KARLSRUHE.- Bearing the title High Performance. Time-based Media Art, the Julia Stoschek Collection, based in Düsseldorf since 1996, presents key works of time-based media art at the ZKM | Karlsruhe from March 16 till June 22, 2014. With large-format video works and films, as well as multichannel spatial installations, the exhibition demonstrates that as an artistic medium, video art, which first began fifty years ago, has lost nothing of its force.

Inspired by the risky maneuvers of a Chris Burden, in his video work High Performance (2000), artist Aaron Young documents a motorbike rider burning black tracks with the back wheel and by applying the front brakes on the concrete floor of his studio. Clouds of smoke, which emerge through the friction process, gradually cloud the scenery. In this creative, high-performance, performative act destructive action and creative violence merge in a threatening contradiction, in which man and machine are driven to the extremes of performance capability to the point of complete disappearance. Painting, sculpture and sound manifest themselves between high-speed and groaning standstill in the most radical sense.

With over 50 main works on the subjects of ‘body and soul’, ‘public space’, ‘environment’ as well as ‘virtual reality’, and across 3500 square meters on the entire ground floor of the ZKM | Media Museum, the exhibition offers in-depth insight into the most recent developmental history of the Julia Stoschek Collection since 1996. In addition, a comprehensive compilation documents the most important performances to have been on show at the Düsseldorf collection building.

With this extraordinary exhibition, the ZKM continues its tradition of large-scale overview shows on video art.

The exhibition, co-curated by Bernhard Serexhe and Julia Stoschek, contains works by Doug Aitken, Francis Al˙s, Ed Atkins, Allora & Calzadilla, Trisha Baga, John Bock, Monika Bonvicini, Robert Boyd, Matthew Buckingham, Paul Chan, Keren Cytter, Simon Denny, Cyprien Gaillard, Christian Jankowski, Jesper Just, Mike Kelley, Klara Liden, Helen Marten, Tony Oursler, Mika Rottenberg, Mathilde ter Heijne, Ryan Trecartin, Clemens Wedemeyer, Andro Wekua, Aaron Young and Tobias Zielony.

The main focus of the Julia Stoschek Collection is contemporaneity. Thus, with this claim to contemporaneity the collection consistently pursues the aim of illustrating communal, cultural and social streams. The conceptual structure of the collection concentrates on media art from the beginning of the 1960s to the present.

First opening in 2007, within the space of a few years and now with an extraordinary program of performances, lectures, screenings and international cooperation, the Julia Stoschek Collection has evolved into one of the most important private collections of art worldwide. The current artistic collection encompasses over 200 artists’ approaches, while the list of works includes over 600 pieces.