Transient Test2

Transient Curator’s Statement



This exhibition is a selection of video based

works curated exclusively through an online

video-sharing network. We have tried to

assemble a show that uses some of the

strengths of this relatively young medium:

ease of mobility, scalable presentation,

simultaneous presentation, documentary

power, and narrative power, to express both

new and traditional concerns about the human

experience.

This work has a switch: one of the internally

contradictory elements of work made with

video is that it’s presence can be an

overwhelming sensory overload while it is

“on” but then be gone when it is “off”, this

fleeting sort of presence creates a confusing

relationship to the institutions of fine art

which now house video artwork. Beyond

medium, what emerged in our selection

process were works with content that also

reflected temporal temporality moves through

the existential fact of death, from the

perspective of the individual, in pieces like

“on dying” and their neighbors in “observe”;

to the political fact of death and revolution in

“post newtonianism” and “I want to talk:

1956”; to the more abstract meditations on

change itself in “untitled”, “resonance”, and

“godot”. A sub-theme of this exhibition

challenges the nature of a personal or

institutional identity subject to change. In

“I want to become a seal” we find an

immigrant narrator who wishes to be broken

and rebuilt by an institution, losing his

identity to the strength of the NAVY. In “one”

we find 25 individuals, anonymously and

without knowledge of each other,

harmoniously and disharmoniously,

participating in an archetypal electric-guitar

right-of-passage. In “192:291” we see our

national boundaries in nuclear weapons tests.

In “108 bowls” we see our national

boundaries bridged by chiming rice-bowls.


(something about being time-centered but

space-less as forcing us to rethink how we

treat and display artwork)----Fine Art Video

continues a tradition that challenges the way

we think about the art object and the

institutions role in displaying them. In

choosing how this work would be displayed

in Gallery 31, we have attempted to

demonstrate a range of experiences from

public space to private spaces.


(maybe separate the institutional critique?)

----The museum and the gallery space are

public institutional entities; they are necessary

to uphold traditions and the unchanging, yet

through this engine of institution there runs

the ever-present combustion of culture; new

generations and emergent institutions (that is

over-metaphoric). This show is an attempt to

synthesize the actual-physical-presence

assumed to be the role of the traditional visual

-arts exhibition space with the dislocated,

ephemeral fact of new human vernaculars

(arty word ending?). We have chosen to

display the work in three simultaneous

formats:

1.) A reel of all of the selections is displayed,

as a theatre-style public experience, with

projectors, on the largest wall in the Gallery.

2.) Each individual piece is displayed, as a

home-style private experience, with dedicated

monitors and headsets, along all of the walls

of the Gallery.

3.) All of the videos are viewable from any

computer with internet access, at______

Attempts at perfection The dialectic: finite

transient universe Being and time?

Homelessness Storytelling/narrative archs,

themes, Documentation, fiction, reality-

television, surveillance How do institutions

protect great works of information? DC a city

of tradition and institution Nostalgia Critiques

of American culture? Vegas, Suburbs

Irreverent, spiritual, flippant, serious

International pastiche?

Transient Test

Transient Curator’s Statement
This exhibition is a selection of video based works curated exclusively through an online video-sharing network. We have tried to assemble a show that uses some of the strengths of this relatively young medium: ease of mobility, scalable presentation, simultaneous presentation, documentary power, and narrative power, to express both new and traditional concerns about the human experience.
This work has a switch: one of the internally contradictory elements of work made with video is that it’s presence can be an overwhelming sensory overload while it is “on” but then be gone when it is “off”, this fleeting sort of presence creates a confusing relationship to the institutions of fine art which now house video artwork.
Beyond medium, what emerged in our selection process were works with content that also reflected temporal

temporality moves through the existential fact of death, from the perspective of the individual, in pieces like “on dying” and their neighbors in “observe”; to the political fact of death and revolution in “post newtonianism” and “I want to talk: 1956”; to the more abstract meditations on change itself in “untitled”, “resonance”, and “godot”.
A sub-theme of this exhibition challenges the nature of a personal or institutional identity subject to change. In “I want to become a seal” we find an immigrant narrator who wishes to be broken and rebuilt by an institution, losing his identity to the strength of the NAVY. In “one” we find 25 individuals, anonymously and without knowledge of each other, harmoniously and disharmoniously, participating in an archetypal electric-guitar right-of-passage. In “192:291” we see our national boundaries in nuclear weapons tests. In “108 bowls” we see our national boundaries bridged by chiming rice-bowls.
(something about being time-centered but space-less as forcing us to rethink how we treat and display artwork)----Fine Art Video continues a tradition that challenges the way we think about the art object and the institutions role in displaying them. In choosing how this work would be displayed in Gallery 31, we have attempted to demonstrate a range of experiences from public space to private spaces.
(maybe separate the institutional critique?)----The museum and the gallery space are public institutional entities; they are necessary to uphold traditions and the unchanging, yet through this engine of institution there runs the ever-present combustion of culture; new generations and emergent institutions (that is over-metaphoric). This show is an attempt to synthesize the actual-physical-presence assumed to be the role of the traditional visual-arts exhibition space with the dislocated, ephemeral fact of new human vernaculars (arty word ending?).
We have chosen to display the work in three simultaneous formats:
1.) A reel of all of the selections is displayed, as a theatre-style public experience, with projectors, on the largest wall in the Gallery.
2.) Each individual piece is displayed, as a home-style private experience, with dedicated monitors and headsets, along all of the walls of the Gallery.
3.) All of the videos are viewable from any computer with internet access, at______

Attempts at perfection
The dialectic: finite transient universe
Being and time?
Homelessness
Storytelling/narrative archs, themes,
Documentation, fiction, reality-television, surveillance
How do institutions protect great works of information?
DC a city of tradition and institution
Nostalgia
Critiques of American culture? Vegas, Suburbs
Irreverent, spiritual, flippant, serious
International pastiche?