Era vídeo. Entornos y potencias (80-00)

The publication of En torno al vídeo (Bonet, Dols, Mercader, Muntadas) in 1980 marked the beginning of the institutionalisation of video. The process was reinforced by different milestones related to the cultural policies of the 1980s and 90s and it began to cause a shift in the communicative and ideological potential associated with this medium, reorienting it towards artistic opportunities. At the same time, this situation gave rise to a series of practices, events such as exhibitions or series and also gatherings such as festivals, whose resistance operations allowed no few projects, attitudes and strategies to be forged. The exhibition and distribution of video, the "festivalization" of culture and its becoming integrated in a new dimension of visibility (steadily converging with the spectacle), plus the appearance of new centres of production and new relational modes within the visual arts, are some of the landmarks that will be examined from today's perspective.

The reediting of En torno al vídeo (by the University of the Basque Country – UPV/EHU) and the publication of En torno a En torno al vídeo (by the Centro Cultural Montehermoso, Vitoria-Gasteiz) set the stage for this exploration. These sessions do away with the traditional framework of exhibition fragmented into discrete screening and debate sections, and instead include complete screenings, and excerpts of audiovisual works, within the conversations themselves. The idea is to spark debate by taking as a point of departure the different eras and registers of video, inserting the video pieces dialectically within the discussion. This series is intended to serve as a starting point for reconsidering narratives about video.

Program

Presentation of the events: Fundación Rodríguez
Gabriel Villota and Marcelo Expósito, in dialogue

May 24

A look back at both the first generation of the international videographic movement —the period discussed in En torno al vídeo— and also at the subsequent generations of Spanish video working in the 1980s and 1990s, which found inspiration in this decisive book. Gabriel Villota and Marcelo Expósito have each selected a number of titles, which they alternately screen and comment on, to fashion a session open to unexpected counterpoints. 
Link to complete program: Day 1

Antoni Mercader and Karin Ohlenschläger, in dialogue

May 25

In the 1980s two generations of artists came together and their work in the spheres of production and distribution would end up creating a Spanish video art scene. Areas such as self-management, independent spaces, the emergence of networks and attempts at institutionalisation would be the site of many of the contributions of this new creative sphere, which at the time was known as new artistic behaviours. 
Link to complete program: Day 2

Eli Lloveras (Hamaca media & vídeo art distribution from Spain) and Pedro Jiménez (Zemos98) 

May 26

HAMACA and ZEMOS98 represent the most complex contemporaneity of this way of looking at video through festivals and initiatives that examine notions of collective creation, remix, video art that is not video art and reflections on the antagonism displayed towards traditional intellectual property. The political activism behind this antagonism and the use of the strategies associated with it have great implications for what Internet means today as a setting for the exchange of knowledge. 
Link to complete program: Day 3

Fundación Rodríguez (Natxo Rodríguez and Fito Rodríguez), in dialogue
Round table with: Itxaso Díaz, Arantza Lauzirika and Iñaki Arzoz

May 27

In connection with the project Intervenciones.tv and the publications that serve as the point of departure for this series of events, Fundación Rodríguez proposes a vídeo jam, which consists of the pooling of audiovisual works, a kind of review of the most recent history of this medium. For this purpose it calls upon those who collaborated in the project En torno a en torno al vídeo, and also offers members of the audience the chance to participate. 
Link to complete program: Day 4

Participants

Iñaki Arzoz
Artist, writer and founding member of the collective Cibergolem, where he has carried out various projects involving the critical analysis of art and new technologies, such as La quinta columna digital. Anti-tratado sobre hiperpolítica (Gedisa, Barcelona, 2005).

Itxaso Diaz
Video artist, documentarian and curator of video and film series. Her most recent project is Aldea DOC, crónicas de Aldea Moret,a participatory documentary made in 2008 in Cáceres.

Marcelo Expósito
Artist who belongs to the Universidad Nómada and the network Conceptualismos del Sur. He is a resident researcher at Museo Reina Sofía for the year 2010-11.

Pedro Jiménez
Founder and member of the collective Zemos98, digital publisher, sponsor and organiser of contemporary cultural activity based on the paradigm of cultural networks (www.zemos98.org).

Arantza Lauzirika
Artist, writer and professor at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). She co-ordinated the book Akme. Artea, Kultura, Media (UPV/EHU, 2010).

Eli Lloveras
Member of the cultural production company Yproductions and co-ordinator of the media-art distributor Hamaca (Hamaca media & vídeo art distribution from Spain).

Antoni Mercader
Artist and professor of Audiovisual Communications at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, he is also a writer and editor, and is a co-author of En torno al vídeo.

Karin Ohlenschläger
Critic and curator specialised in contemporary art and new technologies since 1985, especially relevant among her recent projects are Banquete_nodos_redes (LABORAL Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Gijón, 2009) and Ecomedia: Ecological Strategies in Today’s Art (Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg, 2007-2008).

Fundación Rodríguez
Curators of the series, the members of this collective have been working together since 1994. They organise and co-ordinate projects related to contemporary culture and the new media.

Gabriel Villota
Artist, writer and professor of Audiovisual Communications at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). His publications include Sujeto e imagen-cuerpo: entre la imagen del cuerpo y el cuerpo del espectador (UPV/EHU, Bilbao, 2004) and he is the author of the video Devenir vídeo (Adiós a todo eso), 2005, produced by the exhibition and research project Desacuerdos.