Once a month on a Friday, at midnight, the two initiators, Olaf Stüber and Ivo Wessel, invite artists to show their work on the big screen at the Babylon movie theater. Every evening is dedicated to a specific artist. The artists are always present. There are frequent world premieres, occasionally accompanied by live acts such as performances, concerts or artist talks. VAM aims to offer a platform for a medium that is becoming increasingly important in the context of contemporary art production as well as to provide insights into Berlin’s international art scene. Invited guests include both well-known artists and newcomers.

On December 12–14, VAM, together with the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart and the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), examines the history, present, and future of video art during the international symposium entitled “Future Continuous Present(s) – ‘Video Art’ through Time.” The symposium will discuss questions such as the gap between the steadily evolving digital technologies and related aesthetic consequences or how artists deal with linear and non-linear narratives. Guests include Orit Halpern, Claus Pias, Erika Balsom, Inke Arns, Siegfried Zielinski, and Frédéric Neyrat.

The keynote lecture by the media and film studies scholar Leo Goldsmith is supported by the Schering Stiftung. The lecture addresses contemporary video art’s habitation of the underground – as a space of enclosure and exclusivity, and of capitalist extraction – redefining it as one of radical inclusivity and commonality, and as a site through which to explore the material histories and futures of media.