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The Cinematic in Expanded Fields at the 54th Venice Biennale

 
Justine Grace
Everybody is concerned about time, we never have enough time to do anything,
  and especially to see art in Venice there is so much art to see, and so little time.    
– Christian Marclay

The sticky humidity of Venice’s first summer days, the arty types and hipsters visible
down the labyrinthine streets with colourful show bags of the national pavilions in hand
and the overheard conversations of what one has visited, must see and should avoid:
welcome to the vernissage of the 54th Venice Biennale (December 2011-February 2012).
Always an exciting event, this year’s Biennale promised to be a bumper edition with 83
artists in the main exhibition, 89 national pavilions and 37 collateral events. The sheer
volume of art to visit was almost dizzying, turning the islands of Venice into somewhat of
a theatrical spectacle, with artists, patrons, gallerists and journalists frenetically moving
from one work to the next, as if trying to capture all the art on show like a child’s game of    
scavenger hunt. Despite the frantic energy that buzzed in the air, most of the works on
show – and indeed some of the queues to enter the national pavilions (I spent two and
half hours waiting to see Mike Nelson in the UK pavilion) – demanded just the opposite.
The predominance of durational works and theatrical environments required time from
the audience, defying the hurried spectator and their rigid viewing schedules. A recurrent
feature that was epitomised by Christian Marclay’s The Clock (winner of the Golden Lion
prize): a twenty-four hour film that took the passing of time as its subject matter, where
the minutes of the day were portrayed through moments taken from cinema history.
    

Christian Marclay, The Clock, 2010, edition of 6, Single-channel video, 24 hours. Courtesy the Artist
and White Cube, London and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.
   

What stood out at for me at this year’s Biennale was not only the quasi-ubiquity of video    

art and experimental film, but the notion of expanded cinematic situations. I mean three  
things by this. The first aspect concerns the conscious dismantling of distinct cinematic  
modes (fictional narrative versus documentary, for example) to establish new creative
possibilities for political discourse, and to destabilise conventional forms of journalism.  

The second aspect relates to material expansion in physical space: the ways in which  
artists utilised the structure of the movie theatre and the accoutrements of the more  
traditional arts, such as sculpture, to construct immersive and theatrical environments.
 
The final aspect refers to the use of innovative exhibition frameworks for the presentation
of video art, in order to query spectatorial conventions and the formulaic parameters of  
the institution. Although, as the art world elite has come to expect, the major pavilions –  
United States, Germany and the United Kingdom – did not fail to impress, it was for me
 
some of the so-called ‘emerging’ nations, main exhibition artists and collateral events
spotted around the island that provided some of the most poignant messages and  
innovative examples of experimental film and video art.  
 
 
Dialectics of Cinematic Modes
This year’s theme was ILLUMInations, which incorporated, for the curator Bice Curiger,  
the classical theme of light in art as well as both the socio-political dimensions of the real  
world and the distinctive character of the Venice Biennale with its national pavilions.
Indeed, socio-political questions and explorations of nationhood fueled much of the video 1. Taysir Batniji’s work GH0809
consisted of 20 digital colour prints on
art on display, from Yael Bartana’s filmic trilogy ... and Europe will be stunned, revolving A4 paper and were exhibited as part of
around the imagined Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland calling for the return of the the pan-Arab show The Future of a
Promise curated by Lina Lazaar.
Jews to mainland Europe, to Han Hoogerbrugge’s absurd animation Quatrosupus
exploring the struggles of free speech. The overarching presence of contemporary political
discourse is hardly surprising, considering the recent civil unrest in North Africa and the
Middle East, the West’s ongoing presence in many of these countries, and the debates
revolving around the limits of freedom (speech, dress and religion) that have
characterised the European political landscape in recent times. However, more than
simply documenting such events or discourses, artists like Taysir Batniji – whose
advertisements from an illusory real estate company GH0809 (an abbreviation of Gaza
Houses 2008-2009) paired the lexicon of real estate classifieds with documentary
photographs of bombed-out houses in Gaza – explored more expressive means of
communicating the political to reveal latent truths and question the authority of prevailing
hegemonies. (1)
 
