Forum: Bill Viola & Closed Circuit Video. Unseen Images & Untold Histories

“I never thought about [video] in terms of images so much as electronic process, a signal“ – so bringt der bekannteste lebende Videokünstler Bill Viola das spannungsgeladene Verhältnis von Bild und Prozess auf den Punkt. Der Vortrag handelt von wenig bekannten Closed Circuit Videoinstallationen der siebziger Jahre, in denen Viola sein künstlerisches Programm in seinen Grundzügen bereits ausformulieren konnte – Video gründet auf der Prozessualität: Es lässt sowohl die Differenz zwischen Bild und Nicht-Bild als auch diejenige zwischen dem Analogen und Digitalen als spekulativ und normativ erscheinen. Damit positioniert sich das erste audiovisuelle Medium auch heute als Epizentrum einer Kunst, die nach der Diskussion über die (Neue-)Medienkunst wohl am besten als Prozess-Kunst zu nennen wäre – eine Kunst, die mehr auf Perzeption als auf Messung setzt, mehr auf Kognition als auf Berechnung und auch mehr auf Metabolismus als auf Datenverarbeitung.

Biography

Slavko Kacunko (Ph.D., Dr. habil.) is the author of Spiegel. Medium. Kunst (Fink, 2010). His Closed Circuit Videoinstallationen (Logos, 2004) is described as a “milestone in the history of media art” and “the pivotal source book for the decades to come”. His Marcel Odenbach. Konzept, Performance, Video, Installation (Chorus, 1999) is described as an “Art history pioneer achievement in the field of video art” and awarded with the DRUPA-prize 2000.
Kacunko is Professor for Art History and Visual Culture at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies (IKK), University of Copenhagen. His work has been published in German, English and Croatian and has been translated into Polish, Japanese, and Spanish. Kacunko has furthermore authored monographs Culture as Capital (2014), Wiederholung, Differenz und infinitesimale Ästhetik. Matthias Neuenhofer (2012), Las Meninas Transmedial (VDG 2001), Dieter Kiessling (2001), as well as co-edited anthologies Framings (2015), Take it or Leave It. Marcel Odenbach (2013) and Image Problem? Medienkunst und Performance im Kontext der Bilddiskussion (2007).
Key foci of his scientific profile are Process Arts (video, performance, installation, net art), Visual Studies and its Boundaries, an interdisciplinary Art History and World Heritage as well as the Historical Dimensions of the Aesthetical Discourse. For his interdisciplinary approaches in Art History and Media Studies he received international recognition.
Kacunko was born in Osijek in Croatia, former Yugoslavia where he studied art history, philosophy and pedagogy. He moved to Germany in 1993 and received a Ph.D. from the University of Düsseldorf (1999). His Ph.D. dissertation traces the origins of video, installation and performance art and was the first dissertation on one German video artist. He received the post-doctoral qualification (habilitation with venia legendi for Art History) from the University of Osnabrück with a thesis on the History and Theory of Media Art (2006).
Kacunko has co-founded the first art magazine in Croatia, "Kontura" in 1991 and has been working as a curator, art critics and correspondent as well as lecturer and professor for art history, visual studies, media aesthetics and new philology / media studies. He organized exhibitions, conferences, colloquia and screenings since 1993. Since 2000 he works in the field of artist-based research related to the media of photography, video, bio-media as well as the natural and cultural World Heritage together with Sabine Kacunko.
Kacunko is elected member of Academia Europaea (2014). He received grants from Andrea von Braun Stiftung, Fritz-Thyssen Stifting, Messe Düsseldorf, Universität Düsseldorf, Lufthansa and Goethe Institute. Between 2003 and 2009, Kacunko was a Junior Professor for Art History of the Modern Period at the University of Osnabrück. In addition, Kacunko was a Visiting Professor at Institute for Art History, University of Düsseldorf and is an associate faculty member at the Center for Image Science at the Danube University Krems.