Dear ARLIS/NA:

 

I would like to announce the presence of the New Museum of Contemporary Art at the upcoming College Art Association Conference in Boston February 22-25th. Please come by our booth 624 in the Book and Trade Fair to find out more about our special products: the 11 DVD box set of video art Point of View: An Anthology of the Moving Image, the new media arts resource Rhizome.org, and our new  Library Service from the New Museum Store. 

 

In conjunction with our participation in the CAA Conference, we recently collaborated with the Boston-based art organization Lumen Eclipse in order to exhibit the works off Point of View: An Anthology of the Moving Image in Harvard Square. For the month of February, Lumen Eclipse will screen video pieces off the box set by Francis Alys, David Claerbout, Joan Jonas, Isaac Julien, William Kentridge, Pipilotti Rist, and Anri Sala from 5 am to 1 am daily on two plasma screens in the square. Please visit http://www.lumeneclipse.com <http://www.lumeneclipse.com>  for more information. 

 

I would also like to add that Point of View recently received a favorable review in the December issue of the ARLIS/ANZ Journal. Please see below for the article.

 

Hope to see you at CAA.

 

Ceci 

 

Ceci Moss

Sales Associate for Special Projects

New Museum of Contemporary Art

Tel. 212-219-1222 ext. 211

Fax. 212-431-5328

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Point of View: An Anthology of the Moving Image

New Museum of Contemporary Art

 

Review by Ben Goldsmith, Acting Head, Centre for Screen Studies and Research, Australian Film, Television and Radio School

 

This 11 DVD anthology of new video and digital art by some of the most acclaimed contemporary artists will be an extremely useful resource and a valuable acquisition for film school libraries as well as art colleges, museums, and universities. The collection accompanies a travelling exhibition of the same name, although it does not appear as though it will reach Australia in the near future.  This is a shame as the collection is a vivid snapshot of the state of the art in the early twenty-first century which deserves to reach a wide audience.  There is much here to stimulate practitioners in all media and provoke debate about the form and diversity of video art, and about the many issues - social, cultural and technological as well as artistic – which animate this work. 

 

Each disc comprises an art work, an interview with the artist, an image library of their previous work and a bibliography of criticism and commentary.  Unfortunately due to the limited print run (1500 copies) and the price (discounted institutional price US$700), the full collection was unavailable for review.  

 

I was however able to view the works successively, which brought my viewing experience closer to that of the gallery exhibition. While each is certainly strong enough to stand alone, when viewed together a number of correspondences and conversations across the works emerge to reward the viewer and clearly reveal the art of the curator. 

 

Most works appear to have been shot on digital cameras, but most eschew extensive digital effects beyond editing and sound mixing. This is not to suggest that these films do not display exploration or mastery of technique, rather to say that apart from Gary Hill’s Blind Spot, Isaac Julien’s Encore (Paradise Omerso: Redux), William Kentridge’s Automatic Writing and Pipilotti Rist’s I Want to See How You See, technique (in terms of the manipulation of the image after recording) for the most part is not made overt. 

 

There is a simple rawness and immediacy to works like Francis Alÿs’s El Gringo and Douglas Gordon’s Over My Shoulder which is at the core of their artistry and effect. The former uses handheld camerawork (deliberately un-steadicam) first to position the viewer as a tourist gazing across a landscape that is named (Hidalgo, Mexico) and dated (June 2003), then as an intruder first harassed then chased by a pack of dogs. The camera falls to the ground and lies on its side as the dogs close in and black out the image with their noses. As the film ends, only their sniffling is heard as if they are devouring the camera.  Over My Shoulder uses the deceptively simple device of filming close up from a static position a hand in a variety of poses and situations which invoke complex responses from an almost desperate (and always frustrated) desire to see what is tantalizingly suggested beyond the frame, to curiosity and a kind of repulsion at what is being mimed.  All the while wild sound (that is, sound recorded on location at the time of filming) of a recording of a xylophone version of a Beethoven symphony, and the jumbled sounds of a city adds to the sense of surreal ordinariness.  As in El Gringo, the viewer/camera is physically assaulted as the palm of a hand repeatedly slaps the lens.

 

David Claerbout’s Le Moment is a stripped back masterpiece of suspense, a real ripper of a film that evokes The Blair Witch Project with a nod to Bill Viola’s The Passions, and a surprise ending that brings the relief of laughter. Gary Hill’s Blind Spot also brought Viola’s work to mind, although it is far from derivative. A chance encounter with a man of North African appearance in a French city is slowed down, with black frames inserted between shots of the man first with his back to the camera, then as he turns and realizes its presence.  Initially stroboscopic and almost painful to watch, the cuts to black are progressively lengthened until finally almost thirty seconds of black separates images of the man. The viewer is given time to think and to observe not only what is on the screen, but how the eye regards and scans the image, that is, how we watch. 

 

There is poetry and beauty in Isaac Julien’s Encore (Paradise Omerus: Redux) which makes stunning use of Derek Walcott’s poetry and richly sonorous voice over images of the Caribbean island of St Lucia and a grey, presumably English city, to comment on histories of colonization and migration, and the meaning of ‘home’. William Kentridge’s Automatic Writing, is the only ‘traditional’ animation in the anthology. Almost photo-realistic drawings of buildings and impressionistic sketches of naked bodies are transformed through erasure and overwriting into letters and words which visualize and invite contemplation of the writer/artist’s creative process.

 

Then there is Paul McCarthy’s WGG Test (Wild Gone Girls), in which a handheld camera records a number of women in bikinis partying on a boat and taking turns to hack at a very human-looking leg with a hatchet.  The publicity material provided claims that McCarthy ‘questions the effects that violence and mutilation, both real and simulated, have on the viewer in contemporary culture’, but this compelling yet repulsive film also acts as a commentary on reality television culture and its fascination with ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Its title alludes to the American media brand Girls Gone Wild – an exemplar of what Ariel Levy calls ‘raunch culture’ – in which young women are induced to flash and pose suggestively for the camera in exchange for baseball hats and T-shirts.

 

The anthology also contains works by Pierre Huyghe (I Jedi), Joan Jonas (Waltz), and Anri Sala (Time after Time).  It will grace any archive or collection and should provide a wealth of stimulating material for teachers, students, and practitioners.