Allmend of Research Films explores the possibility of artists sharing with and challenging one another in the field of video art. It started out with a pool of videos: a body of material that is constantly growing with every new video that is made. All the videos that are shown have a relationship based on the footage that they use. They are connected by the material itself, not by a thematic focus or an artistic style.
Allmend of Research Films explores the possibility of artists sharing with and challenging one another in the field of video art. It started out with a pool of videos: a body of material that is constantly growing with every new video that is made. All the videos that are shown have a relationship based on the footage that they use. They are connected by the material itself, not by a thematic focus or an artistic style.
One of the things the Allmend project is interested in is exploring how footage changes its appearance and meaning when the images before and after it change. Or, to use a musical analogy, how a single note is transformed by being embedded in different melodies. This question came up in the context of a discussion about different people’s views of similar material: the original pool consists of videos of a mirrored sphere in a wind tunnel, a standard experiment that has been filmed with cameras from different periods (from the 1920s to today). The scientific way of looking at the footage was unable to distinguish any significant variances in the material. The Allmend project attempts this in a different way by viewing it from the perspective of the arts.
Another focus of the Allmend project is on comparing the online display of video art with its exhibition in a venue. There is a website as an online gallery space, http://www.filmallmennde.net. Once the Covid-19 pandemic comes to an end, all the videos will be installed in a traditional exhibition space to allow for another kind of experience.