Open Video XVIII
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Open Video curated by Janne Talstad
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Open Video derives from the idea of Open Source, which means the open video is a video that can be freely used, changed, and shared. Thus the program in Open Video can be changed by both the curator and the artists involved over time. The program stays the same, with alterations based on natural needs. The program becomes a vessel for content, and in the arbitrary of the diverse content curatorial challenges will become obvious, which again creates the need for curatorial narration in the program. Janne Talstad has summarized the tendencies in the field through the development of the medium, and the curatorial instructions to the different artists became clear; do your best or do what you need. Some has done both. One can say that this video program is the same as any, which is true in a sense, but it's different in the notion that it lacks a center, an agenda and an intention. The aspiration is both aesthetic, political and dealing with the medium as such, so by mixing the program as a note sheet a video graphic composition becomes apparent. The program bites its own tail, the identity of the artist becomes secondary, and the program turns into a joint effort of showing the variety of how to deal with and produce video. The program transforms into a vessel, a toolbox, which changes through the different venues it's presented, in size, quality and geography. The source code is open; generating a diverse landscape of work, through the media of video. The artists share one thing; a total dedication to their own practice, though video might only be one of their tools, one way of expressing oneself.
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Video is easy to carry, because you only need a memory stick. We intend on being the messenger.
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Janne Talstad is a Norwegian artist who is mostly working with photography and video. She’s been doing extensive anthropological, photographic and videographic studies in Svalbard, Cambodia, Antarctica, The Falklands Islands, Yugoslavia and the reminiscence of World War II in central Europe.
She’s balanced the need of the aesthetic approach of being an artist with the ethical responsibilities of documenting what is at face value through the medium of analogue photography and digital video. She summarizes these mediums and experiences in complex installations where she generates labyrinthine installations of plywood where her videos and photography is reveal within a narrative. Her engagement within the world as a whole, realizing the weakness of individuals in confrontation with totalitarian regimes, inspired her to be the initiator of a program which took the stand for the weakest medium in the Norwegian art world at the moment: the language of the free expression of video.
Since 2015 she has been organizing the initiative Open Video, to encourage Norwegian and international artist to show their videos together as part as a whole. The program has been shown in venues in Oslo and abroad, with the intention of being open to all, revealing video as the most free medium of any.
