VideoArtNights 2022/2023

Pieter Vanderbeck, Five o’clock in the morning, 1966, 16 mm Film auf digitales Video übertragen, 5:22 min, ohne Ton
Nevin Aladağ, Rally, 2010, HD Video, 6:22 min, Ton

The second combination of the VideoArtNights for this season concerns itself with extreme deceleration. Pieter Vanderbeck used a borrowed movie camera, which was also used by Yoko Ono and other befriended artists to caption his sujet in the most slowly way possible in order to create a special slow motion effect - as far applicable as the material within the 1960s was enabled to. Eventually Vanderbeck only drops a few stones and chestnuts onto a white paper filming it in black and white. The whole situation which is normally recorded in seconds only takes up to 5 minutes and 22 seconds.
Almost half a century later Nevin Aladağ treats the moving image similar but different. She does not decelerate the medium but the protagonists by inducing professional rally riders to drive through the Italian quarry of Carrara. But they drive as slow as possible for them and their cars. Both in Aladağs as well as Vanderbecks video the spectators experience the slow motion of the objects as aesthetic challenge. (When do the stones and chestnuts finally hit the paper? And when do the rally drivers eventually accelerate?) In addition both works combine a sculptural approach manifesting itself unexpectedly within the sujet and the medium itself: a quarry in Italy as the scene for a snail’s pace race and the toss of certain objects as sculptural slow motion action of the mm-film.
But there is still a site-specific volte-face: the windows of the Kunsthalle do not only uncover towards the railway station but also towards the bus terminal. Almost every minute busses rush by the Kunsthalle - appearing faster than permitted. A situation being extremely striking when happening at night while watching cars, stones and chestnuts in snail’s pace as video art in front of oneself while busses racing by.