13th LICHTER Art Award
International Platform for Video Art
The LICHTER Art Award reaches video artists and filmmakers from all over the world. Since 2011, the LICHTER Art Award has been a platform for contemporary video art.
Over 130 works were submitted for the 13 edition of the prize which is endowed with 1,000 euros.
The five nominated artists' works will be exhibited in a curated exhibition on the premises of the LICHTER Filmfest center Massif Central (Eschersheimer Landstraße 28, 60322 Frankfurt am Main).
Exhibition opening on April 17, 2023 at 7 pm.
Exhibition duration: April 18-23
Opening hours: Tues. 5 - 11 p.m. / Wed. - Fr. 10 a.m. - 8 p.m. / Sat. - Sun. 12 - 8 p.m.
The nominees and their works:
Muhammet Beyazdağ – Her Şey Yolunda / Everything is Fine, 2022
Eva Claus – Any Way, 2022
John Hussain Flindt – Tales, 2022 / Installation
Eunhee Lee – Machines don't die, 2022 // WINNER
Lorena Zilleruelo – SOY NIÑO / I’M A BOY, 2022
This 13th LICHTER Art Award edition is a very cinematic and social one. The selected film and video works touch upon a variety of complex and simple life stories and situations. Muhammet Beyazdağ’s short documentary Her Şey Yolunda / Everything is Fine introduces us to a young girl who talks about the reality of living in her small village in Turkey. Eva Claus reflects in her experimental essayistic film Any Way on our life cycle using running athletes as a metaphor. John Hussain Flindt’s multimedia installation Tales explores some very personal, socio-political and historical aspects of migration and postcolonial realities. Eunhee Lee's video Machines don't die investigates the aftermath of the way we consume, our wastefulness, and of the recycling of digital hardware. Lorena Zilleruelo's film SOY NIÑO / I’M A BOY portrays her cousin, a trans* boy, during his long and arduous years of transition in Chile.
THE NOMINEES
Muhammet Beyazdağ
Her Şey Yolunda/Everything is Fine // 2022 - 20 Min.
The short documentary Her Şey Yolunda / Everything is Fine is a very open and honest portrait of a 12 year old girl who tells about the difficulties, dreams and wishes of her own and of her neighbors in the highlands of Turkey.
Muhammet Beyazdağ was born in Istanbul and earned both his bachelor and master’s degrees in film from Akdeniz University in Antalya, Turkey. His documentaries have been shown at national and international film festivals and have received many awards. Some of his past films, mostly documentaries, are “Zarok” (“Child”, 2013), “Çirok” (“Story”, 2014), “Minibus” (2016) and “Urban Faces” (2018).
Eva Claus // ANY WAY // 2022 - 17 Min.
Eva Claus’ experimental film Any Way is an essay on life and the act of being together and apart in the cycle of life. She transforms a few running athletes into performers while focusing on the details of running itself using different frame rates, brilliant photographic work, precise film editing and a specially developed soundtrack that can put the viewer in a trance-like state.
Eva Claus is an audio-visual artist and filmmaker. Claus was born in 1992 in Brussels and attended the Friedl Kubelka School for independent film in Vienna, Austria, and the Royal Academy of Arts in Ghent where she got her MFA. Her films have been screened at various international festivals such as Light Field San Francisco, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Moscow International Film Festival, Process Film Festival Riga, Harkat Festival Mumbai, Rencontre International Paris / Berlin and Istanbul International Film Festival. In 2021 she won the Public film prize at the 22nd Dresdner Schmalfilmtage, Dresden, Germany.
John Hussain Flindt // TALES // Installation // 2022 - 19:02 Min.
The multimedia installation Tales combines research into the early history of phantasmagoria shows in Germany as well as Victorian satirical illustrations relating to the period of British rule in India, with the artist's personal history, his mother’s brain cancer diagnosis and his relationship with his absent father. Children's books, telephone cables, smoky nightclubs, rebellions and rabbit holes; a series of seemingly disparate narrative elements all lead back to one image: a magazine from 1857 depicting a “British” lion rescuing a woman and child from a “Bengal” tiger. The illustration reflects past to present – the artist’s mixed heritage being a by-product of the colonial history the illustration represents. The interwoven narrative creates a framework of tension between binaries, of the living and the ghostly, of past and present, presence and absence. The work highlights the complexity of identity, examining our faith in images, and a desire for transcendence – to leave the everyday behind.
John Hussain Flindt was born in 1993 in Manchester, England. He studied from 2013 to 2016 at Chelsea College of Arts, London and from 2018 to 2022 at Städelschule Frankfurt am Main, Germany. His video installation Tales was recently exhibited at the 39th Kasseler Dokfest, where he was awarded the Golden Cube for the best media installation.
