Crosstalk Video Art Festival Budapest

FixC (FI)
FROM COUNTDOWN INTO ORBIT

FixC, a cooperative for artists working in moving image, was founded in spring 2007. The purpose of the cooperative is to promote, distribute and market Finnish video art and experimental cinema. To this end, we organize distribution and screening events, installation exhibitions and live performances in Finland and abroad.
This catalogue introduces the activities of FixC and the member artists. The FixC artists are all professionals who have won their spurs in the field of moving image. The members are: visual artists Maria Duncker, Juha van Ingen, Seppo Renvall, Mika J. Ripatti, visual artist and researcher Kari Yli-Annala and producer Jenni Siitonen. We also have in distribution works by visual artists Elena Näsänen and Pekka Sassi. Many of our works in distribution have been featured in prominent international exhibition arenas, from New York’s Anthology Film Archives to the Sao Paulo Biennale.
www.fixc.fi

name	title	year	length	about
Mika J. Ripatti	1. Record of Labor 2. Stationary 3. Wrong	2007 2008 2008	8:21 min. 3:12 min 7:42 min.	Mika J. Ripatti has worked both as a director, producer and scriptwriter and as a cinematographer, sound editor and film editor. Ripatti reflects in his moving image works on human existence, from love to birth and childhood. He combines solid cinematic expression with the processing of recollections and experiences and a meta-level of narration. He can link experimental imagery to documentary material, emphasize the role of the narrator with voice-overs or look at the work upon its end through an outsider’s eye. Ripatti’s works are as fascinating in their multifaceted expression as they are technically skilled.
Seppo Renvall	Return to the Humanity	2007	4:00 min.	In Seppo Renvall’s works one can sense the spirit of the cinematic liberation movement that inspired filmmakers to establish cooperatives and created a poetics of moving image that defies rules, comes close to life and is rough around the edges. Renvall is one of the founding members of the legendary Helsinki Film Workshop which was started in the late 1980s. His films, videos and happenings have gained recognition in some of the most esteemed international arenas of experimental cinema and visual art. All of Renvall’s moving image works are distinctive in character, and in their sequence of images it is impossible to predict what comes next. The gruff and twisted beauty of life is reached in Renvall’s bohemian rhapsodies through note-keeping of anecdotes from everyday life, rearrangement of material and cinematic manipulations.
Juha van Ingen	1. Ecuador 2. Nature morte - Still life	2007 2007	4:00 min. 4:30 min.	Studied his works, through the properties of the applied equipment, surprising and sudden spatial changes and temporal processes that occur in observation. In van Ingen’s video works and installations automatic observations that have become invisible and normalized in everyday experience are viewed from new perspectives. The aspect of rendering structures visible is inseparably linked to the process of realizing the work. The viewer ends up taking part in this formation where the conceptual mixes with the sensory. In his latest works van Ingen often addresses the theme of living and dead nature. Nature Morte – Still Life (2007), in which the preserved animals of a natural history museum are brought to life with moving image effects, can be described as a contemplation on the double role of moving image itself between “mummifying” and “regeneration”.
Kari Yli- Annala	Oma elämä (Pitkä huominen) (A Life of one’s own)	2008	9:00 min.	Is a visual artist, researcher, and lecturer and teacher in the theory and history of moving image. He has been engaged with making video works since the early 1990s. Yli-Annala’s video art extends in scale from performative to structural works, although the latter often also contain narrative elements. Lately he has been interested especially in the form of video essay. Yli-Annala has also created video performances and written articles about video art, moving image installation art and experimental film.