The annual Pictoplasma Festival has established itself as the meeting point for a growing, international scene of artists, character creators and producers. With artist's lectures, animation screenings, panels, exhibitions, workshops and performances, the festivals's focus is less on distinctions of format, style or technique, than on the exploration of common territory. The lively exchange between the various disciplines highlightes the importance of reduced figuration in today's visual understanding. Alongside the official conference and animation festival, an accompanying series of exhibitions, VJ sessions and parties attracted a wide, interested audience.
After screenings at Dis-patch festival in 2006 and 2007, Pictoplasma is back in person! Alongside brand new selections for both the Kid's-patch and the Dis-patch festivals, Larse Denicke has held a lecture and presentation on October 14th at the Cultural Center Grad, presenting the wide scope and adventurous spirit of the Pictoplasma world.
SOME OF THE FEATURED ARTISTS IN THE SCREENINGS: W+KTokyolab / David O'Reilly / Satoru Ohno / Motomichi Nalamura / Mixtape Club / SSSR / Eun-Ha Paek / Marek Michalowski / Eric Lerner / Saiman Chow / Marco Morandi / Ian Stevenson / Joshua Allen Harris / Joji Kojama / Paul Rayment / Stephen Irwin / Mashcomix / Soundso and more!
Colorfield Variations is a collection of audio/visual works reinterpreting the Color Field movement by an international array of critically acclaimed sound and new media artists and assembled by curator and sound artist Richard Chartier.
Color Field painting, an abstract style that emerged as a new direction in American painting in the 1950s following Abstract Expressionism, is characterized by canvases painted primarily with stripes, washes and fields of solid color. An alternate but less frequently encountered term for this style is chromatic abstraction.
As the first critically acclaimed art movement to originate in the United States's capital, the Washington Color School was key to the larger Color Field movement. As a reaction to the emotional energy and gestural surfaces of Abstract Expressionists, the Color Field artists broke away from the individual mark in favor of pure color itself becoming the main content of the work. Artists such as Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Gilliam, Larry Poons, Gene Davis, Jules Olitski, and others eliminated recognizable imagery from their canvas and presented abstraction as an end in itself with each work being a cohesive image. The Color Field movement can be seen as a precursor to the themes and aesthetics of the subsequent Minimalist movement.
WORKS: Steve Roden (US) dark over light earth / Alan Callander (US) cf01 / Frank Bretschneider (DE) looping i-vi (excerpt) / Stephan Mathieu (DE) orange was the color of her dress / Sue Costabile (US) + Beequeen (NL) amp_swell / TEZ (IT) CF #1-2n / Tina Frank + General Magic (AT) Chronomops / Bas Van Koolwojk (NL) FDBCK/AV Silver / Chris Carter + Cosey Fanni Tutti (UK) Chronomanic Redux / Ryoichi Kurokawa (JP) Scorch / Sawako (JP) flirting 07121602 / E.Dominitch + D.Gelfand (RU/US) 10,000 Peacock Feathers in Foaming Acid / Ernest Edmonds (AU) + Mark Fell (UK) Broadway One (excerpt)
www.3particles.com / www.12k.com/line
On the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the city of Mannheim, Alva Noto (Carsten Nicolai) and Ryuichi Sakamoto were invited to develop an audio-visual performance together with Ensemble Modern. The concept of the arising piece named utp_ is derived from the rasterized structure of Mannheim (build as an ideal city in the 17th century) and also paying reference to the musical history of the city.
The result of the collaboration like the former projects of Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto - Vrioon (2002), Insen (2005) and Revep (2005) - is a synergetic mixture of electronic and natural sounds, that is expanded by the potential of the classical instruments of ensemble modern. utp_, the title of the new composition is deduced from the term utopia and hence describes an approach that leaves space for further extensive associations.
The release consists of an audio cd, a dvd, a full colour booklet and the score. The DVD contains the utp_ concert movie and a utp_ "try-out" to document both the developing process of the piece and the final result.
14.10 / Pictoplasma Animation fesitval selection PART 1 / Cultural Center Grad
05.11 / Pictoplasma Animation fesitval selection PART 2 / Cultural Center Rex
05.11 / Line presents Colorfield Variation / Cultural Center Rex
06.11 / Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto: utp_ concert / Cultural Center Rex