20 years of KHM: Looking back and looking forward

Non-stop manifestation and celebration of the KHM’s 20th anniversary

“If you celebrate it, it’s art. If you don’t, it isn’t!” (John Cage)
On Sunday, October 10, 2010, the Academy of Media Arts Cologne celebrated its 20th anniversary. Twenty successful years of teaching and the “Audiovisual Media” degree course were reviewed in the Trinity Church with greetings and contributions by some of the most important protagonists from the past, present and future. There were speeches by, among others, Anke Brunn (former State Minister for Science and Research and Honorary Senator of the KHM), Marc Jan Eumann (State Secretary for Federal Affairs, Europe and Media), Dr. Kreutz-Gers (Director of the High School Management Department of the State Ministry for Innovation, Science and Research), Angela Spizig (Mayor of Cologne), the first two Directors of the KHM Jeanine Meerapfel (Speaker of the Founding Committee, first Professor of Directing at the KHM) and Dr. Klaus Katz (Founding Rector of the KHM) as well as Kaspar König (Director of the Museum Ludwig) and Klaus Jung (Rector of the KHM). The celebration was musically and artistically framed by contributions from Prof. Anthony Moore and Martin Rumori (KHM Klanglabor), and Silvia Ospina, Carolina Pinzón and Adrián Villa (KHM students). In addition, the KHM sponsored prize, donated by Dr. Wilhelm Kappesser, was awarded for the first time, with two students from the fields of art (Alfons Knogl) and film (Isabel Prahl) each receiving 3,500 euros.

In the afternoon, around 30 proponents from 20 years of the Academy of Media Arts Cologne came together to create a non-stop manifestation: former and current teachers and students from the fields of film, art and theory reacted to an open call on the theme “manifesto” with artistic and theoretical contributions forming a long-duration performance. The scope ranged from notes on electronic Bauhaus and musings on sound art as inter-sensual and inter-medial art, an appeal against the definition of principles, planting measures, self-experimentation with trance, a plea for artistic education based on consciousness to the presentation of current and former research projects, thoughts on the design process, lectures on changing sides, and on gravity and melancholy as well as reflection on the context and place of performance.
With contributions by and with Anna Anders, Jürgen Claus, Matthias Conrady, Peter C. Slansky, piet fuchs/dj p-bone, Kosta Rapadopoulos, Matthias Neuenhofer, Peter Kiefer, Ertan Erdogan, Ulrike Kaiser/Inge Kamps, Carmen Mac Williams, Peter Simon & Freya Hattenberger – LES ÉCLAIRS, Peter Miller, Andreas Köpnick, Christoph Keller, Juri Jansen, Andreas Menn, Timothy Shearer, Clea T. Waite, Amy Rush, Alexander Pascal Forré, Martina Mrongovius, Jan Verbeek, Siegfried Zielinski, Yi-Ling Lam, Simonex Krois, Karin Harrasser, and Sebastian Jochum.

At 8 p.m., as the finale of the non-stop manifestation, the Hungarian artist group Kaos Camping presented a performance/installation/screening in the garden of the Overstolzenhaus. Since 2000, the Kaos Camping Expanded Cinema Group, which is made up of the filmmakers and media artists László Csáki, Kornél Szilágyi, József Szolnoki and Csaba Vándor, has been producing anarchic, labyrinthine film installations. With up to 30 film projects running parallel, they choreographed an impressive audiovisual spectacle with historic film material, in particular from Hungary’s Communist period, superimposed on the existing architecture, accompanied by live music from Cologne-based sound and video artists Echo Ho and Franziska Windisch.

The Academy of Media Arts Cologne opened for its first 25 students with the “Audiovisual Media” degree course (called “Media and Fine Art” since the summer semester, 2011) in October 1990. In the winter semester of 1994/95 the range of courses was extended to form a full degree programme. 40 students attended the first year. Since then the range of courses has been continuously extended and its organisational structure repeatedly renewed. In the last ten years the number of students has levelled off to around 60 newcomers in the winter semester and an average of around 330 students a year. They are currently supervised by around 30 professors, 20 members of staff specialised in art and science, 20 technicians and a further 40 members of staff. The academy began in 1990 as “a hotbed of talent”, “a new kind of art college”, “electronic Bauhaus”, a “bird of paradise”, an “experiment without guaranteed success” and also as the “unloved child” of the Cologne cultural landscape. At first it was linked in particular with the closure of the former Kölner Werkschulen and therefore with the loss of  “free art” education and the “end of the printed word”. Today the Academy of Media Arts Cologne is an established and successfully member of the German art and film colleges canon, while staying true to its project-oriented approach (no master classes, inter-subject supervision by professors, undergraduate as well as postgraduate degree courses), yielding individualistic “crossover talent” between art, media, film and theory, and thus remaining unique.