History

During the 1st and 2nd Biennial of Video Art (1993 and 1995 respectively) we find a space that gives room for different genres videographic that during the Franco-Chilean festivals were an exhibition space. That is, documentary, music video clip, including institutional video has an important place. This trend will change rapidly in the following versions which will be gradually shaping into a kind of work that seeks to be inserted into the field of contemporary art.
In the 3rd Biennial of Video and Electronic Arts (1997) first noticed a growing presence of the documentary, animation, video dance and performance. The political issue is not absent, so it is given a space to Amnesty International – Chilean Section I to convene the International Video Festival on Human Rights, whose jury is composed Mondaca Herman, Tatiana Gaviola, Silvio Caiozzi, Hernán Sunday Denmark and Vicente Ruiz. It also accommodates the Ethnographic National Video Competition, which takes place in the context of a video display in the Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art, which displays videos made in Oaxaca Indigenous Video Center of Mexico, one of the first workshops in America who worked video teaching indigenous communities. In addition we review the work of Woody Vasulkas.
From the fourth version of the Biennale (1999), called “Video and New Media”, we can see that there is a departure from the trend that encouraged political documentary or previous years to begin to wonder and problems related to the support and conditioning technology of the work and the artist.
Inspired by the text of Vilem Flusser (“Towards a philosophy of photography”), in the presentation catalog raises the following questions: “In the propositions of an image by computer, how to know that we are facing an original contribution or at the mere demonstration of the virtues of a program? What are the possible relationships for the artist with the computer today? “1
The 5th Biennial of Video and New Media (2001) opens its pages with a decalogue which puts the hybridizations of artistic language and speed to the emergence of new technologies, encompassing the communications environment, daily life and art. Immediately we find a philosophical text by Pablo Oyarzun, as reflected in the concern for making comprehensive vision of video art in the contemporary art context as if it were a requirement of legitimacy to continue justifying a biennial of video.
In the context country, was created in 2001 a new category for the contest Fondart (National Fund for Cultural and Arts): “Art on the Internet”. This gesture blurred symptomatizes a need to access a technologization, not the existence of an artistic practice related to technology that counted at that time with a strong institutional basis.
During the 6th Biennial (2003), we continue to find the presence of a need to strengthen the role of technology and the need for a technology policy that should meet from the institutional to the field of art. Symptomatic installation is then “Psycho-Cyber-Art”, in charge, not an artist, but Ernesto Larraguibel, “electrical engineer,” as the catalog notes.
The “engineer” develops a work-device that requires public participation to run, trying to create a bridge between art viewer and user of technology. Also the work of Christian Oyarzun, “Submit”, is built from the problematization of the relationship between body / information processes and data encryption.
The 7th Biennial of Video and New Media of Santiago (2005) marks his seal opening to a new generation of artists that are built around groups. Among them are Shock, Trojans, Incas of Emergency and Radio Noise. In parallel with the work done at the Museum of Contemporary Art, installing on other settings: Fine Arts Gallery Metro de Santiago, the Museum of Science and Technology of the Quinta Normal, counting also works with single-channel display in cities like Valparaiso, Antofagasta, Valdivia, Talca and Concepción, with the objective of bringing the Biennale as a national event.
The 8th Biennial 2007 was certainly a milestone over past versions. For the first time we Audiovisual Fund support under the National Council for Culture and the Arts. Such support allowed us to develop a more comprehensive regarding one of the objectives from the outset in relation to place reflection, criticism and artistic experimentation in a more interdisciplinary, that achieves visual culture connect with both specialist and general.
It also emphasizes the participation of instances that actively contributed to the realization of the Biennale, and allow us to project the work of the Chilean Video Corporation in a logic network to consolidate the long term. Thus were established close links with international institutions such as ZKM, Transmediale, Festival Sydney Lux, Le Fresnoy (France), Video Brazil and a sample of Quebec, and national organizations like the Institute of Aesthetics and the Faculty of Communications Catholic University, AFA Gallery, the Cultural Center of Spain, Goethe Institute, the CEDOC (Documentation Centre of the Arts) of the Centro Cultural Palacio La Moneda, among others.
The 9th Biennial in 2099 finding mission had exponential effects of the use of technology in society through work and research that mulled around these themes. In the case of the invited institutions, Itaú Cultural Visionaries brought the sample, with more than 70 works dating from 1958 to the present day, video is exposing most significant Latin American Art Biennial, with the participation of Mexico, Cuba, the Caribbean, Central America, via Brazil and the Southern Cone. The prestigious French study contemporary art, Le Fresnoy, landing with a compilation of film, animation and experimental video with authors like Bertrand Dezoteux, Liu Zhenchen, Samer Najari, Clorinde Durand, Laurent Mareschal, Eric Pellet and Chilean Enrique Ramirez, who made a residence in the space. For its part, the Belgian Media Art Laboratory (IMAL) brings interactive installations Jump!, Yacine Sebti, and Salt Lake, Tom Heene, Charo Calvo and Sebti, works great playfulness and perceptual important meetings have come and festivals International multimedia.
This edition has the title this year Deus Ex Media, and is based on the need to put emphasis on works that transcend the technological means to favor the relationship with the current context, the concept, aesthetics and meaning of the work, beyond the effect technology. This trend is due to the current medial post, in which there is an overexposure of technological infrastructure based on the production of visual and sound effects. For BVAM curatorial team, lately there has been an abuse of technological support without creating works of reading deep, poetic and symbolic experience of the sensory and affective.
The 10th Biennial celebrated its 10th version between 10 and 22 January 2012 with a varied program of activities at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC), the National Museum of Fine Arts (NMFA), the National Film Cultural Center Palace Currency (CCPLM), the Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral (GAM), the Cultural Center of Spain (CCE), and Factory Italy, all in Santiago de Chile. His proposal argued that media art is “art with machines, but not machines but improbable languages”, drawing the line between the use of technology in art, the market and the culture of spectacle. Deus Ex Media is a provocation to dialogue based on the current problem of the relationship between culture, society and technology. This curatorial concept is deployed in the center of the biennial show, which will be presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) under the Brazilian station Paula Perissinotto, director of the prestigious Brazilian FILE festival.