TAM Darkroom

2023

Vacations in the Subconcious @ The Surrealist Vacation Resort Los Angeles @ TAM was part of the simultuneous presentation of The Surrealist Project in Cologne amd Los Angeles between 22 July and 9 September – called The Surrealist Summer Vacation Camp Los Angeles/Cologne presenting during 7 Weeks 14 different screening programs at Alphabet Art Center – Torrance Art Museum – on occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto by Andre Breton.

2022

The collaboration with TAM in 2022 encompasses 2 occasions, the TAM installation @ LA Art Show 19-23 January 2022 and the second occasion of Peace Letters to Ukraine @ TAM Darkroom 4-25 June 2022

The Peace Letters Project is representing a networked solidarity action between The New Museum of Networked Art and associated partners including Torrance Art Museum on occasion of The Russian/Ukrainian War

Memorial to the Future – curated vy Max Presneill (TAM)
Memory of the Future? curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne at
LA Art Show/TAM – Torrance Art Museum Los Angeles – 18-23 January 2022

DIVERSEartLA is back with a new ecological lens. Curated by Marisa Caichiolo, this year’s edition will examine not just how the environment is represented in art, but how humanity’s place in the world is depicted. This exhibition will open up an important dialogue about the Earth’s past, present, and future, uniting the community around discussions of the global climate crisis and potential solutions.
“One of the most powerful things about art is that it brings people together, and transforms the way we communicate. The goal of DIVERSEartLA 2022 is to view this sector of art within the show through ecological glasses.
This topic is at the heart of a growing number of art narratives, including exhibitions built with high-tech innovations, designed to inspire artistic appreciation and the desire to respond to environmental challenges – reinforcing the value of translating environmental advocacy into art.
The installations, immersive experiences, and performances represent our present day and the looming impact we will all face if the planet continues to warm. DIVERSEartLA 2022 will encourage visitors to confront the complex challenges of our global climate crisis and imagine potential solutions.” – Marisa Caichiolo

2020

The 7 Memorials for Humanity – 7 programs – 7 weeks –
curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne at
TAM – Torrance Art Museum Los Angeles
18 July -20 September 2020

NewMediaFest2020 celebrates numerous anniversaries this year, including the foundation in Cologne in 2000. WOW Jubilee VII Los Angeles – (WOW stands for “We Are One World”) is the 7th anniversary program in a row, this time with the focus on the 7 video program units with their 11 programs in total, which Wilfried Agricola de Cologne, the director, main curator realized NewMediaFest2020 for the screenings at TAM – including 150 videos by 150 artists from 30 countries on topics that concern artists and society alike – violence, migration, climate change, environment and identity – as they are manifested in “The 7 Memorial for Humanity” , a commemorative context of media art developed during the past 290 years since 2000.
NewMediaFest2020 is an event structure with a retrospective character, which is carried out in an exchange between virtual and physical space throughout 2020, starting on December 26, 2019 and ending on December 31, 2020 with network partners around the world. In addition to the 12 monthly festival programs, the daily features are of particular importance with the publication of new media art programs from “The 365 Days Diary” online.
After Addis Ababa and Cologne before the Corona crisis, which forced NewMediaFest2020 to continue its activities exclusively online as the 1st Corona Festival, Berlin is now the first physical venue starting on 9 July followed Los Angeles (USA) on 18 July online, and depending of the Corona developments worldwide additional events are scheduled in Cusco (Peru), Athens (Greece), Lucca (Italy), Beirut (Lebanon) and Calcutta (India) – either offline or online.

2018

W:OW Project 2018
We Are One world
Torrance Art Museum
July 21 – December 14, 2018
Encore Screenings: December 1 – 14, 2018

WOW.18 / USA is the 18th and so far most comprehensive manifestation of The W:OW Project – We Are One World and the first in the USA, at Torrance Art Museum.