The fraught position of the West in the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was subtly
evoked in Omer Fast’s film, Five Thousand Feet is the Best (2010), located in the central
pavilion of the Giardini. Utilising the Situationist technique of détournement, Fast
juxtaposed an actual interview with a Predator drone sensor operator (predator drones
are unmanned aerial vehicles flown by remote control, today the primary means of
offensive operations by America) with a fictional narrative that dramatised the operator’s
rambling musings about an attack on civilians and militants. The interview, held in a
dimly lit hotel room, was seamlessly woven together with aerial views of a city at night
and the narrative of an American family going on a weekend holiday.

Shot from the ground, the fictional story follows the family’s journey from their home in    
the suburban streets, through an occupying army’s checkpoint on the outskirts of town,
and past a small group of resistance fighters burying explosives in the scrubland. After  
the family gingerly passes the fighters, the perspective shifts to an aerial view, as seen
(we suppose) from the viewfinder of a predator drone. (It is worth noting the uncanny  
formal parallels between this aspect of Fast’s film and Jananne Al-Ani’s digital video
Shadow Sites II, which documents an aerial journey across the Middle Eastern
 
landscape.) The film ends with a rocket attack on the family and resistance fighters but,
despite the supposed fatality of the attack, we see the absurdly contrived spectacle of the
family members peeling themselves away from the wreckage and walking out of the
 
scene. The overall effect of splicing the factual with the fictional also brings into focus the 2. Another contemporary example of
disjunction between what the drone pilot recounts as his experience (computer reality) blurring the distinction between fiction
and the experience of civilians on the ground (actuality of war). The film, in effect, mimics and documentary is Oliver Laxe’s
Moroccan film You Are All Captains,
the twofold character of contemporary – American – combat. The war in Afghanistan is which won the international critics prize
certainly ‘real’ (as the 1271 civilian deaths in 2010 alone attest), nonetheless the at the Cannes Film Festival in 2010.
deployment of Predator drones, much like a video game, transposes the actuality of war
to the level of a detached simulacrum. Fast manipulates the categories of audiovisual
modes such as the journalistic interview to question where reality resides and whose
reality actually counts. It is not the answers that preoccupy the artist, but rather the
framework that makes such questions possible. (2)

   

Omer Fast, The Tunnel, 2010, film still by Yon Thomas. Courtesy of the artist.    

A similar juxtaposition of modes was used in the contribution for the Egyptian pavilion,   3. Ahmedy Basiouny, Egypt, 30 Days of
Running in the Place, ILLUMInations
which brought together video documentation from Ahmed Basiony’s performance 30 Days exhibition catalogue, Venice: Marsilio
Running in the Place (2010) with documentary footage captured by the artist, on his Editore, 2011, p. 350.
phone, of the Egyptian uprisings (2011) in downtown Cairo. While documenting these  
events, Basiony was killed by snipers on January 28, 2011 in Tahrir Square, dying at age
 
32. (3) In the pavilion, five screens were buttressed against each other, floor to ceiling,
confronting the viewer with alternating scenes from the performance and the protests.  

The performance was played out in a transparent square structure, transforming the act  
of running into a visual schema of digital codes through sensors installed on Basiony’s
body and shoes that calculated the heat he generated and the number of steps he took.
By splicing the documentation of the art performance with journalistic footage of civil
resistance, the contrast encompassed by the two sets of film sequences – futile
movement and progress, stasis and emergency, rule and revolution – was visualised to
full, dramatic effect. It is an opposition that also alters the historical significance of
Basiony’s performance. In light of the revolution, the static movement of 30 Days
Running in the Place takes on a quasi-iconic status within the fabric of Egyptian
contemporary culture and society, as if presaging the explosion of revolutionary energy
after thirty years of dictatorial rule. Likewise, the phone camera footage takes on a
dramatic poignancy within the context of the pavilion, both foreshadowing and now
framing the artist’s martyrdom. Similarly to the German Pavilion, which featured the late
Christoph Schlingensief  (winner of the golden Lion for Best National Pavilion), the
exhibition of Basiony’s work had a memorial and perhaps even cathartic element that
provided a space to reflect not just on art, but on the life of an artist and a nation.

