Marcel René Marburger studied Art History, German Literature and Philosophy at the University of Cologne with a PhD on theoretical art relevance in Vilém Flusser’s writings.
Since 1973, video contributions have taken an essential part in the International Forum of New Cinema at the International Film Festival. 1988, the MedienOperative showed its own programme under the name VideoFilmFest – usually it has only been the second venue for screening of the selection.
In only its second year, VideoFest has become the largest european video festival. Video is a young artform; from the beginning, it has been a reaction to the “brave new world” of the highly technical mass societies with all their computers, nuclear power stations, destroyed landscapes and lonely individuals. Thus, video is not film; it remains bulky, playful and vulnerable. And it is left outside from „high“ culture.
Within a short time the VideoFest has become one of the most important international video festivals. The programme consisted of works covering the field of videoart and documentation; the intention was to point out video-specific realisations of documentaries.
1991 – the character of the programme has become more angular than before; there are more works that irritate in form and content, more documentaries that ry to find an innovative formal language for exciting topics, surprisingly more works that use artistic means to reflect upon social or political topics in an unusual way.
Also with the VideoFest ‘92, the MedienOperative claimed to reflect the development of international video culture and to represent a rich variety of genres – productions, sculptures, or selections from fields like interactive media and computer animation that break down boundaries.
VideoFest `93 had more to offer than ever before. On the one hand we offered a core programme of the usual high quality. On the other hand we can now boast greater space for all activities – the programme, installations, market, conferences, special showings, and so forth. Better informed and better entertained. Sometimes irritated, but never bored –plenty of mental turbulence.
