Wulf Herzogenrath. Video Art in the Akademie Archives

"Someday artists will work with capacitors, resistors and semiconductors as they work today with brushes, violins and junk." – video artist Nam June Paik predicted in 1965.

As a curator, Wulf Herzogenrath decisively contributed to the establishment of video art as a new artistic medium in Germany. The discussion at the opening of his archive with Rudolf Frieling, curator of media art, and art historian Franziska Stöhr is the kick-off to an international symposium that is part of the Videoart at Midnight festival.

In addition to documentation on video art, the exhibition shows several early works, accompanied by photos, letters and installation designs from the exceptional study collection in the Herzogenrath Archive. The focus of this review is on documenta 6 – for which Wulf Herzogenrath curated a new, independent section of video art in 1977. It represents a milestone in the history of media art. Herzogenrath's collection of artist's books – with original dedications that are living testimonies to his numerous professional as well as private encounters since the late 1960s – are being presented to the public for the first time.