Limited Access Guests: Tasja Langenbach

Public Talk Tasja Langenbach

Videonale – Festival for Video and Time-Based Arts was founded in Bonn in 1984 and since this time takes place every two years. Since 2005 the festival and its exhibition are located at the local art museum, the Kunstmuseum Bonn. Videonale is one of the oldest festivals for video and time-based arts in Europe focusing specially on young and upcoming international artists.

The 17th edition of the festival took place from February 21st to April 14th, 2019 and presented 29 moving image artworks from 20 countries, selected from over 1.100 entries under REFRACTED REALITIES. In optics, “refraction” refers to the bending of a beam of light, a change in a direction which occurs at when it passes from one medium to another. In its figurative sense, refraction refers to a critical reflection on the means and channels of visualization, and by extension, the possibility of our view of things—how they are, were, or apparently, always have been. Our interest was to ask what artistic strategies are being developed to create alternative points of view and to integrate new perspectives. Which visual languages are available to the artist? And how can we use these languages to enter dialogue again and discuss how we see things, saw them or apparently always have seen them?

Moving Image and the New Media

Presentation/talk: 

For Limited Access Festival, Tasja Langenbach presented a special screening program of the recent edition of the videonale, REFRACTED REALITIES—a selection Videonale 2017, and a public talk on the history of the festival and its strategies on decades since 1984,  in presenting moving images in an exhibition format and museum context. The screening/talk and seminar took place at Bidar School for Art and Literature.

Besides that has held a one-day Seminar on one of the Videonale on tour programs: Technic Visions, Which is composed out of 6 works from the 80s to today which had been presented at past Videonale editions. The focus here is on how artists deal with the technical developments of media technologies, from an artistic point of view (as artistic material) but also from a social point of view (how technologies influence social and identity processes).

About Tasja Langenbach

Tasja Langenbach studied Art History and Cultural Sciences in Germany and Spain. After working at the ZKM / Center for Arts and Media Karlsruhe, Germany for the exhibition project MakingThings Public – Atmospheres of Democracy, she held a position as gallery manager at Gallery Anita Beckers, Frankfurt, Germany. In the following years she curated the yearly film program of SoundTrack_Cologne / See the Sound in Cologne, Germany and was responsible for the festival program of Videonale – Festival for Video and Time-Based Arts, Bonn, Germany. Since 2012 she has been the Artistic Director of Videonale.  Tasja Langenbach still periodically takes part in prize and competition juries, curates video and film programs for different occasions, contributes to catalogues and teaches in the MA program Culture, Aesthetics, Media at the University for Applied Sciences in Dusseldorf.