The notion of looking for and securing traces guided our choice of installations this year. Certainly, the forensic aspect of artistic analysis is not new. But the sculptures, objects and installations produced In the fields of electronic and computer-assisted art increasingly display differentiated approaches and new forms of presenting artistic standpoints. In Up-current Christoph Giradet created an installation whose multidimensional spatial model forces us to review our experience of physically and visually perceptible procedures. Kjell Bjorgeengen's Shift consigns both the video image and the viewer's thoughts to a visionary space behind the monitor. Nicolas Anatol Baginsky's imposing sculpture Elizabeth Gardner places a firm focus on structural networking. Its form and content reveal unusual ways of seeing which fall between the poles of order and chaos, evolve from the precise to the spontaneous. Poised on the threshold to a new millennium, Haruo Ishii's latest work Hyperscratch Ver. 6 - The Gate Of 2000 Ad traces of social history together with the resultant visions to form an interactive projection installation in which users see themselves as the focal point of cause and effect. In the interactive installation Table of Memories, which employs thermographic scanning techniques to document on video the body heat emitted by the human hand, Kirsten Geisler addresses the theme of absence as a special aspect of human speculation.

Axel Bohse

The first video works date back to the early 70s. Artists were primarily interested In the properties of the medium and its possibilities as a means of artistic expression. Video was seen as a separate medium, and Its followers kept a consciously critical distance from TV until the late 80s. Jozef Robakowski, the leading figure In Polish media art, described their reasons in 1976: “Video art is wholly incompatible with the commercial character of that institution (television). It is an artistic movement whose Independence denounces the mechanics of manipulating others." Accordingly, many Polish video artists were preoccupied with the relationship between reality, the audio-visual representation of the same, and the viewer. They attempted to work out the different ways of perceiving and to investigate the associated manipulative possibilities. Despite this analytic approach, in the course of the 80s more and more artists began to emphasize the significance of emotions and their irrational sources. This influence was a major factor in the development of the video performance form, which sought to accentuate as a new field the intuitive and spontaneous character of artistic confrontation.

Ultimately, the coordinates of a new Polish art became increasingly clear. Most artists grouped around the protagonists of the Polish "new wave" video were art school graduates and contributed their depth of knowledge and commitment to creativity. The intention of using video as a medium of spontaneous, personal expression was more important than the puristic investigation of materiality and the associated theoretical deliberations. Super-8 footage was transferred to magnetic tape and edited with musical rhythms and self-composed music to create new art-works. The crossover of means and influences in this movement has had a lasting effect on Polish art.

The young artists of today draw liberally on a sensitization combining the influences of personal history with elements of universal, symbolic collective memory. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the number of Polish artists working In the new media has grown rapidly in the past 10 years. Their ranks still include some of the media art pioneers, as well as video artists now counting as the second generation and wholly inexperienced newcomers from other fields. The diverse range of video genres today spans everything from music video to folk poetry, from animation to analytic investigation. In line with the fast pace of technological advance in our times, increasing numbers of Polish artists are experimenting with communications projects and interactive concepts. The Video-Spaces exhibition held In 1994 at the State Art Gallery Sopot was the result of a concept by Jözef Robakowski which invited artists from different fields to answer the question: What does video mean? The 9th VideoFest in Berlin will now present a selection of the sculptures and installations displayed there.

Dr. Ryszard W. Kluszczynski Curator of New Media Museum of Contemporary Art, Warsaw