Eunhee Lee // MACHINES DON’T DIE // 2022 - 20:04 Min.
Machines don't die is a documentary video work that investigates and questions some of the impact and aftermath of digital production and consumption. What happens with the devices after they cease to function, are outdated, or just not fashionable anymore? The digital remains and waste need to be disposed of, which has become very problematic and complicated. Mixing digitally embellished imagery and nature footage, the work becomes more than a documentary piece, it creates its own formal language. In this work, Lee connects the whole process of dealing with minerals and recycling them with the history of natural resource extraction.
Eunhee Lee was born in 1990. Lee attended the Universität der Künste, Berlin, Germany, from 2012 to 2014 where she graduated from the Fine Arts class by Thomas Zipp and received her MA in Hito Steyerl’s class. She received her MFA in Videoart at Korea National University of Arts, Seoul, South Korea, in 2016. Her works have been exhibited and screened internationally. Machines don't die was commissioned by the Seoul Museum of Art in 2022.
Lorena Zilleruelo // SOY NIÑO/I’M A BOY // 2022 - 62 Min.
SOY NIÑO/I’M A BOY is the real story and a personal portrait of Bastian, a young trans* boy, who has to face his teenage years. From age 12 to 18 Bastian was filmed by his cousin, the artist and filmmaker Zilleruelo, who is able to see every little glimpse of intimacy and the difficulties he goes through while transitioning. SOY NIÑO is a work that witnesses how social and economical obstacles can put a young trans* person at risk but at the same time introduces us to a newly open-minded Chile, that is more tolerant and accepting because of Chile's new generation which stands up for transgender rights.
Lorena Zilleruelo was born in Chile in 1974, one year after the coup. At the age of 18, she moved to Paris. She received her National Diploma in Fine Arts, from the École Supérieure d'Art de Grenoble and the National diploma at the National Studio des Arts Contemporains Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing in 2009, National University Diploma in Expression Plastique, École Supérieure d'Art Paris-Cergy in 2006 and her Diploma Author Documentary Director. She attended the Fémis, Paris in 2016. Her film and video installations have been exhibited and screened internationally. SOY NIÑO was screened in numerous international Film festivals and received several prizes.
JURY 13th LICHTER ART AWARD
Liberty Adrien
Liberty Adrien is a curator, art historian and critic. Since 2022, she is the curator of Portikus in Frankfurt am Main, together with Carina Bukuts. Liberty Adrien is the founder of the independent art space Âme Nue in Hamburg, dedicated to contemporary art and culture, and the Âme Nue Ateliers in Paris. The French Ministry of Culture awarded her a research grant in 2016 for her study on "the history of works by women artists acquired for the French national collections, from 1791 to the present day". Since then, she has collaborated with the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP) and the Institut français Paris to present exhibitions of video works from the French collections in several European cities. In 2021, was the artistic director of the art space Les Vitrines at the Institut français Berlin. Together with Carina Bukuts, she curated the large-scale project Balade Berlin: an exhibition route in public places, for which they worked with artists, such as Christine Sun Kim, Ulrike Ottinger, Jimmy Robert, and Slavs and Tatars.
Britta Färber
Britta Färber is an art historian and, since 2022, the head of the Deutsche Bank's global art program. After her master's degree in art history, literature, film and media studies in London, Kiel and Frankfurt, she gained professional experience at various cultural and media institutions, as an editor at a Frankfurt city magazine and as a freelance art critic and mediator.
In her previous role as Senior Curator and now as the Head of the Art Program, she has worked with the Deutsche Bank Collection and managed the "Artist of the Year” award. She has curated exhibitions with artists such as Koki Tanaka, Basim Magdy, Zhang Xu Zhan and most recently LuYang. As part of the cooperation with the Frieze Art Fair in London, New York, Seoul and Los Angeles, she created the Deutsche Bank Frieze Los Angeles Film Award.
Saul Judd
Saul Judd is an independent curator based in Frankfurt, Germany. Since 2010 he has been responsible for the video art section of the LICHTER Filmfest Frankfurt International. He conceived exhibitions with artists such as Keren Cytter and Mike Bouchet in the context of the festival until he created the LICHTER Art Award in 2011. He started to curate the LICHTER Short Films International program in 2015. Among his projects BLANK SLATE a publication about art, architecture and design he started in 2016 with SCHAUT! - a series of exhibitions of contemporary art film and video art at the MAL SEH’N movie theatre in Frankfurt. In 2017 he presented the artist John Skoog as a guest curator for Double Feature at Schirn Kunsthalle.
Supported by:
Big thanks to our friends at Städelschule for the support in realising the installation of John Hussain Flindt.