Stefaan Decostere (BE) makes media installations and produces documentaries for television . His programs on video art, dance and technology aim to establish a critical platform for discussing current developments in image, media and technological culture and the impact of media on our daily lives.
Stefaan Decostere studied film direction at the National Film School
RITS in Brussels. Finishing in 1978, he directed his first documentary
on Marcel Duchamp. From 1979 until 1998, he worked as director and
producer for the Arts Department of the Flemish Belgian Television (the
former BRTN). He was amongst a handful of truly innovative directors
working in television, creating new forms for increasingly complex
ideas. Decostere approached the television medium as a serious platform
for his specific ideas about media analysis, structural experimentation
and video-graphic creation. In his documentaries he became increasingly
critical of the medium he employed, a form of essay in which he
responded to codes that uphold mainstream television programming. His television documentaries include productions for
Belgian Television BRTN, co-productions for the Banff Center
for the Arts, CBS, Channel Four, INA, NOS, TVE and VPRO.
Central
to Decostere's journey of discovery towards a radical, new visual language was his creative use of editing. Because of this, even today, his
documentaries remain more than a report about their subject. Unlike
'normal' television productions, for the viewer, Decostere's programmes
offer a challenge. Because they approach themes and subjects from
several perspectives, or offer an opportunity for reflection and
introspection, they force the viewer to take an active stance.
Since 1990, some of Decostere's work for television leads to media installations: Tulips for Holland, (World Wide Video Festival, The Hague, 1994); Imperial TV, (ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, 1992); @Holyking, (Triple X, Amsterdam, 1995), and Warum 2.0 (STUK Leuven 2008, and V2_, Rotterdam, 2009).
In 1998, Stefaan Decostere founded Cargo vzw together with Margit Tamás.
In 1997, he published Angels in Hell for the V2_ publication TechnoMorphica. As part of the IFFR 2009, his work Warum 2.0 was exhibited at V2_.