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Posts tagged ‘media’
December 4, 2014  |  Collection & Exhibitions
Manipulating Cultural Material: Cut to Swipe
Dara Birnbaum. PM Magazine (detail). 1982. Four-channel video (color, three channels of stereo sound; 6:30 min.), two chromogenic prints, Speed Rail® structural support system, aluminum trim, one wall painted Chroma Key Blue, and one wall painted red, dimensions variable. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired with support from The Modern Women's Fund Committee, The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, and through the generosity of Ahmet Kocabiyik. © 2014 Dara Birnbaum. Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris. Installation view, Cut to Swipe, The Museum of Modern Art, October 11, 2014–March 22, 2015. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar

Dara Birnbaum. PM Magazine (detail). 1982. Four-channel video (color, three channels of stereo sound; 6:30 min.), two chromogenic prints, Speed Rail® structural support system, aluminum trim, one wall painted Chroma Key Blue, and one wall painted red, dimensions variable. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired with support from The Modern Women’s Fund Committee, The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, and through the generosity of Ahmet Kocabiyik. © 2014 Dara Birnbaum. Courtesy the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York and Paris. Installation view, Cut to Swipe, The Museum of Modern Art, October 11, 2014–March 22, 2015. Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar

There has been no shortage of commentators noting the effect of the increasing circulation of images on the development of artistic production. From the current “Art vs. Image” issue of Texte zur Kunst to Hito Steyerl’s influential 2009 essay “In Defense of the Poor image,” contemporary art’s concern with mobile images has grown with the proliferation of technologies that facilitate it, both hardware (laptops, smartphones) and software (Tumblr, Final Cut Pro).

June 20, 2014  |  Film
Inside Flaherty at MoMA: Turning the Inside Out—Duncan Campbell, Raqs Media Collective, and CAMP
It for Others. 2013. Great Britain. Directed by Duncan Campbell. Courtesy of Duncan Campbell and LUX, London

It for Others. 2013. Great Britain. Directed by Duncan Campbell. Courtesy of Duncan Campbell and LUX, London

I have been viewing many interesting film and media works by contemporary artists and filmmakers while attending the Flaherty Seminar at Colgate University in upstate New York. Three artists representing a cross section of the work presented at the Flaherty Seminar—and offering three different positions on form—will be at MoMA to discuss their work during a special Modern Mondays event

June 18, 2014  |  Collection & Exhibitions
Hito Steyerl’s HOW NOT TO BE SEEN: A F**king Didactic Educational .MOV File
Hito Steyerl. HOW NOT TO BE SEEN: A Fucking Didactic Educational .Mov File. 2013. Still image, single screen 1080p .mov file, 14min. © Hito Steyerl. Courtesy Wilfried Lentz Rotterdam

Hito Steyerl. HOW NOT TO BE SEEN: A Fucking Didactic Educational .Mov File. 2013. Still image, single screen 1080p .mov file, 14min. © Hito Steyerl. Courtesy Wilfried Lentz Rotterdam

I go to bed with my phone. It’s often the last thing I look at before falling asleep, and the first thing I touch in the morning. There’s no shortage of people thinking about this type of thing—technology-as-prosthesis or part-object—and its array of consequences, but few get to the heart of the matter quite like Hito Steyerl does.

May 22, 2014  |  Intern Chronicles
The Big Picture: Media Methods at Newseum

The entrance to Newsueum, Washington, DC. Image courtesy Newseum

The entrance to Newsueum, Washington, DC. Image courtesy Newseum

April in Washington, DC. Cherry blossoms, sunny weather, and an in-depth analysis of one of Washington’s top attractions: the Newseum. Boasting six levels, 15 theaters, and 16 exhibits, the Newseum is one of the largest museums I have ever been to. Functioning as an interactive learning experience and a production facility—Al-Jazeera America broadcasts from the building—the Newseum is structured in a radically different way than MoMA.

November 15, 2013  |  Collection & Exhibitions
Unwriting: Sarah Charlesworth

“This is real time, it is modern history in the making.”—Sarah Charlesworth on her work, Movie-Television-News-History, June 21, 1979

Documentation Diaries: Re-creating the Performance

Joan Jonas. Mirage (installation details). 1976/1994/2003. The Museum of Modern Art. Gift of Richard Massey, Clarissa Alcock Bronfman, Agnes Gund, and Committee on Media Funds. Photos: Sydney Briggs

When the Department of Media and Performance Art collects and exhibits time-based media or performance, caring for and properly installing such work is a collaboration between the artist and the Museum. Time-based media commonly uses video, film, audio, and computer programs as platforms for creativity. Often such artwork is digitally based, and it depends upon technology that may become obsolete. In the case of performance art, the ability to re-perform the work mainly relies on the artist’s memory, with the aid of documentation. Both time-based media and performance are therefore mediums in which individual works are often replicated, migrated, or emulated in order to ensure their continued existence.

January 25, 2010  |  Artists, Collection & Exhibitions
Joan Jonas: Synchronicity of Old and New
Yokohama Tobacco Shop

Tobacco shop in Yokohama, Japan. Photo: Azby Brown

At the moment Joan Jonas is on a residency at Kita-Kyushu in western Japan. She has worked in Japan several times since her first visit in 1970, when she bought a portable video camera and began her exploration of media art. The immediacy and reality of video entranced Joan. It was so unlike the stark artificiality of traditional Japanese theater. There, the actors moved at a glacial, mesmerizing pace across a spare stage, and the productions, often stretching over an entire day, made time dissolve. The formality and ritual of Japanese performance became integral to Joan’s work, as can be seen in Mirage, the installation currently on view in the Media Gallery. She wrote that Noh and Kabuki, the two poles-apart forms of traditional Japanese theater, taken together contain every idea that has ever been realized on a stage.