Video workshop digs artistic possibility

Video workshop digs artistic possibility

By Helly Minarti

JAKARTA (JP): Alongside mainstream artistic expressions such
as painting and sculpting, video art has emerged as a new medium
serving the same purpose. It has been widely developed in Europe
over the last two decades; there are now some video art museums
and regularly held festivals on that continent, like the Biennale
Venezia in Italy or Documenta Kassel in Germany. But video art is
relatively new for Indonesian artists.

To explore this new artistic possibility the Goethe Institut
in cooperation with Yogyakarta-based PUSKAT audio visual center,
the Indonesia Art Institute (ISI) and the Institution of Javanese
Study recently invited two video artists from Germany and France
to collaborate in a two-week workshop with 12 artists and
practitioners from Yogyakarta.

The participants came from various backgrounds including
practitioners (editors, directors, computer graphic animators and
cameramen), artists (painters), and art institute lecturers as
well as students majoring in broadcasting.

The result is a 36-minute edited video, titled Tanda Api
(Signs of Fire), which is divided into 12 parts showing many
scenes associated with fire.

It was displayed in Galeri Ardiyanto in Yogyakarta for two
weeks and now can be seen in Teguh Galeri, Jl. Gaharu 1/3,
Cilandak, South Jakarta, up to Dec. 3.

The husband-wife video artists, Gerard Couty, 48, of France
and Rotraut Pape, 41, of Germany, led the workshop in a more idea
exchange-style rather than a teaching-learning experience.

In the morning, they presented some video art works from their
suitcase collection to the participants so as to give some view
of the video art world as well as to generate some creative
thinking. The rest of the day was spent in group discussion,
filming and editing.

"Firstly we came up with four themes to work with. These were
fire, bamboo, traveling and words and images," said Pape whose
video art works were shown several times in Jakarta in 1995 and
early 1997.

"We were all happy with the theme of fire right away because
it's very political in a way, and (it has a relation to actual)
ecological problems. It's also very visual -- you can have black
fire, blue fire, red fire, cold and hot fire," added Pape.
Philosophically, "fire also can mean the beginning and the end of
social life".

Then Couty and Pape provided stimulation to carry the idea of
fire further by quoting the famous statement of French author,
Georges Perec in his book, Je me souviens (I remember). Pape used
this simple statement as a trigger to dig out ideas from every
participant. Only two hours after the first session, they put
everyone on camera to express their personal memory of fire in
their own words. The diversity of thoughts simply flew, creating
raw material for their video workshop.

"I was astonished to see how easily the participants reacted
on camera. You really have an oral culture," said Pape. This
collection of ideas led into some experimental shots of fire with
matches and candles at the end of the first day of the workshop.

Over the next 11 days they explored all possibilities around
the theme -- both technically and from the idea base. They worked
with the input sentences, chose the best, made new ones and
started to build up a scenario based on that.

The next step was to film the desired images using the
sentences as the clue. The participants were grouped into three
to make the work faster. What came up was an experimental musical
loop (a technique of repetition), images using a different style
of direction such as performance style, documentary or narrative
direction.

The 12 parts of the video reflect the manifold creative
approaches of each participant though they used the same scenes.

"You can see the 'handwriting'," said Pape pointing at some
visual effects applied by different groups to the same scene.
These include super imposing, fast cutting or looping.

The technical aspects: the lighting, the sound and
composition, were discussed in the workshop.

"There's nothing new in terms of technique from this workshop,
but it is new in terms of searching for alternative forms in
expressing artistic works. It's a totally new phenomenon," said
one participant, Arif Eko Suprihono, 34, a director of
documentary film and lecturer at the Indonesia Art Institute in
Yogyakarta.

New Medium

But what actually is video art after all? According to Pape
and Couty, the essence of video art is exactly the same as other
artistic forms.

"Like any form of art, you can not strip the works out from
the content," explained Pape, a guest lecturer in the Hochschule
der Kunst (The Institute of Art) in Berlin.

"It's basically a continuation of art, only using a new
technical aspect, video, as a new medium for doing art," added
Couty, who once taught at the Institute of Art of Nancy.

"Video art is like a window to look into the world and
subjectivity of people's minds," said Pape. This role is totally
different to the more popular function of video as a visual
communication medium, as commonly used in making television
programs the goal of which is to be understandable for a mass
audience.

Besides, as a new creative field in exploring ideas, video art
also infuses many forms of technical effect that in turn affect
the commercial world of video. "For example the technique of
scratching film in MTV's music videos was taken from video art
works," said Couty. Creative people from advertising also flock
into video art museums and festivals to "steal" ideas for their
TV commercials.

The couple will show the video made during the workshop at
several video art festivals in Europe. "I'm sure it will be shown
worldwide," said Pape. While in Indonesia, progress takes its
course. "We have scheduled a special section to show video art
works in next year's Yogyakarta Art Festival in June-July. We
hope we can make our own video art festival later on," said
Suprihono.