Quick takes on video viewed
as art in Contemporary
Museum show
By Tim Ryan
Star-Bulletin
"New Video from Great Britain," a video art presentation at The Contemporary Museum beginning tomorrow, features a two-hour program that highlights the recent wave of video from the young BritArt generation.
The exhibit comprises 21 short tapes made between 1993 and 1997, that will run continuously during museum hours.
The videos reflect a surge of interest in video and a trend among British artists toward low budget, low-tech conceptual and performance-based works, according to Ann Brandman, coordinator of the museum program.
She described the videos as "rough around the edges," reflective of early Body Art work video from the 1970s.
The videos are simply and spontaneously filmed, often with a home camcorder, dealing with themes of the body, identity, self-image, and sometimes, the darker realms of the psyche. The program contains imagery such as nudity and self-mutilation that may be "difficult" for some people to watch, Brandman said.
The video presentation originally was curated by Steven Bode, director of the Film and Video Umbrella in London, and screened last winter at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Included are works by Douglas Gordon, winner of the Guggenheim Museum's 1998 Hugo Boss Prize and Britain's 1996 Turner Prize; 1997 Turner Prize winner, Gillian Wearing; and Sam Taylor-Wood, whose art also is on exhibition as part of Brooklyn Museum's controversial "Sensations" show.
THE PROGRAMS ARE:
"Hands" by Edward Lipski; 1993; 5 minutes. The every day action of someone fidgeting with his or her cuffs is magnified through repetition. This is one of a number of works in which a bodily tic or gesture is isolated and observed.
"Necking" by Monika Oechsler; 1997; 2 minutes. Oechsler has made a number of videos that explore the dynamics of group behavior, especially among adolescent girls. In this tape, a traditional playground game becomes a site of peer interaction, shyness and sexuality.
"Brontosaurus" by Sam Taylor-Wood; 1995; 10 minutes. A blissed-out clubber gyrates to music in his bedroom. The slowed-down footage imbues the dancer's rush of abandoned excitement with intimations of loss and mortality.
"Tape" by Stephanie Smith and Edward Stewart; 1996; 4 minutes. This work provides a humorous slant on the themes of intimacy and separation.
"Untitled: Clothes" by Mark Dickenson; 1995; 18 minutes. Sifting through a roomful of discarded second-hand clothes, Dickenson painstakingly dresses himself in item after item, fastening layer upon layer, until his body, barely recognizable, finally collapses under the burden.
"Hiding" by Anne-Marie Copestake; 1997; 3 minutes. The story transports viewers to a childhood world of hide-and-seek games, an example of the humor and nostalgia that can be extracted from the mundane.
"Monster Sketch" by Douglas Gordon; 1996; 7 minutes. This party-trick rendition of the myth of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, has Gordon transforming himself with the aid of strategically applied Scotch tape.
"Other People's Clothes" by Janie Nicoll; 1996; 6 minutes. A fly-on-the-wall video sketch of Nicoll trying others' outfits. An engaging reminder of the mutability of identity and the importance of the seemingly inconsequential.
"Je reviens bientot" by Yael Feldman; 1995. Like an isolated moment from an imaginary movie, suggests all manner of possible narratives.
"Life-Size Box" by John Wood and Paul Harrison; 1997; 5 minutes. In a series of carefully choreographed sequences that are more like extended sight gags, Wood and Harrison create a number of simple tableaux that are completed by the presence of one of the performers.
"Hypnotic Suggestion '505' " by Jane and Louise Wilson; 1995; 15 minutes. The Wilsons undergo hypnosis at the hands of two strangers in a piece that reflects the twin sisters' preoccupation with the paranormal.
"Hot Music" by Sean Dower; 1995; 4 minutes. Deadpan karaoke features air-drummer Sean Dower and an accompanying beat-box.
"Amami Se Vuoi" by Michael Curran; 1994; 4 minutes. A graphic, shocking encounter that offers a disturbing illustration of the thin line between desire and abuse.
"Sine" by Gillian Dyson; 1996; 7 minutes. Dyson tests the limits of her own and her audience's endurance by pressing her tongue against a white wall until bleeds.
"Notes on Pronunciation" by Roderick Buchanan; 1996; 3 minutes. Glasgow artist Buchanan asks residents of various countries to try pronouncing a selection of familiar and foreign names. The tape articulates the intricacies of cultural difference.
"Test" by Phillip Lai; 1994; 5 minutes. The camera records a disembodied hand clenching and unclenching in an attempt to shake off a hardening layer of mysterious white foam.
"Boat" by John Wood and Paul Harrison; 1995; 1 minute. The duo sit together in a rudimentary "boat," their happy-go-lucky rocking motion playing mischievous games with the boxed-off space of the screen until they go a little bit too far.
"Jetsam" by Alan Currall; 1996; 6 minutes. Currall ruminates on art, life, and intergalactic travel to droll and disarming effect.
"Ex" by Stephanie Smith and Edward Stewart; 1997; 3 minutes. In a succession of close-ups, Smith extracts impossibly long trails of bandage from Stewart's mouth.
"I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" by Gillian Wearing; 1995; 3 minutes. An early single-screen work by Turner Prize winner Wearing, who patches together a number of "vox pop" performances into a pastiche of musical and social harmony.
"So Long Babe" by Georgina Starr; 1996; 2 minutes. Starr hovers above the city skyline like a cartoon super heroine to the kitschy accompaniment of a country and western tune.
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