Credit Suisse Förderpreis Videokunst 2015

Award Ceremony for Talented Young Video Artists

February 26, 2015

The Kunstmuseum Bern and Credit Suisse Honor Recent Video Art

The Credit Suisse Förderpreis Videokunst was advertised at schools of art and design in Switzerland for the first time in 2012. On that occasion, 32 applications were submitted, but for the current competition, the fourth, this has increased to 64. The jury voted unanimously for the video by 26-year-old André Mayr. His innovative, unorthodox experimental film "Vampyroteuthis" employs surreal, visual elements and classic animation techniques to contrast human and animal perception.

The Credit Suisse Förderpreis Videokunst arose out of the long-standing partnership between the Kunstmuseum Bern and Credit Suisse in 2011, and its aim is to support the careers of young video artists. With a prize of CHF 8,000 and a place in the Kunstmuseum Bern collection, this award is aimed at students enrolled at Swiss schools of art and design and the F+F School in Zurich that work with the medium of video. Interest is growing all the time, and the competition attracted a total of 64 student participants in this, its fourth year. The jury voted unanimously to award the 2015 Credit Suisse Förderpreis Video to a student at Bern University of the Arts: André Mayr received the award at 6 p.m. on February 26 at the Kunstmuseum Bern.

A Squid in Town
André Mayr's winning work "Vampyroteuthis" (2014, HD video, color, sound, 8:03 min.) is an unorthodox experimental film that draws on the philosophical essay of the same name by Vilém Flusser. The artist contrasts human perception with that of animals by showing, on the one hand, a young woman who moves through deserted urban niches and happens on surreal, sculptural forms in a riverscape. On the other, we see a mythical creature in the film – a vampyroteuthis or vampire squid – whose different perception is characterized by colored, geometric, and organic interspersions and which appears just as mysteriously at the beginning of the film as it disappears at the end. Underlying the work is the longing to escape from an anthropocentric world view and to find a disinterested way of looking at the world. It is a subject that André Mayr translates into an innovative and unorthodox video with surreal visual elements and classic animation techniques.

Improvement in Quantity and Quality
It is not only the number of entries that has increased this year, their quality has also improved. That made the jury's work no easier and meant that there were eight videos on the shortlist rather than the previous six. The entries spanned the entire range of video film art, from the self-portrait, to the documentary film essay, and the video performance. When choosing the videos, the jury is looking specifically for a distinctive individual style, precise use of the medium of film, a contemporary theme, and incisive storytelling or portrayal. The winning entry satisfied the jury in all these aspects.

Presentation of the Winner and the Shortlist
In order to make André Mayr's "Vampyroteuthis" accessible to a wider audience, it can be seen in the Kunstmuseum Bern's "Window on the Present" in the PROGR exhibition space/Stadtgalerie from March 5 to April 4, 2015. The winning entry and shortlisted works will also be shown in the Credit Suisse branch at Bundesplatz 2 from 6 p.m. to 2.00 a.m. on March 20, 2015 as part of the Museum Night in Bern event.

Jury 2015

• Dr. Kathleen Bühler (Chair)
  Film scholar, Curator of the Kunstmuseum Bern, Member of the Board of the Bernese Foundation for Photography, Film, and Video
• Mario Casanova
  Curator and Director of the Centro d’Arte Contemporanea Ticino
• Simon Lamunière
  Artist and independent curator, Geneva
• Ursula Palla
  Video artist, Zurich
• Dr. André Rogger
  Head of the Art Unit and the Credit Suisse Collection

CREDIT SUISSE FÖRDERPREIS VIDEOKUNST 2015

Showing at the Kunstmuseum Bern @ PROGR from March 6, 2015 at 6 p.m. through to April 4, 2015; also at the Credit Suisse branch at Bundesplatz 2 on March 20, 2015, as part of the Museum Night in Bern

Winner: André Mayr (born 1989)

Biography
André Mayr was born in Austria in 1989. While studying MultiMediaArt at Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, he focused mainly on the medium of video, alongside experimental design. In 2010, he formed the art collective "Dekonstrukt" (www.dekonstrukt.at) with Marlene Hirtreiter (born in Germany in 1983). As part of this collaboration, they produced multimedia works dealing mainly with synergies between the moving image and sound. Since 2013, André Mayr has been studying at Bern University of the Arts (M.A. in Contemporary Arts & Practice), working on the discipline of fictional film in the context of contemporary art.

Video Work

André Mayr: Vampyroteuthis,
2014, HD-Video, Farbe, 7’08”

Statement by the Artist:
The fictional experimental film "Vampyroteuthis" draws on the publication "Vampyroteuthis Infernalis" by Vilém Flusser and deals with his extraordinary attempt to dismantle anthropocentrism in favor of an objective examination of human society. Starting from Flusser's hypothesis – in which a deep-water squid represents the exact, antipodal, biological counterpart to a human being – the film also contrasts two individuals with each other in (their) respective habitats in metaphorical images. If we succeeded in isolating the human factor from our social disciplines such as culture, politics, and morality – we would come face-to-face with a mirror image of our self.

More information: www.foerderpreisvideokunst.ch