The documentary vein was also seen in Mohammed Bourouissa’s two-channel projection
Boloss, screened within the Arsenale. Playing with the codes of documentary and images
obtained by security cameras, the two projections cover a poker game that is
interspersed with interviews with the players. The projected sequences move between
inside shots of the card table and outside views of a cramped courtyard filled with youths
who are not permitted inside. The films follow the question of someone cheating,
although it seems, through the sequence of interviews, that the act of cheating is not
limited to the card table. The uneasy confusion and disorder of the films was also
reflected in the site of its exhibition. The screens were located alongside other works in an
open and nondescript space, which allowed for the sounds of the gallery – the
conversations and comings and goings of the public – to mingle with the dialogue of the
films. What would normally be a distracting cacophony heightened the disorienting nature    
of Bourouissa’s work.
 
Cinematic Theatre and the Neo-Liberal Marketplace
Another distinguishing feature of the Biennale was the construction of cinematic theatre:
the combination of more traditional art objects with the screening of film to create total
environments. Such works were distinguished, in my view, from the tradition of
installation art by the move away from the conceptual experience of space, as expressed
by artists such as Mike Nelson, to a greater focus on enhancing the screening of the film
by drawing attention to the figurative elements of the narrative experience. The
constructed environment revolved around the film, rather than the film being subsumed
as one of many elements in an installation.

The Belgium artist Hans Op De Beeck consistently works in different mediums such as   4. This URL, accessed 28 June 2011.

sculpture, video, photography and animation, often with a focus on combining the various  
artistic elements to create immersive environments. As part of the curated show One of a  
Thousand Ways to Defeat Entropy, Op De Beeck presented the work Location (7), which
 
forms part of an ongoing series of large-scale and experience-based sculptural
installations. (4) Although there was no film actually present, the construction of the work  
utilised the apparatus of the cinema, and the experience of the piece was less about the  
conceptualisation of space than it was about the subject of mortality: a narrative on the
 
tragedy of life.
   
Located at the back of the expansive Arsenale Novissimo, viewers climbed stairs to enter
a darkened studio apartment furnished with a bed, chesterfield lounge, kitchen sink and
the general debris of an abandoned human existence. The entire scene was made out of a
soft grey plaster that recalled the ash-covered artifacts of excavated Pompeii; a memento
mori where the once vital substance of the everyday was transformed into a moribund
stasis. A window, a cinematic screen of sorts, provided the frame for a courtyard vista: a
fountain encircled by fairy lights and two long wooden tables scattered with ashtrays,
bottles and candlestick stubs, all of which were made with the same grey plaster as the
interior. The heavy notes of Serge Lacroix’s music punctuated the melancholic air, further
heightening the cinematic effect. The overall impression of the piece was like a short film
loop, the plumes of water continuously flowing from the fountain being the only
movement in an otherwise static scene. There was a sense, sitting on the lounge and
looking out at the mise en scène, that we were not just spectators watching a fragment
from a stranger’s discarded life, but rather made privy – a witness – to our own mortality.

   

Hans Op de Beeck, Location (7), 2011, sculptural installation, mixed media, sound, light, 500 x
1800 x 850 cm. Courtesy the Artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.
   

