... Like no other medium, the music video-clip seems to be in an intense phase of transition: While some voices already interpret its increasingly limited presence in TV as a sign of its death, others prefer to see this as a development which they not only consider as consequent but also as granting a chance for new ways of the presentation and reception of the music video. Again others are reading the present situation as a moment where the video clip is about to split up into different, new forms which will then develop and evolve independently in the future.

However, it can´t be denied that the music video is marking our everyday-culture like perhaps no other medium: film, art, literature, adverts - in their aesthetics, their technical procedures, visual worlds and narrative strategies they all are clearly under the impact of the music video: be it that their protagonists are clearly marked by video clips, or that they even were resp. are directors of music videos (such as e.g. David Fincher, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze or Mark Romanek who are now working as movie-directors; others such as e.g. Chris Cunningham or Jonas Akerlund have firmly established themselves in the art world while artists such as Doug Aitken, Damien Hirst, Floria Sigismondi or David LaChapelle have been directing music videos).

A look into the past and on the antecedents of the music video moreover shows that the above mentioned signs of crisis and change seem to be an integral part of the history of this medium which thus, with the interruptions and strides in its development, does seem to have (had) not one, coherent history but rather several histories.

Thus, it appears to be of crucial importance to discuss the history/histories, the reception, the development of suited analytical methods as well as the general future of the music video, a goal the conference is aiming at by bringing together representatives from different disciplines. Hereby, its concept is based on the conviction that the writing of such a history (or histories) and the development of suited analytical tools have to be closely linked: Only a historical approach that has reflected upon the main aesthetic elements of the music video will be able to describe its genesis and development sufficiently. On the other hand only an analysis, aware of this genesis and development and thus endowed to draw upon this knowledge while discussing a clip, will be really suited.