LOOP – THE PLACE FOR VIDEOART LOVERS 2010 at Barcelona
Barcelona, Catalonia. – LOOP was born in 2003 to celebrate video and its infinite creative possibilities. The two week-long festival and accompanying 3-day fair have grown since their inception without sacrificing its distinctly independent, local flavour. The LOOP 2010 Festival will take place from May 12-22 and the LOOP 2010 Fair from May 20-22. The Fair is an excellent opportunity to check out new experimental and independent video pieces as well as to hobnob with gallery owners, collectors, critics, museum directors and video-art enthusiasts. The Fair’s headquarters at the Hotel Catalonia Ramblas (C/. Pelai, 28) also serves as a fascinating exhibition venue: approximately 50 rooms have been turned into projection spaces, allowing visitors an unusual and intimate viewing experience.
The Festival portion of LOOP once again proves how deeply interwoven the event and the city’s cultural fabric have become. Almost the entire Old Town and a variety of spaces – from important museums like Arts Santa MónicaPicasso Museum to independent cultural centres like Miscelänea, the Fundación Suñol (Swiss video-art) or the Swallow Gallery (Peruvian video-art). Amongst the smaller participating venues, the Galeria Senda is showing an intriguing exhibition by Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation, an installation project involving video, sculpture and large format photos to narrate a journey through post-Soviet Central Asia. The 754 participating artists are representative of video’s egalitarian character, ranging from international professionals to local art students. This year’s roster includes work by Jef Cornelis, Miquel Barceló, Marina Abramovic, Chen Chieh-Jen, Bill Viola, Tacita Dean, John Baldessari, Alexander Kluge, Eva Davidova, Isabel Coixet and many others. The artworks are eclectic: VJ sessions, documentaries, installations, animation, film and every imaginable genre crossover. The festival also includes several panel discussions and lectures on conservation, collectors, distribution and new trends in video art.
LOOP Festival: May 12th – 22nd, 2010 at Barcelona (Program available at website)
LOOP Fair: May 20th – 22th, 2010 at Barcelona
LOOP Video Art Fair 2010
20-22 MAY
Hotel Catalonia Ramblas
C/ Pelai, 28 | 08001 Barcelona
LOOP FAIR counts with the participation of international galleries selected by an expert committee constituted by Anita Beckers (Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt), Christopher Grimes (Christopher Grimes Gallery, Santa Monica) and collector Jean-Conrad Lemaitre (France) and Manuel of Santaren (Boston).
LOOP FAIR is the most important annual event for all those involved and interested in buying, learning, disseminating and enjoying the latest video art productions. LOOP Fair focuses on new releases. Galleries from around the world gather in Barcelona to provide an overview of current video art trends as well as the future possibilities that video and new technologies offer to the artist.
LOOP FAIR takes place at the Hotel Catalonia Ramblas offering the galleries an exclusive and intimate space to present their proposals. Every year the best proposal is rewarded a prize by the selection committee.
About LOOP
LOOP – THE PLACE FOR VIDEOART LOVERS is the annual meeting point in Barcelona for video art lovers around the world.
The platform takes the form of Festival + Fair + Conferences.
The LOOP Festival present works of 800 artists to 200.000 visitors in 100 locations, from important museums to restaurants and shops across Barcelona. During two weeks LOOP acts like a showcase of curated exhibitions, important video art collections, renown universities and international festivals.
The 44 galleries invited by the Committee for the LOOP Fair present recent works of emerging and well-known artists to 4,000 professionals, journalists, curators and collectors from around the world. This selection is completed with presentations of specialized magazines and international distribution companies.
For the next three years, the LOOP Conferences will be organized around the title “The Fronteers of Videoart”. This program consists of lectures, round tables, presentations and screenings.
LOOP counts with the support of the Government of Catalunya, the Spanish Ministry of Culture as well as other institutional and corporate sponsors. LOOP is widely covered in the national and international media, as one of the major events in video art and audiovisual creation.
