Tenth edition of International Video Art Festival Now&After will be held 21.10-11.11.2020 at Contemporary Art Center Winzavod.
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 20.05.2020 (23:59 MSK (GMT+03:00))
The theme of Now&After’20 is POSSIBILITY OF COLOR
“When we’re asked “What do the words ‘red’, blue’, ‘black’, ‘white’ mean?” we can, of course, immediately point to things which have these colours, — but our ability to explain the meanings of these words goes no further!”
Ludwig Wittgenstein “Remarks on Colour”
The world is colorful, the number of hues and shades it has is countless — every artist knows that. Blue sea, azure sky, green leaves, gray concrete… Apart from visual perception, we can also understand color in another way: happiness makes the world around you golden and orange, the world is painted in dull and passive gray when you’re bored, and the anticipation of spring infuses everything around you with green. However even a green and golden world would seem black at the time of misery and pain, and red — if blood was spilled.
We invite video artists from around the world to think about color not in terms of brightness, saturation, and hue, but as a metaphor for the state of the world around us.
“Any description, any notation of color is cultural and ideological, even when it is the matter of the most insignificant inventory or the most stereotypical notarized document. The very fact of mentioning or not mentioning the color of an object was quite a significant choice reflecting the economic, political, social, or symbolic stakes relevant to a specific context.” (Michel Pastoureau’s Black: The History of a Color)
Colors are full of contradictions, they reflect different states and emotions, and their meanings change throughout different time periods and across cultures.
One thing remains unchanged: Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain.
Red — color of passion and evil, of blood and fire, of celebration and sexuality, symbolizing birth and death, the color both frightening and giving hope.
Orange — lively and expressive, it is the color of humility and life force, leaving no place for melancholy.
Yellow — the blinding color of Sun and of the yellow tags of xenophobia, the color of gold and fall, of gentle warmth and of betrayal.
Green — color of growth and development, of immaturity and sadness, it is the color of life on Earth, the soothing color of hope and ecology.
Blue — color of sky and water, of tenderness and ease, it is cool and serene.
Indigo — calm and peaceful, cold and distant, color of melancholy and eternity.
Violet — spiritual and intuitive, the color of dignity and repentance.
The black-and-white world is always with us as well:
Black symbolizes night and the underworld, mourning and “a dead nothing after the sun has been extinguished”*, fertility and Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square.
White is the “perfect” color, all colors synthesized, it symbolizes purity, happiness and mourning, the shine of light and the coldness of ice.
We would like artists to send in works reflecting the world in its entirety, and we will perform a “spectral” analysis and select the videos that characterize colors as emotional, social, and cultural metaphors for real and virtual worlds, memory spaces and future possibilities. The videos that do so the most vividly, regardless of the color scheme.
What would prevail in this palette created by artists from all over the world?
Would it be the depth, concentration, and melancholy of the indigo?
“Eternal silence without future and hope?” of the black*?
Ruthlessness of blinding shining of the yellow?
Monotonous calm of the green?
Cruelty and passion of the red?
Indifference and hopeless stillness of the gray? Or
Radiant perfection of the white?
As always, we expect innovative ideas, original and bold solutions, clarity of thought, creative realization, and possibly hints as to what is the color that could be associated with your work.
* - Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art
Organized by: Media Art Centre Now&After
Co-organizers: Contemporary Art Center Winzavod, OOO “Vystavochnoye Prostranstvo”
Now&After director and curator - Marina Fomenko
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