Running between July 21 and December 14, 2018, the screening series presents the entire artvideo program as it was presented across the ten venues in 2017, and includes more than 125 art films and videos by 125 artists from nearly 30 countries, selected by 10 guest curators from Mexico, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Italy, Israel, Austria and Russia, along with the German chief curator and director of The W:OW Project Wilfried Agricola de Cologne – packed into 20 curated, conceptual programs.

According to its concept reflecting the diversity of life and human existence,The W:OW Project presents a diversity of artistic and curatorial concepts, as well as a variety of topics affecting human individuals wherever they live on the globe. The project uses the technology of video and medium of “moving images“ as one of the contemporary audio-visual languages of art. It addresses an open-minded audience who is eager to learn new ways of viewing following the new rules of “artvideo,“ differently than the mass of static and moving images that overwhelm people in daily life – like in cinema, television or Internet. It gives the individual image, or “frame,“ back its individuality and gives time another relevance and perception.

2016

CologneOFF 2016 USA
In the Name of TRUTH : Time, Peace and Humanity
@ Torrance Art Museum LA
2 April – 28 May 2016

01. Temporary-Contemporary
02. The Speed of Time
03. Times Collapsed
04. The End of Time
05. Humanity – Perspectives of Time

Curatorial statement
by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne

In the Name of Truth: Time, Peace & Humanity

The screening project encompasses five programs of audio-visual art prepared by artvideoKOELN, curated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne under an explosive topic endangering the human species.
If art isn’t reduced to mere esthetics for its own sake, the artist is looking for truth through his work. Although it’s mainly his subjective point of view, this view, however is going deep to the essence of life. Art and the perception on art are ongoing processes changing continuously.
The present five programs of time based art are speaking in the name of truth, the artist becomes the lawyer of truth focusing on the relation between time, peace and humanity.
But this is not only a question of art, rather of transforming the perceptions of the human survival into concepts and the language of art. By doing so, the participating artists show face, take position and responsibility not only in an artistic, but much more in a social and political concern due to the local and global relevance.
The artistic message is – not to remain passively consuming, but instead of this getting personally involved. In this way, the screening program is including an interactive component. We are one world, we all are sitting in the same boat. The basis of perception and decisions has to be humanity.
There are good reasons, why some wise politicians in the Western societies involve artists in developing concepts for the sustainability of the future of the living species on the globe.
Each of the five video programs is following another approach, including different artistic concepts – showing this way a diversity of audio-visual art creation.
The curatorial concept, however, is not only including the works selected for the screening programs, but also the complete original sources as they are released online, so that visitors of the museum website have the chance to review the entire artistic contexts, as well.

2014

CologneOFF 2014 USA
@Torrance Art Museum Los Angeles
8 November – 6 December 2014

CologneOFF X– “ Total Art “

Selections, entitled:
Alienate Territories – Alienated Identities – Alienated Time Lines – Alienated Memory
curated & coordinated by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne

Curatorial statement
by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne

Alienated Worlds is the theme of a two-part screening program of art films and videos, which Wilfried Agricola de Cologne, director of CologneOFF – the Cologne-based international festival of experimental audiovisual art, has put together on the occasion of its 10th birthday for women and men in Düsseldorf Has.

Under the motto Gesamtkunstwerk, the 10th edition of Cologne International Videoart Festival refers not only to the type and content of selected audiovisual works of art, but also to the festival project “CologneOFF” itself as an artistic and cultural creation, which Agricola de Cologne is the founding director realized during the past 10 years in the context and as part of an extremely exciting media development.

The focus is on the audiovisual works of artist colleagues from all over the world, the concept of which follows the concept of the “Gesamtkunstwerk” by using the medium of video in all its technical and technological complexity to develop their own audiovisual (global) language and provide the viewer with a variety confront content and philosophical, political, cultural or artistic statements through a critical look at the present, sometimes ironically with a dose of humor, but always serious and profound in artistic terms.

The selection in itself represents a unit and thus also a kind of total work of art, which in times of mingling art forms wants to show the diversity of contemporary art in Düsseldorf on the occasion of the 10th birthday of CologneOFF.