Martine Syms Lessons I-CLXXX 2014-18

Not on view

Lessons I–CLXXX is a visual poem composed of 180 video shorts that sift through everyday events, art, music, and popular culture to foreground core principles of the Black radical tradition. Featuring found footage from home videos, talk shows, sitcoms, memes, and YouTube, Lessons uses Max, a computer-programming language, to randomize the order of the segments. The algorithmic loops in this work refute the linear beginning, middle, and end of traditional storytelling, creating an ever-shifting cultural history. “I'm voracious with books, movies, TV,” Syms notes, “and I'm always interested in the way that different cultural values are presented or, in their absence, are present.”

Gallery label from Signals: How Video Transformed the World, March 5–July 8, 2023

Medium: 180 standard- and high-definition videos (color, sound)
Duration: 90 min. (30 sec. each)
Credit: Fund for the Twenty-First Century
Object number: 780.2017
Copyright: © 2024 Martine Syms
Department: Media and Performance

Martine Syms has 4 works online.
There are 2,049 videos online.

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