Published by PNEK May 15, 2008
in Current projects, Excursions, Festivaler, Important, News, PNEK reports, Uncategorized, events, international relations, networking and presentations.
My PNEK trip to Beirut for the FIFVC experimental video festival became somehow different than what anyone had expected. It all started very nicely with a good crowd, a mix between teachers and students at the ALBA art academy in east Beirut, european curators and filmmakers, and local artists and audience. The Norwegian Embassy had sent out a press release about the topic of my lecture, and the english language paper The Daily Star even wrote an extensive preview of the whole event. I had the pleasure of presenting the first couple of programs, which was generally well received, especially the first part where I had the possibility to talk abput the works and the contexts they had originally been made and presented.
Then, after a heated roundtable discussion on the second day of the festival hell broke loose and nervous Beirut inhabitants had to rush home before the rocket-propelled grenades (RPG), machine gun firing and roadblocks of burning tyres would prevent them from getting through the city. My dutch friend and colleague Nat Muller, currently on a one-year residency in Cairo, has written this text about our war adventures in her blog at LabforCulture.org.
It is now confirmed that Per Platou will participate in one or more roundtable discussions at Les Rencontres Internationales in Paris, taking place at the Centre Pompidou, the musée national du Jeu de Paume, the Palais de Tokyo contemporary art centre and other locations at the end of November.
The debates in this years edition will focus on issues in art programming between new cinema and contemporary art - film, video, installation and net art.
Participants will be curators, artistic directors and programmers from European and extra-European national museums, contemporary art centers and biennales, in the fields of contemporary cinema, video and new media. The presence of these participants in Paris, each of them having an expert view on cultural and contemporary art issues, is of genuine interest.
The debates that will be proposed have a real stake : presenting a panorama of preoccupations and tracks explored in each country to give an account of this contemporary practices, and to accompany them, from the criticism side as well as from the side of audiences and artists themselves. The issues approached in each round table are subject to a preparation according to the specific participants of each round table, to their centers of interests and their artistic and professional preoccupations.
In connection with the opening of the Generator X exhibition in Porsgrunn Kunstforening, PNEK director Per Platou will give an introduction to the field of Electronic Art in Norway on a conference October 23rd at Klosterøya, Grenland. The conference will be held in Norwegian.
