“Multivision” festival continues to explore animation as fine art. For the fifth time the competition includes the nomination for the “Best Video Installation”, oriented specifically for animations rather similar to painting or sculpture than to cinema. This year the organizers have selected over 40 works. The finalists will be shown at Erarta.

The exhibition “The Myth of the Eternal Return” explores the specifics of looped video as a way of presenting video art in museum exposition. What is a loop? A tribute to necessity of having a larger audience or a full-fledged artistic technique? The authors of the works presented at the exhibition masterfully use this and other questions as a means of communication with the viewer.

The viewer of the installation “E in Motion No.2” by a Japanese artist Sumito Sakakibara is invited to immerse in the artist’s mind and travel through his life experience. Once experienced emotion becomes the perpetual motion machine of the individual’s inner world, scrolling over and over the childhood memories.

In the work “Above All” by Red Triangle art group (Dmitry Shorin, Vladimir Korolyuk, Yulia Lebedeva), the looped video with the footage from everyday life confronts the fixed, as Plato’s world of ideas, figure of a ballerina. Only reflections and echoes of the video images are sliding along her glossy skin, without affecting the substance.

“Rhizome” is a new work by the winner of the “Multivision’13”, a rising star of French video art Boris Labbé. Working in his original recognizable manner, he shows the life cycle of strange humanoid creatures, who by their existence create an amazing chaotic harmony that can be endlessly admired.

The exhibition “The Myth of the Eternal Return” presents video loop as an artistic approach and a valid means of artistic expression. The story, told as a loop, acquires dimension of myth and ritual, creating a new genre of visual poetry.

Exhibited works:

On Loop (Andrey Sikorsky / Russia / 2015)

The installation “On Loop” is made of old clocks, no longer showing the exact time, and a screen with video projection. Time is cyclical, and everything is repeated. Morning-day-evening-night-morning, spring-summer-autumn-winter-spring, life-death-life. We are moving on loop, turning into dust and getting reborn. The second hand is running on loop too, measuring our lives. So does it matter what time it is?

E in Motion No.2 (Sumito Sakakibara / Japan / 2013)

Sumito Sakakibara is an artist, producer of animated films, actor and a puppeteer. His “E in Motion No.2”, first discovered at the famous animation festival in Annecy, talks about life as a continuous cycle, and has already become a hit at various international festivals and exhibitions.

Above All (Dmitry Shorin, Vladimir Korolyuk, Yulia Lebedeva / 2014)

The sculpture of a ballet dancer embodies all the sublime, unearthly, and the artistic. The podium under the figure is a huge monitor with projections of daily life vanity scenes. But just as art is inevitably reflected in our lives, so the worldly shimmers with all the colors, revealing its reflections in the sublime!

Rhizome (Boris Labbé / France / 2015)

From the infinitely small to the infinitely big. Everything is interconnected in this world. Everything interacts, connects, breaks, and connects again in perpetual motion of metamorphosis. Boris Labbé is the winner of the “Multivision’13” Festival and The Annecy International Animation Film Festival.

Stop the Show (Max Hattler / UK-Germany / 2013)

The film, commissioned by Amnesty International, is a reference to international relations and arms trade. The campaign was created in support of a United Nations treaty to regulate the arms trade between countries and reduce worldwide killings through firearms.

All Rot (Max Hattler / UK-Germany / 2015)

Responding to the compositional and aesthetic qualities of abstract expressionism and cameraless animation, All Rot uses photographic reanimation to render the mundane environment of a decaying crazy golf course into a rapturous split-screen experiment in synaesthetic cinema.

Super 8 (Rim Sharafutdinov / Russia / 2015)

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. The well-known Russian director of animated films tried himself in the genre of video installation, and came up with a great result!