2003
LOOP – THE PLACE FOR VIDEO ART LOVERS was created by the Barcelona Art Association in 2003 as a platform for active dissemination, discussion and creation of audiovisual art. Together with its network of professionals, they wanted to contemplate the video art discipline as a way capable of removing the boundaries between art and society. LOOP emerged from the transformation of the New Art fair, which for seven editions of art had filled the rooms of a hotel. The LOOP Fair was held from November 27 to 30 at Hotel Barceló Sants in Barcelona.
2004
From November 18 to 21, 50 rooms on the first floor of the Hotel Barceló Sants were once again occupied by 50 international galleries, upon selection, presented their proposals of video art. There was also an area of 900m2 in which institutions and museums could present their collections of video art. Magazines and publications specialized in contemporary art also occupied a prominent place in the Fair LOOP. To encourage collectors, LOOP’04 created a program of video art patronage, formed by a group of institutions and enterprises engaged in the acquisition of works presented at the fair. At the same time, arts centers, galleries and other spaces in Barcelona presented videos through the festival Off LOOP. A series of conferences in the media library of CaixaForum and a course organized by the Friends of the Museums of Catalunya were also scheduled.
2005
The LOOP Festival returned from November 7 to 20 with more than 350 participating artists presenting their video art works along 8 main routes: Route El Raval, Route Eixample, Route Calle Montcada, Route Montjuïc, Route Gràcia, Route Born/Ciutat Vella, Route Playa and Route Nau Ivanow. One of the hits of LOOP’05 was Video London. With more than 150 participants, this large exhibition featured the panorama of contemporary video art by young artists who study, work or exhibit in London. The LOOP Fair was held from November 10 to 13. The 52 invited galleries from different countries presented their latest works of their best video artists at the Hotel Barceló Sants.
2006
The fourth edition of the LOOP Fair, from May 19 to 21, offered an exciting showcase of international premieres in the rooms of Hotel Pulitzer. In addition, a parallel space, called Video Zone, presented the collections of major video art distributors as well as a diverse sample of the latest contemporary art magazines. Also, the fair hosted video feedback, three days of presentations by collectors, panel discussions, lectures and workshops on key issues and practical matters in the field of video art. From May 10 to 21 the festival of LOOP’06 was held. After three editions Off LOOP continued with an emphasis on the cultural dynamism in institutional spaces, independent cultural locations and entertainment venues. Seeking a balance between length and density, the program sought to explore the directions of video creation and the links of video art with other fields, as well as highlighting the many forms of reproduction and distribution of video as format and support.
2007
In its fifth edition, from May 23 to June 3, 180,000 visitors saw works from over 800 artists in 108 spaces, from institutions like the CCCB and the MACBA to restaurants and shops, presenting 66 curated programs, 20 universities and 20 international festivals. LOOP’07 has established itself as a centre for premieres, essential for all professionals devoted to video art. The 43 galleries selected for the LOOP Fair presented their artists to 4,000 international professionals, journalists, curators, and collectors in Hotel Catalonia Ramblas. In the conferences were involved the heads of major institutions in the sector, such as the MoMA, the Tate Modern, the MNACRS, the Pompidou Centre and the ZKM. One of the successes of the LOOP Festival was the projection of the Cremaster Cycle at the CCCB. For the first time in Barcelona it was possible to see the whole work of artist Matthew Barney. The Cremaster Cycle is a cycle of five films which revolve around the genesis of creation and has as conceptual origin the male cremaster muscle.
2008
The sixth edition, LOOP’08, opened its doors from the 6th until the 18th of may, 2008. The LOOP Festival has changed Barcelona in the capital of video art showing the works of more than 800 artists in 142 spaces across the city. The program LOOP Diverse, which was created last year with the objective to explore the possibilities of video art as a vehicle of intercultural dialog, has been stimulated on the occasion of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008. During this edition the 16 principal collectives of Barcelona’s residential immigrants were involved, and works from their countries of origin has been shown in a total of 37 establishments. The program was closed by a round table in the CCCB with the presence of the artists Hannah Collins and M. Rosa Jijón. The LOOP Fair occupied 44 rooms in the Hotel Catalonia Ramblas, where the 44 proposals from participating galleries were exhibited. LOOP’08 had a high quality of the work presented and the greater influx of national and international professionals, commissioners and collectors, signifying a higher rate of sales and contacts made with regards to past editions.
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