Info
3rd International Sound Basis Visual Art Festival
1991, December 4th – 8th
WRO 91 has been the last of the December series of WRO festivals. It has been inaugurated by Bogdan Zdrojewski, the then mayor of Wroclaw who had officially taken the festival under his patronage. One of the most commonly discussed works has been the installation Perseweracja Mistyczna (Mystical Perseverance) by Zbigniew Libera exhibited in a museum space for the first time in Poland. Jozef Robakowski’s Exhibition Magia Zwierciadla (the Magic of Mirror) has been presented in Galeria MIejska.
Channel 2 of the Polish National Television had provided WRO with coverage on a daily basis, and a studio programme dedicated to electronic art had been aired live from the television studio. Said programme featured a competition for the best computer animation with the jury being the television audience. Over 5000 postcards had arrived from all over Poland in response to the competition (text messages and e-mail haven’t been introduced yet, and a TV call for voting has still been a novelty back then). The first prize winner had received an Apple Classic computer.
It has been for the first time that the uniqueness of video art – which finds itself between an independent gallery and widely available TV – had become a subject of an international symposium. A series of American works put together by the Video Data Bank of the Art Institute of Chicago has been shown alongside with a full retrospective of animated films by Jan Svankmajer has also been presented.
WRO received the Laterna Magica, an award handed out by the chairman of the cinematography committee at the ministry of art and culture.
COMPETITION & AWARDS
COMPETITION
40 works selected from 585 submissions were presented
JURY
Nell Lundy (USA)
Enrique Fontanilles (ES/SE)
Erwan Huon Depenanster (FR)
Ralf Sausmikat (DE)
Tadeusz Sobolewski (PL)
Stefan Szczypka (PL)
1st PRIZE
Bright box, Volker Schreiner (DE, 1990)
SPECIAL MENTIONS
Philippe Andrevon (FR), Coignoux (FR), Sanja Ivekovic & Dalibor Martinis (HR), Beate Priolo (USA), Jan Verbeek (NL), Eku Wand (DE), Wojtek Wójcik (PL), Grzegorz Zygier (PL)