Insomnia Night I
The Future of Video Art
curator – artist & artist as a curator talk
Olaf Stüber & Irina Botea Bucan
For the first Insomnia Event, we are happy to invite Irina Botea Bucan, film-maker, video artist,
theoretician and lecturer, currently a Goldsmith PhD scholar and Olaf Stüber , the well-known
director of Video Art at Midnight, curator, art dealer and lecturer on video-art and cinema. The talk
will take place online, on zoom while waiting for the warm weather to allow us to meet in person
soon, in our gallery garden.
Irina Botea Bucan and Olaf Stüber will approach the topic of recent changes in video art / film /
digital media, historically as well as conceptually in relation to recent changes in technology and
video streaming. The dialogue will depart from various ways of understanding video art nowadays,
imagining further ways to engage with audiences, to creating spaces of dialogue around the moving
image. The talk will be accompanied by short video extracts from Irina Botea Bucan’s own artistic
portfolio in dialogue with a selected collection of excerpts from the artists that Olaf Stüber has been
working with throughout his career.
What is the Insomnia Nights event?
The series of events Insomnia was inspired by the ”Insomnia Drawings” exhibit at the Beyeler (2019)
of Louise Bourgeois’ drawings and sketches made in her small New York apartment during sleepless
nights. The show managed to capture the confined and intimate space of thoughts, emotions running
through an artistic diary in the midst of the symbol-city for outrageous art market transactions,
hustling sales and fierce competition. The contrast of the two worlds led to wishing we could do
without the invisible limitations and boundaries between East and West, between high and low
culture, and the want to find that common space of alike small big apartments from New York,
Bucharest, Berlin, Dhaka, Singapore or Rădești, together with all the other spaces we can imagine
and make real during the nights, the days of Insomnia.
Each event is centred around a talk with guest from all corners of the world, and each discussion topic
revolves around the main themes of the ARAC ART & RESIDENCY: climate change, technological
developments, or migration.
Read more about the event: https://www.aracartandresidency.com/insomnia-nights-days-future-of-
video-art/
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This project is financed with the support of EEA Grants 2014 – 2021 within the RO-CULTURE Program.
The EEA Grants represent the contribution of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway towards a green,
competitive and inclusive Europe. There are two overall objectives: reduction of economic and social
disparities in Europe, and to strengthen bilateral relations between the donor countries and 15 EU
countries in Central and Southern Europe and the Baltics.
The three donor countries cooperate closely with the EU through the Agreement on the European
Economic Area (EEA). The donors have provided €3.3 billion through consecutive grant schemes
between 1994 and 2014. For the period 2014-2021, the EEA Grants amount to €1.55 billion. More info
on: www.eeagrants.org and www.eeagrants.ro
RO-CULTURE is implemented in Romania by the Ministry of Culture through the Project Management
Unit. The Programme aims at strengthening social and economic development through cultural
cooperation, cultural entrepreneurship and cultural heritage management. The total budget amounts
to 29 million EUR. More details are available on www.ro-cultura.ro