Lusus Naturae (Gunnar Karlsson, Ólöf Nordal, Thurídur Jónsdóttir / Iceland / 2014)

Poetic metaphor death-birth cycling. Life goes very slowly under the pressure of deep waters. The pioneer of video art from Iceland, Gunnar Karlsson, is an award holder of numerous film festivals around the world. He is also engaged in painting and illustrating.

Re÷belief (Raymond McCarthy Bergeron / USA / 2014)

3D Printed, hand crafted, zoetropic short-film that asks if recalling memories can break a cycle.

Ultimately, the story thread focuses on cycles, and choosing 3D printed zoetropes as the metaphor and medium within a short film seemed perfect to share a story about childhood, religion and relationships. After all, Zoe translates as 'life' and trope is a reoccurring motif. 3D Printing, handcrafting and manufacturing these zoetropes are physical representations that impart a physicality within this film.

It is hoped that while watching this experimental, filmed animation, the viewer would allow their own life experiences, moments and feelings to emerge and discover the resonances of the film's themes within their own memories or consciousness.

Mirror in Mind (Seunghee Kim / South Korea / 2014)

If you look inside a woman's head, you can see how she is fighting against her stereotypes and complexes, balancing on a tightrope and realizing that each of her “imperfection” in fact makes her exclusive and unique.

R.P.M. 2 (Ryan Fox / USA / 2014)

A kaleidoscopic video experiment utilizing the revolutions of a car tire.

If you suffer from motion sickness look away now!

A new video takes viewers on a head-spinning journey through a city by night from the perspective of a car tire. Ryan Fox attached a GoPro camera to a wheel of his vehicle with duct tape and captured a kaleidoscope of color as he went for a drive in the dark. The neon flashes from street lamps, shops, diners and car headlights blend into a psychedelic cocktail.

Sleepwalker (Theodore Ushev / Canada / 2015)

Based upon the poem by Federico Garcia Lorca. Video poetry, swinging in the rhythm of rainbow days and passionate nights. Ushev’s films have received over 80 awards and are recognized worldwide. The main prizes: Short Film Festival Clermont-Ferrand, France (2013), Gloria Victoria 2-13 — Best animated film according to leading critics and festival producers, Annie Awards (USA, 2014). In 2014, the Canadian Film Institute published the book “Dark Mirror: The Films of Theodore Ushev”.

Zodiac-Evolution (Murat Sayginer / Turkey / 2014)

A new video by the Czech video artist, photographer, film director and composer Murat Sayginer is an experiment on astrological theme. The author, a winner of numerous awards of Prix de la Photographie (France), works in the style of acid trip, his art sometimes reminds Alice’s falling into the rabbit hole. Watching his films is similar to eating chips with ice cream: unhealthy, but tasty. The real “guilty pleasure” for video art lovers.

Bicycle (Dana Sink / USA / 2015)

Where is my bike? I want to ride! Dali-esque landscapes comprised of spinning windmills, marble chutes and billowing flags rapidly overlap to reveal a concealed velocipede. Combination of current trends of optical illusion and cyclic video, an allusion to Rube Goldberg’s machine.

Urban Conformation 31:41 (Florian Rouzaud Cornabas / France / 2014)

The parts of the mosaic are the parts of the city. By rotating them, comparing and combining into a perspective, we obtain a tunnel, where the warring parties get reconciled.

Spherical Harmonics (Alan Warburton / UK / 2014)

Spherical Harmonics is an experimental CGI animation produced for display on The Wall at The Photographers' Gallery, an 8 screen digital video display. Investigating ideas of memory, photorealism, commercial imagery, fetish and technology, the film features an off-the-shelf female model in an entirely digital set, which acts as a showroom for a sequence of surreal and mysterious events.

Inside (Andrey Sikorsky / Russia / 2015)

Dive into the internal world, created by imagination, but seeming rather material. Characters-simulacra mask the absence of reality, in comparison with something obviously artificial. The familiar environment seems more “real”, and they, representatives of the imaginary, lead us to believe that all the rest is real.