Art, New Media in Santiago de Chile

December 16th sets the deadline for applications to the 10th Juan Downey Latin American Contest of Audiovisual Creation and Authorship. Its results will be put on the map during the upcoming edition of the Video and Media Arts Biennial (BVAM), to be held on January 7-22, 2012.

This event entails the organization, in Santiago de Chile, of several exhibitions, one international colloquium, audiovisual concerts and one fair of creative industries –Deus ex Media, curatorial core of the Biennial, will be the theme of all these activities–, and demands the action of acclaimed cultural centers and institutions, such as the Contemporary Art Museum (MAC), Palacio de la Moneda Cultural Center (CCPLM), Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center (GAM) and Spain Cultural Center (CCE).

The “title” choosing is based on the importance of making emphasis on works that go beyond technological means in order to privilege the relation with the current context, as for BVAM’s curatorial team, the means have recently been given priority, far from the creation of works featuring a profound, poetic and symbolic lecture. Along with the central exhibition, commissioned by Brazilian Paula Perissinotto (Director of FILE festival, Brazil), this edition offers a Wolf Vostell showcase, one of the most important representatives of Fluxus movement and video arte, organized by curator and theoretician Ronald Kay (MAC Parque Forestal), among other projects.

Latin American creators of video-art, digital animation and author micro documentary can participate in the contest, which is a tribute to one of the pioneers of video art in the world. The call has become one of the emblematic activities since the beginning of the Biennial, and this edition will be awarding residences for artists in Chile and overseas. Competing artworks must have been created after October 2009 and must conceptually respond to the theme chosen by the event organizers as benchmark. Handpicked works will automatically join the media library owned by the Chilean Video Corporation, which has organized the Biennial since the beginning back in 1993.

Another significant event related to the 10th Contest will be the BVAM Retrospective (Film Repository of Palacio La Moneda Cultural Center): a selection of the Chilean Video Art collection showcased at the Biennial 1993 – 2009 that makes up the archive of the Chilean Video Corporation.

For further information on the Biennial and the contest http://bvam.cl/

Source: Press release