Tastes, collections and video tapes
Tastes, collections and video tapes is an exhibition featuring 22 video works by 21 artists, all of them belonging either to the Contemporary Art Collection of the Regional Government of Madrid or other private collections in Madrid specialising in this medium.
Nicolas Bourriaud: “Nowadays, some works are time-specific, just as in the Sixties they began to be site-specific. The world has become a giant hard drive crammed with the images we take with any one of the numerous devices that allow us to record and keep them. Our daily reality is fashioned from these images or, as Derrida would have said, spectres".
The development and promotion of video art has been catapulted by the new low-cost -and widely distributed – technologies that have helped to publicise it in a much easier way even than going to see exhibitions: namely, at home, on the pc, when we have some time to spare. In the course of a few short years, video has escaped the constraints of the restricted and specialised field of contemporary art to become a universal medium. The internet has provided a dramatic impetus for this creative medium in that it allows works to be viewed immediately, on the spot, in files available online. Is this process – so widespread that it runs the risk of becoming banal – beneficial to video art? Does it improve our understanding of contemporary society? Does it enable us to engage with the artist and his ideas? It is not only a new aesthetic, it is the democratisation of the image.
Until a few years ago, working with video was very costly: a camera was a luxury item for students. Nowadays it is clearly much cheaper and a medium that many artists can take up without having to think twice about it. Meanwhile, making pieces with high production costs, almost on a par with those in the film world, is beginning to be a standard procedure in video art.
Artists look back at what has happened throughout history in order to work forwards. However, in the case of video artists, for the first time we are seeing that they are probably studying the history of film rather than the history of art; that some of them are more interested in film than art, and that their masters come from a different genre - cinematography – which in video creation fuses with art. Julian Rosefeldt explains it as follows: “I prefer working with film in the context of art, because you have so much more freedom".
This exhibition brings together a selection of artists – both national and international – whose works represent a broad spectrum of aesthetic languages and, as a collection of samples, definitively characterise the current evolution of contemporary video art. The works are grouped for display under three thematic headings: Domestic Landscapes and Other Interiors, On the Streets of the World and Cultural Exchanges.
ARTISTS. Domestic Landscapes and Other Interiors
Terry Berkowitz & Pawel Wojtasik, Three Chimneys, 2006, 4'03''
Nuria Carrasco, ¿Quién eres?, 2004, 10'
Cao Guimaraes, Da janela do meu quarto, 2004, 5'
Hans Hemmert, The handbag, 2002, 43’’
Zilla Leutenegger, Nostigels, 2003, 4’
Thiago Rocha Pitta, Herança, 2007, 11’
Hiraki Sawa, 8 Minutes, 2005, 8’49’’
Fiona Tan, Rain, 2001, 1’50’’
ARTISTS. On the Streets of the World
Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Signs facing the sky, 2005, 2’23’’
Alex Campoy, Boomerang, 2004, 6'35''
Filipa César, Berlin Zoo Part 02, 2001-2003, 5’37’’
Willie Doherty, Control Zone, 1999, 32’2’’
Francesco Jodice, Sao Paulo Citytellers, 2006, 48'
Yoshua Okon, Poli IV (Oríllese a la orilla), 1999, 3’
Robin Rhode, The Storyteller, 2006, 13’18’’
ARTISTS. Cultural Exchanges
Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Sweat Glands, Sweat Lands, 2006, 2’27’’
Isaac Julien, True North, 2004, 14´40”
Kaoru Katayama, Technocharro, 2004, 5’35’’
Christian Marclay, Guitar Drag, 2000, 14’
Aernout Mik, Middlemen, 2001, 21’29’’
Jill Miller, I am making Art too, 2003, 3'
Julian Rosefeldt, Lonely Planet, 2006. 16’18’’
COLLECTIONS
Contemporary Art Collection of the Regional Government of Madrid
Teresa Sapey
Pi Fernandino
Helga de Alvear
Fundación Arco