Geert Lovink...Ostranenie...MM 8#1...Review
- G E E R T L O V I N K
Ostranenie
- Catalogue of the 1. international video festival at the Bauhaus,
Dessau. Gropiusallee 38, 06846 Dessau BRD, ISBN 3 910115 53 5. German and
English-text, 497 pp.
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- Viktor Sklovski writes in
his essay Art as Process (1916): The aim of art is to convey a sense
of the object, to make us see it, not to re-cognize it. The process of art is
the process of `estrangement' (ostranenie). In art the process of perception is
an end in itself and must be lengthened. The organizers of the first East
European video festival Shattered Myths -- New Realities, held in the
original Bauhaus in Dessau and now on tour, chose a title that goes straight to
the heart of the matter. Video productions from central and eastern Europe, the
Balkans and Russia don't need to be `recognized' (i.e. to be held up to Western
work for comparison), but watched and discussed. While it would be premature to
look for a common aesthetic or political denominator, it is a fact that many
East European videos provoke estrangement, if nothing else because they lack
the cool, technological transparence of Western videos.
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The Ostranenie catalog offers the first survey of what has been created
since 1989 in various regions. Besides descriptions of the 52 selected tapes, a
special program and installations, it includes ten articles with discussions
not only of progress, but of problems in Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, Russia,
Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, among others.
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Writing from long experience, Keiko Sei speaks of the dangerous situation
of TV in eastern Europe. Independent video has always been struggling with TV,
being its critic, and acting as an alternative point of view. This position
must be maintained in order to remain critical in the face of the current,
ominous situation. In view of censorship and manipulation of state
television, firing (like the termination of the Hungarian TV program
Videovilag), forboding national folklore, western trash and
neo-communistic aesthetics, the creation of independent media structures has
the highest priority. While media war might not be preparation for military
conflict, it's a worthy substitute. It leads to fixation on the level of
politics in an impasse, and ultimately frustrates: media war sucks. Keiko Sei
refers to former Yugoslavia, a video paradise not only for eastern Europeans in
the 80's, now in ruins. The video community must realize that since we all
legitimized Ethnic Cleansing by not reacting against it, thus neglecting
the sin, the war will spread and come back to haunt us in the future.
-
translation JIM BOEKBINDER
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