Spring Break
The Contemporary Museum traces media in the Broadcast
Issue date: 11/1/07
- Page 1 of 2 next >
Today we are not outspoken. Not about broadcast television or radio, that is. Broadcast media is drifting from our youth. Instead, we bob to iPod tunes and watch films on our laptops. We've embraced the Internet with fingers outstretched, perhaps because we can navigate and control our interaction with it.
There was a time, however, when people were not content with submitting to ideas because they were emitted to a grand audience; a time when people felt powerless in the face of its authority. Broadcast, at the Contemporary Museum (100 W. Center St.) is an exhibit that explores how artists since the 1960's have responded to the flagrant authority of broadcast, have understood the nature of media's power and intrusion, and how broadcast served as a venue for their own art.
An exhibition of 13 pieces, with production dates ranging from 1972 to 2007, Broadcast presents ÂÂÂartists of different engagements with media. Included are artists Siebren Versteeg (2003) and Nam June Paik (late '60's), whose manipulation of broadcast media undermines its authority. Versteeg's "CC" is an installation of a TV monitor that casts a loop of newscasters. Beneath the speaker, the closed captioning - streamed from blog entries - verbalizes intensely personal experiences and feelings, some quite Freudian.
The juxtaposition undermines the speaker's authority, reminding the onlooker of the humanity and fallibility behind the media. Paik's piece explores how film distortion of a Lyndon B. Johnson press conference can dehumanize the actors.
Other artists, including Chris Burden (1970's) and Doug Hall, Chip Lord and Jody Procter (1980), are artists who insert themselves into media, paradoxically using media to present their work, which then seeks to question authority and the role of media. Bromden created his own commercials, and Hall, Lord and Procter infiltrate a news show, and collaborate to create their own absurdist cast.
Also presented are seminal documentaries that are more focused on critiquing the governmental and commercial powers that exploit through media. TVTV's "Four More Years" is a "pioneering video collective" of the early '70's that candidly presents the Nixon campaign at the Republican Convention. Another collaborative effort, "Frequency Allocations," is a powerful, unostentatious presentation of the power of media conglomerates. The communication of its visual representation - the juxtaposition of lists, and the buildings and clouds - is capturing.
There was a time, however, when people were not content with submitting to ideas because they were emitted to a grand audience; a time when people felt powerless in the face of its authority. Broadcast, at the Contemporary Museum (100 W. Center St.) is an exhibit that explores how artists since the 1960's have responded to the flagrant authority of broadcast, have understood the nature of media's power and intrusion, and how broadcast served as a venue for their own art.
An exhibition of 13 pieces, with production dates ranging from 1972 to 2007, Broadcast presents ÂÂÂartists of different engagements with media. Included are artists Siebren Versteeg (2003) and Nam June Paik (late '60's), whose manipulation of broadcast media undermines its authority. Versteeg's "CC" is an installation of a TV monitor that casts a loop of newscasters. Beneath the speaker, the closed captioning - streamed from blog entries - verbalizes intensely personal experiences and feelings, some quite Freudian.
The juxtaposition undermines the speaker's authority, reminding the onlooker of the humanity and fallibility behind the media. Paik's piece explores how film distortion of a Lyndon B. Johnson press conference can dehumanize the actors.
Other artists, including Chris Burden (1970's) and Doug Hall, Chip Lord and Jody Procter (1980), are artists who insert themselves into media, paradoxically using media to present their work, which then seeks to question authority and the role of media. Bromden created his own commercials, and Hall, Lord and Procter infiltrate a news show, and collaborate to create their own absurdist cast.
Also presented are seminal documentaries that are more focused on critiquing the governmental and commercial powers that exploit through media. TVTV's "Four More Years" is a "pioneering video collective" of the early '70's that candidly presents the Nixon campaign at the Republican Convention. Another collaborative effort, "Frequency Allocations," is a powerful, unostentatious presentation of the power of media conglomerates. The communication of its visual representation - the juxtaposition of lists, and the buildings and clouds - is capturing.
Be the first to comment on this story