PETRA UNNÜTZER

In UN CHIEN DÉLICIEUX, Lo Me Akha, a Burmese from the rural north of Thailand, relates how a group of French anthropologists visited his village in 1946 and took him to post-war Paris. There he met André Breton and persuaded him to prepare dog meat – a delicacy in Thailand, absolutely taboo in France – for his farewell dinner. The splendid, convincing story has as its theme the unguarded reception of documentary pictures and their value as the proof of truth.

That artists from Japan, USA or Finland really did come to Bonn to meet and exchange ideas, filled us with delight in Videonale’s early days and validated our concept. What we hoped for at that time as a vision of the future has – not least because of the breathtaking technical development – come to pass: Videos have become a normal form of artistic expression – on an equal footing with painting, sculpture or photography. Videonale’s most important task was, and still is, to give young, unknown artists the chance to present themselves alongside the established names.