Urgent Conversations: Athens – Antwerp

    ENELNL

    The exhibitions Urgent Conversations: Athens–Antwerp and Urgent Conversations: Antwerp – Athens are a collaboration between EMST and M HKA, a theoretical and visual dialogue, based on works from the collections of both museums, which includes more than 70 works structured in 22 topics.   

    28.04.2017 - 07.01.2018        

    M HKA, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen - Leuvenstraat 32, 2000 Antwerpen

    EMST, National Museum of Contemporary Art - Kallirrois Avenue & Amvr. Frantzi Str., Athens 11743

    Guy Mees

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    (c)image: M HKA
    6 x 4 min. (Portretten) [6 x 4 min. (Portraits)], 1974
    Guy Mees
    Film , 00:24:00
    digital betacam, dvd, b/w, sound

    The video breakthrough. Video is the perfect symbol of what for some time have been called the ‘new media’, signalling the start of an opening up of the hierarchical structure of the ‘old media’ which was to lead to the present ‘e-culture’. The first system, called ‘Phonovision’, goes back to the 1920s. The first TV pictures were stored on ordinary gramophone records. In Belgium, the ICC was one of the first places where video art was shown. The ICC was an international avant-garde arts centre set up by the then new Flemish Community in 1970. This is the institution from which the M HKA emerged. In addition, in 1974 Flor Bex set up the first Belgian video studio for artists, called ‘Continental Video’. A cinema was opened in an old bus, and this ‘mobile museum for modern media’ was able to take the new art out to the people.

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