The Edith Russ Site for Media Art has awarded three six-months work stipends for 2013. The 10.000 € stipends are sponsored by Stiftung Niedersachsen. The advertisement was answered by 368 applications from all over the world.

Stiftung Niedersachsen sponsors the stipends at Edith Russ Site for Media Art continually since 2001. Many of the works developed in Oldenburg have been shown in international exhibitions and have been awarded various prizes.

With their support Stiftung Niedersachsen intends to encourage one of the leading sites for media art in Germany, in its highly qualitative profiling to make art creation possible and to create international networks as well as local cooperations.

The Jury for the stipends and the price consisted of:

Pre-Jury

Dr. Claudia Giannetti
Maria Pallier
Prof. Dennis P. Paul
Prof. Dr. Nils Röller

Jury

Prof. Dr. Norval Baitello Junior
Roberta Bosco
Dr. Claudia Giannetti
Prof. Hartmut Jahn

The Grants for Media Art 2013 from the Foundation of Lower Saxony at the Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art, each of them endowed with €10,000, go to:

Marcello Mercado, "Van Gogh Variations"
Installation

Patricia Reis, "The Brain Is the Screen"
Interactive installation

Hannes Waldschütz, "Ziviler Ungehorsam: Reparieren"
Performance/Installation

Jury Statements

Marcello Mercado, "Van Gogh Variations"
Installation

The project by the Cologne-based Argentinian artist Marcello Mercado deals with the relationship between biological, technological, and artistic forms. Land art, software art, bio art, video, performance, and sound art enter into a symbiosis in his installation project. Marcello Mercado forges a link between the organic and the digital world by means of an original system of data transformation that culminates in the creation of sound and 3-D sculptures as well as video documentations.
The work is part of research process that the artist has been conducting for several years and whose various results were capable of sparking public interest.
What the jury acknowledges about the work’s concept is that it incorporates basic contemporary issues: from artistic to ontological and genetic issues, without, however, ignoring the problems associated with the context in the exhibition space. The results of Marcello Mercado’s previous research as well as his artistic production allow expecting the successful implementation of this project.

Patricia Reis, "The Brain Is the Screen"
Interactive installations

The two installations by Patricia Reis can be regarded as both a scientific as well as aesthetic research project whose aim is to examine the potential of the public’s interactive holistic experiences. By means of various apparatuses, the Portuguese artist intends to establish a direct relationship between the viewer and the work: one of the installations provides scope for sensuous, haptic experiences that can even be had by the blind; the other creates a connection between the visual experience and neuronal stimulations.
In both cases, the visitor’s physical involvement is essential for the development of the work. What the jury rates as very positive is the meticulous presentation of her concept, which guarantees the successful implementation of the project. By the same token, it was considered very positive that she produces a possible relationship between her examination with a strong neuroscientific element and the neurobiological focus of the Department of Biology at the Carl von Ossietzsky University of Oldenburg and the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Study in Delmenhorst and thus fulfills the criterion that the artistic grant projects be integrated into the local structures in Oldenburg and into institutions in Lower Saxony.

Hannes Waldschütz, "Ziviler Ungehorsam: Reparieren"
Performance/Installation

The work Ziviler Ungehorsam: Reparieren (Civil Disobedience: Repairing) by the Leipzig-based artist Hannes Waldschütz is convincing due to the use of communication, action, and documentation as the artistic strategy of a media-based project.
Making repairs—an everyday activity that is becoming increasingly difficult for us—is declared an artistic act. Hannes Waldschütz opposes the principle of the obsolescence of industrial products planned by laws governing the market and discovers a resistive process in the restoration of the functioning of any object.
By means of a series of participatory performances that deal with the repair of technical devices, the artist wants to create a dialogue with the public and in this way give them back a bit of their autonomy.
The fact that overproduction leads to a compulsory, ever more rapid destruction of objects turns these actions into sociocritical and at the same time artistic acts of disobedience. We do not know whether the Edith-Ruth-Haus will be come a clinic for the treatment of objects, but we recognize the enormous potential of this artistic communication project.