The exhibition

To mark the Videonale's 40th anniversary, we took a deep dive into the festival's impressive archive: Over 1,200 works by around 1,000 artistic positions have been shown over four decades, a selection of which was invited for submission by the committee – Kat Lawinia Gorska, Kathrin Jentjens and Tasja Langenbach. From over 180 works, 26 international artistic positions were selected, whose works open up an exciting and meaningful dialog between the past and present of video art and explore the narrative possibilities of audiovisual art in a variety of ways. Seven historical video works from previous Videonale editions will be shown in the exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Bonn and at our exhibition venues in the city, together with 19 current productions.

Historical video works from earlier Videonales by artists from the Rhineland such as Marcel Odenbach and Jan Verbeek meet international positions such as VALIE EXPORT, Ken Feingold, Gorilla Tapes, Akiko Hada, Lynn Hershman and Ana Torfs, which impressively document the spectrum of what video can do as an art form and what has characterized it as a narrative medium from the very beginning. In terms of their relevance, they are in no way second to the works of younger generations. On the contrary, it is remarkable how timelessly relevant they are in bringing controversial topics and discourses of the past into the present. Reflections on gender stereotypes and body images that still have an impact, political crises and situations of upheaval that almost frighteningly echo those of today, colonial coping strategies and traumas that still need to be dealt with – updated with a view to technical means and narrative styles, these themes can also be found in the works of younger artists such as Beatrice Gibson and Stéphanie Lagarde, Philipp Gufler and Renate Lorenz & Pauline Boudry, Chto Delat and YAN Wai Yin, Anna Zett, Ida Kammerloch and Ana María Millán. They are complemented by contemporary commentaries on the obsession with youth in social media society by Julia Scher, the effects of international financial capitalism by Viktor Brim and the consequences of extractivism for nature and humanity by Lukas Marxt and Alex Gerbaulet & Mareike Bernien.

We value the Kunstmuseum Bonn as a place for a protected and concentrated presentation of works. However, we deliberately want to go beyond the boundaries of the museum and bring video art to where it also belongs – in the middle of the city, into people's lives. With a total of six video installations by Mark Bain, Alwin Lay, Angelica Mesiti, Stefan Panhans & Andrea Winkler, Dani & Sheilah Restack and Julia Scher, we will be showing the works in places in the center of Bonn that resonate with the works in a meaningful way and can thus have an impact where their themes are discussed in the everyday life of urban society.

For the first time and with the support of our long-standing partner Fluentum, the Videonale was also able to commission three new productions by Alwin Lay, Julia Scher and Dani and Sheilah ReStack for this edition, all of which will be shown in urban spaces.