50 Great Works of Video Art...

...that you can watch online.  I absolutely LOVE it when my students direct me to such useful spaces on the internet (thank you, Haley Bowen).  As the article says, "This collection should serve as a compact introduction to video art for anyone who’s uninitiated or a handy compilation for anyone who loves the medium but has some trouble finding the good stuff online."

Click HERE to access the page with video links.

Final post in fototazo's "How to Start a Project"

Mark Steinmetz

...and it's a good one.  Photographer Mark Steinmetz suggests that,

"people like to justify to themselves that the work they are doing is valid and it seems natural to use words to tell yourself that what you are doing is important and meaningful. But it’s important to not to too narrowly define what you’re doing through the use of language. People want to feel like they have a grip on things and so using words to make sense of what you’re doing might provide a feeling of relief and control but be careful you don’t make your project less interesting by having it fit neatly into a scheme of words. Images have a power that is different from the power of words and they communicate in ways that words cannot. In today’s culture, words dominate our thinking and, used in a lazy manner, they help sustain a spectrum of fundamentalist thought. Being able to accept ambiguity leads to a better quality of life and better work."

Click HERE to read the full essay.

Pipilotti Rist at Guangdong Times Museum in China

Mercy Mercy,Audio video installation,Music by：Heinz Rohrer,留涟 [Gentle Wave In Your Eye Fluid], Times Museum, Guangzhou, 2013,All works courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Luhring Augustine New York

An excerpt from the announcement on e-flux describes the exhibition as follows:  

"The Guangdong Times Museum is situated on the top floor of a residential tower. Rist has abandoned the lofty, unreachable stance of the art museum, re-envisioning it as a medium for transmitting her spirit to the masses. She has penetrated the substantial space of the art museum, extending her art into the museum garden and into the lives of the museum’s neighbors, creating the outdoor installations Innocent Lanterns. She uses mischievous methods to insert strangeness into the everyday lives of local residents. This “strangeness” is like a mote in your eye, drawing your attention to another side of reality, showing you the danger beneath the glamor.

Rist has also devised the 75-meter-long installation Mercy Mercy especially for Guangdong Times Museum, as well as creating artworks with locally sourced materials, such as Relax Your Eyeball, made with locally collected glass lenses. These artworks are the results of her exploratory visit to Guangzhou last year. Guangdong Times Museum is on the outskirts of Guangzhou, where the city meets the country. It is a microcosm of Chinese urbanization. Through the museum space, Rist has inserted her woven Technicolor world into the complex, contradictory and vibrant Chinese social reality."

Click HERE to visit the museum website.

New Photography 2013 @ MOMA

Lisa Oppenheim, Man holding large camera photographing a cataclysmic event, possibly a volcano erupting, 1908/2012 (Tiled Version 3). 2012

Another interesting selection this year.  One of the first reviews is in The New York Times today, and MOMA has a separate website for the exhibition including short, audio clips with the artists speaking about their work.

Click HERE to read the review.
Click HERE to visit the exhibition website.

Fototazo's How to Start a Project Series

© Brian Ulrich, Marshall Fields, 2009

Another great addition to this series from artist Brian Ulrich.  An excerpt from his contribution is below:

"My advice to students is to work a lot and enjoy working. After a time the project will pick you. Work is also not just using the camera but researching, reading, asking questions, critiquing, etc. Practice. Improvisation. Evaluation. We call it work because it is not easy and doesn’t necessarily get easier. The reward of this is the many small and big discoveries that are outside of what one knows and what one would know by just thinking about it all. I am still amazed by how focus and fidelity can function; I still marvel when I discover something out in the world entirely indicative of the multi-layered moment we live in; at how psyches and expressions change over time."

Click HERE to read the full article.

Live Performance to be viewed on YouTube in Real Time

Nicoline van Harskamp, European English Exercise, 2013. Courtesy the artist.

BMW Tate Live: Performance Room 2013
With Nicoline van Harskamp, Ragnar Kjartansson and Daniel Linehan
19 September, 24 October and 12 December 2013 at 20h BST
Watch live online: www.tate.org.uk/bmwtatelive

BMW Tate Live: Performance Room is a pioneering programme of live performances commissioned and conceived exclusively for online viewing and simultaneously seen by international audiences across world time zones. 

Audiences are invited to enter the online Performance Room via www.youtube.com/user/tate/tatelive at 20h in the UK and exactly the same moment across time zones on the specified dates—15h on the East Coast of America, 21h in mainland Europe and 23h in Russia. 

Theatrical Fields

Interesting review of an exhibition of film/video incorporating performance.
"Theatrical Fields examines forms of artistic practice that make use of the theatrical in performance, film and video. Developed as a research project by the curator Ute Meta Bauer, Theatrical Fields explores the analytical and political potential of theatricality through various manifestations ranging from an exhibition to public presentations, film programme to a live performance."  From E-flux

Joan Jonas, Lines in the Sand, 2002. Commissioned by documenta 11. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Werner Maschmann.

The Carnegie International Opens in October

2013 Carnegie International opening weekend

October 4–6, 2013

www.carnegieinternational.org/opening

...among the artists, is Zoe Strauss -

Zoe Strauss, Blast Furnace Matriarchy, Braddock, PA, 2012, from the series Homesteading, a multifaceted collaborative project based in Homestead, PA, and an installation of photographic prints and video projections at Carnegie Museum of Art; Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by Carnegie Museum of Art for the 2013 Carnegie International