At the beginning of the 80´s Karl Kowanz was an assistant for video productions at the university for applied art. He influenced a group of creative, young media art students in this time animating and above all technically inspiring them. A video art scene developed, declaring the electronic picture as a new reality instead of a reproduced image. Socio-political contents and TV critical work of the 70´s yielded to a videographic picture, which constructed a new art form. Karl Kowanz repeatedly builds machines and apparatuses, in order to take advantage of the technical possibilities of the video medium. He created terms such as "multi-sandwich" (alienated generations copied into another through keying) and light rolling machines. The connection to performance and production, within the created realities, emerges again and again: pure technical investigations on the inaccuracies of analog video equipment within his video productions, he recurrently sets the intuitive, spontaneously performed work.

The video "Freedom Hopapa IO" is Kowanz? attempt to once again work with the linguistics of Super-8. For Karl Kowanz, who examines the technical possibilities of videos in its work, Super-8, due to it?s grammar, is a post experimental attraction with it?s single frame reproduction and possibility to play backwards, and is brought together with a Live music performance of the group of Pas Paravant. Karl Kowanz has worked, since the start of the 80´s, with music/video performances, he confronts the potential space of the music performance and places it opposite the reusable elements of video and lets the video join the performance. There was never a constant membership in the formation and the name "the Guendung? was found for the group after 3 years and 7 mastered audiocassettes. During the years 1983 - 1991 the main participants were Renate Kowanz Kocer (drums), Karl Kowanz (saxophone), Wolfgang Stengl (guitar), Hans Weigand, (guitar), ManfredDU shoe (singer), Wolfgang Poor (saxophone) and Guenther Schorm (bass).

The performances are numerous in, among other locations, the gallery Grita Insam who consistently supported video, performances and interdisciplinary work, and at the "ARS Electronica? in Linz. The music is described by Wolfgang Kos on a Cover of the record " bread and play " in this way: "these short pieces are rather wild rides: They are composed untypical for brass, because they do not leave room for the players to blow out and breath in.... Also the pieces composed for the computer, which emerge every now and then as dance rhythms like minimalist Spor Coupes, are tricky: there are the quick smooth sounds of an organ á la Sixties, there is percussive restlessness... "

Video is always present in Karl Kowanz? productions, in Freedom Hopapa IO the participants of the music performance play the main role, the apparatuses double, repeat, play backwards, cover up ? and allow the musicians perform an almost endlessly motorized sound. Freedom Hopapa IO documents a performance and shows it after it has been developed in real time through the light rolling machines. (Suess)

Exhibitions

Zwei Zimmer. Pas Paravant und Gäste, 1988

Galerie Grita Insam, Wien, Austria

Specifications

6min stereo color PAL

Technical protocol

Umatic HB, S-8 Film (recording); Multiple recordings using Luminanz-Key over mechanical-analog light rolling maschine (built by: Karl Kowanz); U-Matic HB (master)

Produced together with

Music und Performance: Renate Kowanz-Kocer, Wolfgang Poor, Günter Schrom, ManfreDu Schuh, Wolfgang Stengl, Hans Weigand

Production

Karl Kowanz

Post production

Hochschule für Angew. Kunst/MKL Prof. E. Caramelle (jetzt: Universität für angewandte Kunst)

Copyright

Karl Kowanz

Copy to see