The use of traditional art objects alongside the presentation of film was prevalent in many    

of the exhibitions, especially exemplified by two artists, Nathaniel Mellors and Anton  
Ginzburg. In Illuminations, Mellors exhibited Parts One and Two of his absurdist film  
series Ourhouse (2010-present). Following the structure of a standard television drama
and loosely based on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema (1968), the series explores the  

relationship between language and power. The drama is set within the country manor of  
the Maddox-Wilson family and follows its breakdown after an unexpected visitor – ‘the  
object’ – invades the house, consuming books and effectively taking control of rational
 
language and action. Parts One and Two were shown in different rooms, separated by 5. This URL, accessed 28 June 2011
another exhibition space in which Mellors exhibited his animatronic sculpture Hippy  
Dialectics (Ourhouse) and a new series of colour photograms, Venus of Truson  
(Prehistoric, Photogrammic Originals). The sculptures depict the character Charles ‘Daddy’
Maddox-Wilson doubled and joined together by his own hair. The photogram portrays an 6. Anton Ginzburg, At the Back of the
North Wind, collateral event of the 54th
image of The Venus of Hohle Fels, a copy of which appears in the film. (5) By translating International Art Exhibition La Biennale
characters and items from the film into extra-filmic objects, Mellors projects the story into di Venezia, press release, 2011.
the viewer’s physical space.
 
Anton Ginzburg’s multifaceted work At the Back of the North Wind revolved around the
forty-five minute film Hyperborea, a mythical region that exists ‘beyond the Boreas’
(beyond the North Wind). The film is a poetic record of a three-part journey that Ginzburg
took, commencing in the American North West (Astoria, Oregon), continuing to St.
Petersburg and then to the White Sea. (6) The film was surrounded by a body of work
including photos, drawings, sculptures and bas-reliefs that functioned like the found
objects of an archeologist, the research notes of an historian or the photographic
documentation of an anthropologist. More than embellishments, they gave a physical
presence to the film and a sense of ‘realness’ to Ginzburg’s exploration of the
mythological land of Hyperborea.

   

Anton Ginzburg, At the Back of the North Wind, 2011, Archival digital print, 58.5 x 76cm (framed)
from ‘Hyperborea series’. Courtesy of the artist.
   
Beyond adding a sense of the tangible to the film experience, how might we approach the
combination of film and more traditional art objects? Do these objects really contribute to
our experience and understanding of film, or is there something else at play? In the first
part of my exploration of the cinema/art relationship, I discussed Michel Chevalier’s
critical framework for approaching emergent trends of video presentation in the gallery.
One of the three positions that he delineated was the Duchampian remix strategy, where
traditional art objects (or what Chevalier refers to as commodities) accompany the
presentation of film. For Chevalier, this strategy is less about the experiential and more
about subverting the ‘non-sellable’ art film. Unlike traditional modes of cultural production
that through their ‘uniqueness’ can ask for a high price on the art market, the earning
power of film art – which unlike populist cinema cannot even count on box office ticket
sales – is almost non-existent. The relative unsellability of film art is a fact that holds true
now more than ever (even with artificial means of inscribing value such as the limited
edition). Considering the continuing rise of online distribution (both legal and illegal), the
increased accessibility and speed of file sharing networks, and the normalisation (and
acceptance within the public sphere) of decreased image quality that these new channels
of distribution perpetuate, who would actually purchase film art?
 
Chevalier’s argument that artists should utilise the fetishistic objects of sculpture, painting
or photography as the means to re-inscribe their film art within the neo-liberal
   
marketplace has some foundation in recent art practice. For example, Mellors’ colour
photograms for Venus of Truson were made to accompany the screening of Ourhouse at
London’s Institute of Contemporary Art with the distinct purpose of being sold (£550 for
non-members). However, it seems to me that the use of fine art objects creates a spatial
experience of film that subverts both the one-dimensional screening experience, as well
as the ubiquitous availability of film art on the Internet. Artists like Anton Ginzburg and
Ryan Trecartin do not shy away from the possibilities of distribution provided by the
Internet; they make their work freely accessible. This does not, however, necessarily
reduce public interest when they do exhibit within the framework of a gallery, film festival
or biennale. Both artists create sculptural environments for their films, which expand
upon the narratives and provide a heightened sensory experience that is markedly
different from the downloaded file on a laptop. Embedding the film within a sculptural
environment turns the screen-as-window into a looking glass, inviting us to step into, and
be part of, a constructed world.
 
