Urban GIF Parcours
This year, we are transforming Cologne's city center into an open-air gallery again. With the second Urban GIF Parcours, FILM FESTIVAL COLOGNE is dedicating a special program to the GIF as the shortest form of visual storytelling.
Curated GIFs will be presented in the store windows of the shops, bars and cafés between Filmpalast and Brüsseler Platz around the popular Maastrichter Straße. The festival audience can expect works by renowned net artists, viral reaction GIFs and pop-cultural mashups that turn strolling into a media event.
The Urban GIF Parcours will open with a vernissage on Wednesday, October 19, at Hallmackenreuther.
Participating Locations:
- Brownies, Hohenzollernring 29
- Galactic Headshop, Maastrichter Str. 5
- Simon & Renoldi, Maastrichter Str. 17
- Galerie Ulrike Tolksdorf, Maastrichter Str. 19
- Das Hochhaus, Maastrichter Str. 21
- cambio Rheinland, Maastrichter Str. 41–43
- Ryzon, Maastrichter Str. 45
- Monsieur Courbet, Maastrichter Str. 49
- Tante Kurt, Brusseler Str. 55
- Hallmackenreuther, Brusseler Platz 9
- St. Michael, Brusseler Platz 13–15
- LOOK! Conzept Store, Brusseler Str. 65
- Goldschmiede Marcus Gotten, Brusseler Platz 10
- Magasin Populaire, Brusseler Platz 8
- Bob 10.5.10, Brusseler Platz 6
- Becher’s Backhaus, Brusseler Platz 4
- Bali, Brusseler Platz 2
- SCHEE, Maastrichter Str. 40–44
- HURRA., Maastrichter Str. 38
- SCHEE, Maastrichter Str. 36
- joaH kRaus, Maastrichter Str. 24
- Latif’s, Hohenzollernring 22–24
- Filmpalast, Hohenzollernring 24
Artists
Brittany Bartley
From Brooklyn come some of the most comforting GIFs on the web. Brittany Bartley's stop motion animations find images for everyday observations and gestures that speak more than thousand words.
Creative Cooking
This South Korean collective consists of several animation artists. The fact that not much more can be found on the web makes the colorful fish and reptiles that crawl through their GIFs all the more magical.
Cyriak (Cyriak Harris)
Cyriak's vast oeuvre includes early viral classics as well as successful music videos for Bonobo or Flying Lotus. Adding to the mistery sorrounding him, the British anarcho-collagist claims to live in a dilapidated house “in the middle of nowhere”.
Giuliano Di Girolamo (GIU).
Using rotoscopic processes and analog-digital hybrids, Brazilian Di Girolamo/GIU creates dreamy micro-stories that deal with the fundamental questions of life, sometimes allowing us to look at the world with children's eyes again.
Robert Ek (kreationsministern)
Nightmarish Spaces. Morphing bodies between cyborg and human. Smooth surfaces, with gateways to alien universes. It is almost impossible to find words for the crystal-clear 3D animations of Swedish artist Robert Ek.
Erma Fiend
Erma Fiend has captured his transition in numerous loops and animations. GIFs, says the New Yorker, are the best medium for self-portraits: They are the only art form that can represent variable identities as a state. They are in constant motion and never completed. Word!
Mulan Fu
The works of Mulan Fu (Shanghai/New York) look like children's illustrations, but appearances are deceptive. Only at second glance, Fu's works mirror our ambivalent relationship with technological devices - with brutal honesty.
Evan Hilton
U.S. artist Evan Hilton designs colorful and playful stop-motion campaigns for Apple, MTV and other major players. In his artistic works, edibles are often very associatively misappropriated.
Anna Hrachovec
During an exchange in Japan, Chicago-based artist Hrachovec began knitting. Her passion escalated into the creation of Mochimochiland, a world filled with gnomes, cats and other knitted little companions. Cult for cold winter days!
James Kerr (Scorpion Dagger)
Canadian James Kerr aka Scorpion Dagger, already featured at our 2021 course, gives the term “tableau vivant” an entirely new meaning - and the figures of classical art a dazzling second life.
Loxel Li
Loxel Li (Shanghai) describes herself as "a real bad-ass woman you really shouldn't mess with." Her posthumanist AI GIFs depict physiognomies in flux and topographies without any human presence.
Rebecca Mock
While the action in the comics of American artist Rebecca Mock is high-paced, time almost seems to stand still in her animations. They offer a space for contemplation, reflection and the dissection of a moment.
Joe Pease
With Joe Pease, we offer the big screen of Filmpalast to an Australian artist at the intersection of net art and film. His work echoes MATRIX, INCEPTION, Michel Gondry music videos and a youth on a skateboard. Seldom has the zeitgeist promised so much fun!
Chris Phillips (Crispe)
Chris Phillips' GIFs are as sunny as his hometown Sydney and show that philosophical moments often come when you don't take yourself too seriously.
Marc Rodriguez
Are we looking at the past or is the past looking at us? US-based artist Marc Rodriguez seems obsessed with the act of seeing and being seen, and he poses the question with countless rediscovered films and found-footage loops.
