At the end of the 1960s, ephemeral art forms like video, film and performance became popular and established forms of expression. Aachen, thanks to its geographical proximity to the Netherlands, Belgium, and Düsseldorf and Cologne, played a significant role in this development. For it was the Neue Galerie, the precursor of today’s Ludwig Forum, that made a decisive contribution to the establishment of these new contemporary art forms by opening its doors to these new media from the very start of the 1970s.

The Ludwig Forum’s extensive video archive bears witness to the particularly significant phase of artistic activity in this field in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, the collection encompasses about 200 works of video art, many of them substantive for the history of the moving image in art. The collection boasts a wealth of key artistic positions in those historic early days of video art, exemplified by internationally acclaimed video pioneers like Klaus vom Bruch, Peter Campus, Douglas Davis, Joan Jonas, Wolf Kahlen, Bruce Nauman, Nam June Paik, Ulrike Rosenbach, Wolf Vostell and William Wegman. This inventory is complemented by documentary material and a whole body of generally unknown and so far unprocessed works. One particular feature of the video collection is the huge number of works that refer to correlations between video art and performance art. The international orientation of the collection is enhanced by a large emphasis on the works of Belgian video artists.

In acknowledgement of the exceptional value of this collection, the Ludwig Forum has taken on the task of the preservation, scientific exploration and presentation of this “memory bank” through the research project “Videoarchiv”, which it launched in June 2012. In collaboration with the ZKM in Karlsruhe, the works – primarily stored in the historical video format U-matic, have been digitised and are now ready for scientific processing.

Management: Dr. Brigitte Franzen
Project Manager & Curator: Miriam Lowack (June 2012 – April 2016)
Researcher & Curator: Anna Sophia Schultz
Researcher & Curator: Lou Jonas (August 2013 – April 2016)
Researcher & Curator: Jenny Dirksen (May 2015 – October 2015)

Contact person

Sonja Benzner
Tel. +49 2411807-118
sonja.benzner@mail.aachen.de

Homepage

http://www.videoarchiv-ludwigforum.de/

In cooperation with

Universität Köln

Prof. Dr. Ursula Frohne
University of Cologne
Department of Art History
Division General History of Art

 

ZKM

ZKM (Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie)
(Centre for Art and Media Technology), Karlsruhe

 

Sponsored by

VolkswagenStiftung

 

Ludwig Forum Aachen
Jülicher Straße 97–109
52070 Aachen
Tel. +49 (0)241 1807-104
Fax +49 (0)241 1807-101
info[at]ludwigforum.de

Opening hours
Tue-Sun 10am-5pm
Thu 10am-8pm
Closed on Monday

Library
Tue-Fri 1pm-5pm

Guided tours and workshops
+49 241 432 4998
museumsdienst[at]mail.aachen.de

Admission
Regular € 6.00
Reduced € 3.00

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