Fuzzy Dark Spot: Video Art from Hamburg in Connection with the Falckenberg Collection

The book Fuzzy Dark Spot accompanying the exhibition at Falckenberg Collection/Deichtorhallen Hamburg examines how video, as an artistic medium, interprets social and media irritations and manipulations. This refers to television, progressive movements by the counter-public during the 1970’s, and the use of video as a surveillance medium, means of artistic narration, and psycho-social mirror or instrument of self-optimization in the digital present. The great influence of video images on our collective memory and consciousness in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries turns doubts about an image, discomfort with the established, and distrust of claims into important motives for artistic reflection. The title of the exhibition brings together these strands and describes a nebulous, fuzzy, obscure point, place, or state. The term fuzzy dark spot comes from an Internet forum where mold contaminating camera lenses is discussed. The exhibition, curated by Hamburg-based video artist Wolfgang Oelze in the context of the Falckenberg Collection, offers a comprehensive look at work by artists from Hamburg.