa, Paul Divjak , Thomas Draschan, Tomas Eller, Tina Frank / Peter Rehberg, Rainer Ganahl, Nicolas Jasmin, Anne Jermolaewa, Susi Jirkuff, Leopold Kessler, Dariusz Kowalski, Sabine Maier, Josh Müller, Rudolf Polanszky, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Station Rose, Markus Schinwald, Veronika Schubert, Franz Schubert, Hubert Sielecki, Axel Stockburger, Erwin Wurm