OK. VIDEO, JAKARTA

OPEN SUBMISSION!
ruangrupa present
OK. VIDEO: COMEDY
4th Jakarta International Video Festival 2009

Exhibition, workshops, discussions, and award for the best works

28 July - 9 August 2009
National Gallery of Indonesia
Galeri Nasional Indonesia

COMEDY is an effective way to free ourselves from anxiety. As a critique that disguise itself as a form of entertainment, comedy helps us to reflect, laugh at ourselves, protest without anger, and turn calamity into hilarity. As a way to communicate, comedy never dies and has been accompanying us since time immemorial, from the form of comedy that uses the body as a medium to one that uses the audio-visual language.

KOMEDI adalah cara ampuh untuk melepaskan diri dari kecemasan. Sebagai kecaman kritis yang menyamar sebagai hiburan, komedi membuat kita bisa merefleksikan segala sesuatu, menertawakan diri sendiri, memprotes tanpa amarah, dan mengubah celaka menjadi jenaka. Sebagai cara berkomunikasi, komedi tak pernah mati dan telah menemani masyarakat sejak dulu, dari komedi yang menggunakan medium tubuh hingga kini dalam bahasa audio-visual.

OK. Video: Comedy will look at comedy as a form of communication using the medium of video, which responds to a variety of problems in critical ways. From the problems of the city, politics, power, modernity, technology, economy, generation, gender, tradition, religion, mass media, identity, pop culture, art, daily lives, to the general election. OK. Video Festival is focused on non-narrative video works and open for reconstructions, recording manipulations, and an array of experiments of the audio-visual language. We receive video works with a variety of approaches to comedy—from jokes, parodies, to absurd, satirical, sarcastic, vulgar, as well as tragic comedy.

OK. Video: Comedy akan melihat komedi sebagai bentuk komunikasi melalui medium video yang membicarakan berbagai permasalahan saat ini secara kritis. Dari permasalahan kota, politik, kekuasaan, modernitas, teknologi, ekonomi, generasi, gender, tradisi, agama, media massa, identitas, budaya pop, seni, keseharian, sampai pemilihan umum. OK. Video Festival fokus pada karya-karya video non-naratif (tanpa cerita) dan terbuka bagi rekonstruksi, manipulasi rekaman, dan berbagai eksperimen bahasa audio-visual. Kami menerima video dengan berbagai pendekatan komedi, dari lelucon, parodi, absurd, satir, sarkastik, vulgar, tabu, hingga komedi tragis.

Download Submission at
http://okvideofestival.org/form.html

Video format: DVD, mini DV - PAL and multimedia file
with the duration of 3 to 15 minutes
produced in 2007 – 2009

Deadline: 31 May 2009
Registration fee: none

Send your work to:

ruangrupa
Jl. Tebet Timur Dalam Raya No.6
Jakarta 12820
INDONESIA

p/f: +62-21-8304220
info@okvideofestival.org
info@ruangrupa.org

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OK.VIDEO
OK. Video - Jakarta International Video Festival is a biannual video festival held since 2003 by ruangrupa, a contemporary art organization in Jakarta, Indonesia. OK. Video is one of the events organized by ruangrupa to discuss the social and cultural phenomena in Indonesia and the international world within a festival with a specific theme.

OK. Video - Jakarta Internasional Video Festival adalah festival video dua tahunan yang diselenggarakan sejak 2003 oleh ruangrupa, sebuah organisasi seni rupa kontemporer di Jakarta, Indonesia. OK. Video merupakan salah satu kegiatan ruangrupa untuk membahas fenomena sosial dan budaya di Indonesia dan dunia internasional dalam sebuah festival dengan tema spesifik.

www.okvideofestival.org
www.ruangrupa.org

VIDEO ART FROM JAPAN

About the Artists:

Katsuyuki HATTORI, (b.1973) is a Japanese video artist, based in Tokyo. He has been active in producing single-channel videos and collaborated with many artists such as theatre choreographers, contemporary dancers, poets, musicians, and so on. He also produces live video performances. Hattori, who graduated from San Francisco Art Institute, co-founded several important video art organizations in Tokyo such as Tokyo: Spread Video Art Project, Art Lab. Goldenshit, and Video Art Center. His work has been shown internationally in Spain, Canada, Ireland, Australia, France, Mexico, China and Indonesia, amongst many countries.


SATO Hiroaki, (b. 1962) is a video artist cum musician who graduated from Nihon University, College of Art. He is also active in teaching video making and theory of image technology at the Nippon Engineering College and Nihon University College of Art, Department of Cinema. Sato also writes, mostly on video art.

Mad(e) in Malaysia

'Rafflesia'
2009

MALAYSIAN ARTIST AMIR ZAINORIN TO HOLD SOLO EXHIBITION IN LONDON

Kuala Lumpur, 23rd January 2009 – R A Fine Arts – The Gallery announced today that they will be showcasing Malaysian contemporary artist Amir Zainorin in a solo exhibition entitled Mad(e) in Malaysia at Brick Lane Gallery, London from 17th to 30th March 2009.

Mad(e) in Malaysia will feature fifteen pieces of artwork by Amir which represent scenes of society and popular culture, with recurring political undertones, and yet are free from ethnic connotations.

It is not his intention to create works with a Malaysian identity but rather to render them as universal as possible. The characters, imagery and objects used in his works attempt to be “non-specific” and have an instant accessibility.

The influences in Amir’s works however are multiple, from pop art to music and culture, including classic television shows such as the “Lone Ranger”, “Superman” and “The Six Million Dollar Man” as well as Seventies music groups such as the Bee Gees and Abba to mention a few.

Amir’s works also specifically refers to Jeri Azhari, an iconic Malaysian artist, as well as Amir’s mentor, who gave him the artistic knowledge and background which initiated his artistic practice.

Amir’s works strive to show the norms of modern life while juxtaposing them with popular imagery through the technique of digital print. Among the popular imagery which are showcased is Sir Stamford Raffles sporting the Rafflesia flower as well as a camel which functions as comical imagery – the bizarre subverting the normal.

Zainorin’s works however are not merely aesthetic images – and despite his poetic approach – he also boldly questions a string of global issues such as social and political conflicts, power struggles within our capitalist society as well as notions of consumerism and the influential power of mass-media.

Zainorin’s work records, reminds, explores and at times highlights universal issues linked to identity, spirituality and modernity and expresses with sincerity and playfulness a vision devoid of monotony or cynicism.

His artworks have evolved from the consecutive layering of various mediums into complex collages, with the superimposed colourful tones and texture of acrylic paint.

This refined technique, where opacity and translucency complement each other, creates a quiet equilibrium in the composition of the image. Areas of bold colours, sometimes of contrasting tonality, sit perfectly with the layering of the more complex and detailed contents of glossy magazines, advertisements or newspaper articles.

Striking a balance between texture and opacity, detail and simplicity, colour and muted tones as well as spirituality and modernity, the artist explores the surface of his works with an almost instinctive approach, punctuating the surface with sentences, symbols, pauses and rhythm.

The guest curator for this exhibition is Badrolhisham Mohamad Tahir who is currently writing his PhD thesis on Aesthetic Communication at Edinburgh College of Art.

Amir Zainorin was born in Johor, Malaysia in 1963 and now lives and work in Copenhagen. After finishing his secondary school in Melaka, he attended business studies at Politeknik Ungku Omar, Ipoh. After two years working in a bank in Kuala Lumpur, he went to the United States to continue his studies. After five years living in the US, he returned to Malaysia and worked in advertising and PR companies for five years before embarking on his artistic career.

* This exhibition is supported by the Ministry of Culture, Arts & Heritage