Robert Cahen is one o f the most important and internationally renowned artists in the realm o f experimental video. Right from the early 1970s, he was among the first Europeans to tackle the technology o f electronic imagery and to employ new machines, testing their effects and attempting, like a pioneer, to extract their fullest expressive potential. Sanda Lischi, The Sight o f Time - Films and Videos by Robert Cahen, Pisa 1997, S. 5 „HongKong Song" was m y first encounter with Robert Cahen's work. I was immediately captivated. A short time before I had paid my first visit to New York, and when I left after three days I remembered the city only in the form o f flickering, shadowy images - they danced about in my mind on the flight back to Europe. On seeing Cahen's video, I was fascinated by how closely his visualized impressions ofHong Kong corresponded with my fragmented recollection o f New York, and by his ability to very precisely articulate things that were, in fact, intangible. The course taken by Robert Cahen resembles a tightrope walk in that he has repeatedly attempted to express emotions and create poetry with video, a medium that is cold in itself. It is a complicated undertaking, since video differs from cinema in that it has no relatively constant semiotics, no stock o f stereotypes which can be called up as required and relied upon to function in some degree. Video art functions through the principle of association, and in this regard Cahen has indeed experimented, laying himself open, make himselfvulnerable. Born in 1945, Cahen was educated at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, among other institutions, and studied electroacoustical composition. In most o f his work, there is some indication ofthismusicalbackgroundin themeticulously composed and amalgamated electronic levels o f visuals and sound. Cahen has producedjust under 50 works to date, among them a smattering o fhumourous pieces. Until 1982, he also worked with Super8,16mmand35mm film. Robert Cahen selected the works for this programme (as well as for this evening's Nightflight).„Corps flottant", his most recent video, will show in Nightflight on 20 February. On the same occasion, he and other directors w ill be there to describe the significance for their work of the fully digitized methods now possible. Having met Robert Cahen only once, and briefly at that, I am looking forward to this opportunity ofjointly presenting a retrospective o f his work in the video medium. Our interpreter will be Barbara Hahn, who has had close ties with the transmediale since 1990. Karine; Justeletemps; Voyage D'hiver; Dernier Adieu; Le Deuxieme Jour; Cartes Postales; Hong Kong Song; Septes Visions Fugitives