5. til 9. April 2003

A retrospective to mark the 20th anniversary of 235 MEDIA, agency, sales office and exhibition consultancy for media art.

Video art, originally situated between cinematic experiment and visual art, has long since left the narrow frame of the screen and assumed a spatial presence. While early linear video works were closely linked to the utopian ambitions and socially critical ideals of the 1960s and 1970s, contemporary media art reflects the discourse on the evolution of artificial intelligence and virtual worlds with great intensity. The far-reaching metamorphosis in media art can be observed in the constant further development of interactive media spaces that the viewer can walk in and amongst and digital network installations in the past two decades.

235 MEDIA has followed this process over the last 20 years and helped shape it. Founded in Cologne in 1982, the company offers an overview of some of the most important standpoints in media art to mark its twentieth anniversary. The special exhibition is on display from 5 to 9 April as part of KunstKöln in an exhibition space measuring approximately 250 m2. It is at once a portrait and a retrospective.

Visitors can see and experience installations by Studio Azzurro, Doug Hall, Bill Seaman, Marcel Odenbach, Ulrike Rosenbach and Klaus vom Bruch to name just a few. The genesis of media art can be followed in the selection of exhibits, which touch on key issues in this discourse: video art as anti-gesture and political statement, the staging of corporeality, the construction of the self, interactivity and engaging the viewer in the work, the expansion of semantic and virtual spaces… An accompanying
program with selected historic video works provides an insight into the roots and visions of video artwork.

The exhibition includes:
Studio Azzurro, Il Nuatatore & Der Schwimmer, 1984
Marcel Odenbach, Die Unwahrheit der Vernunft, 1978
Ulrike Rosenbach, Über den Tod, 1995
Doug Hall, The terrible uncertainty of the thing described, 1987-89
Bill Seaman, Hybrid Invention Generator, 2002
Klaus vom Bruch, Radar Zylinder, 1992
Kirsten Geisler, Cat Walk, 2002, & Touch Me, 1999

And a selection of video art works from 1578 til 2003.