BARBARA POLLA
Wednesday, October 9, 5:30pm 331A+D
VIDEO FOREVER # 42 — APOCALYPSE NOW : EXHILARATING !
VIDEO FOREVER https://videoforever.wordpress.com is a part of a series of one-night video projections around a selected theme, initiated in December 2011 by Barbara Polla and Paul Ardenne, with the goal to increase awareness of video art and to discuss timely issues https://vimeo.com/248122415. “L’apocalypse, c’est enthousiasmant” (Apocalypse is exhilarating) is a quote by the well-known thinker and writer Bruno Latour, who states that we are missing both theoretical and affective material to think the anthropocene. Hence, innovation is mandatory. Video art constantly innovates, inventing new images, “intersemiotic” esthetical forms and as yet unknown synesthesia and provides new room for intellectual maneuver. The selected works screened in this VIDEO FOREVER will illustrate a current wager for beauty and love for “this world we haven’t lost yet” (Paul Ardenne).
Barbara Polla is a medical doctor, a researcher in biology (including a two-year fellowship at Harvard University) and a former MP in Switzerland. She created the first “Environment and Health” program at University of Geneva back in 1994. She has run an art gallery for the least 25+ years and is also an independent curator. As such she has curated several institutional exhibitions on “art and prison” (the 10th such exhibition will start in November 2019). She is a prolific writer, and has published many essays on gender issues, on art, as well as novels and poetry. She is an active blogger and regularly publishes articles about video on the online magazine art-critique.
