UTE HÖRNER

DIVINE BEINGS was one of the quiet works at VIDEONALE.8 whose images and story captivated me deeply. It starts in a park in Tokyo. We follow Dan Oki’s camera through streets and cities – see people, animals and trees, all of them divine beings. When war breaks out in his homeland there is no more time for trees and animals, »Humans have to solve problems among themselves«. Nowadays, at a time when the question of the moral status of animals is being asked with unprecedented vehemence, his 1998 video is completely up-to-date. The form that he came up with turns out to be beyond time.

Judith Ruzicka and I were the first female artists invited to direct the festival. Our way of artistic working made it important for us to incorporate new, experimental formats, such as non-linear or interactive narration, but also to integrate installations which reached over and above the picture into the space. Our successors went back to single channel video and for a time it looked as though things would stay that way. For me nowadays, Videonale is one of the finest and most differentiated festivals for video art in Europe.