The Cinema/The Gallery
In a recent interview, Kenneth Goldsmith, the founder and main curator of UbuWeb,
stated:

Galleries are a really bad place to watch video, I usually never feel like seeing it,
even if they have comfortable couches. The exception has been the new Christian 7. Kenneth Goldsmith interviewed by
Geir Haraldseth, ‘The Robin Hood of
  Marclay piece, The Clock (2010) ... what they have done there is to turn the Paula   the Avant-Garde’, Kunstkritikk, 2 March
Cooper gallery into a movie theatre, with seats in a black room and couches, and 2011.
it’s wonderful. (7)
The above statement neatly encapsulates the enduring view that art galleries are often
not the most conducive environments to watch film or video, and that when the gallery
does provide a comfortable environment it is through, as Adrian Martin elucidates,
‘especially constructed black boxes: little havens of the cinema-apparatus’. (8) But is this
white cube/black box dichotomy really indicative of – and helpful to understanding –
contemporary viewing practices any longer? 8. Adrian Martin, ‘The Imperfect Light:
  Cinema and the Gallery’, Secuencias,
32, pp. 89-106. I must admit that
What struck me attending both the Venice Biennale and the International Film Festival Marclay’s The Clock certainly seized
Rotterdam were the ways in which artists and filmmakers consciously transcended what me with the promise of comfortable
lounges and the enveloping calm of a
has become – at least in terms of the neo-liberal marketplace and through the role of
  cinema-like space at the end of the
institutional framing – an entrenched distinction between art and cinema. Indeed, many arduous journey of Arsenale’s
exhibition halls.
of the artists and filmmakers screened/exhibited at both events, including Hans Op De
Beeck, Harmony Korine and Ari Marcopolus, and others such as Yi Zhou and Yang Fudong,  
consistently cross the cinema/art divide, exhibiting at both film festivals and art fairs,
 
cinemas and galleries. In addition, with the continuing rise and success of websites such
as UbuWeb and Vimeo, and as artists/filmmakers such as Ryan Trecartin, Anton Ginzburg,
Tommy Pallotta and Bregjte van de Haak increasingly negate traditional viewing platforms
and modes of distribution, the white cube/black box dichotomy seems to me an ever less
satisfactory model through which to approach and consider experimental film, video and
media art.

As part of this trend, the third prevalent feature running through the Biennale was the    

use of innovative exhibition and screening formats to challenge institutional conventions,  

spectatorial expectations and traditional notions of contemplation. These examples from  
the Biennale address the relationship between cinema and art (as did the Rotterdam 2011
 
works), but also point to some new directions in the presentation of audiovisual work.
   
The Spanish artist Mabel Palacín represented the Catalan and Balearic Islands in the  
collateral event entitled 180° (an allusion to the 180-degree rule of cinema, which seeks
 
to maintain a coherent, singular relationship between reality, the image and the
spectator). Palacín’s contribution was a media installation that explored the relationship  
between the static and moving image, and was constructed with three different media 9. This URL, accessed 1 August 2011.
elements. Palacín took as her starting point a photograph that showed a majestic vista of
buildings stretching out along a waterfront in Venice. The second component was a video
of the photograph, scanning across the still image to explore and reveal various mini-
narratives: the comings and goings of people, their interactions, and the objects and
tasks that make up everyday life. The final aspect was a series of five small monitors that
showed films shot from the rooftops of Venice, ‘functioning as vanishing points, they were
obtained through various recording media, in high and low quality, [and] initiated a
dialogue between different characters based on the main building featured in the project’.
(9) The series of works dislocates the coherency of the 180-degree rule, displacing the
singular viewpoint and providing new ways of seeing. The three elements establish a
complex, but nevertheless non-hierarchical perspective that mirrors the proliferation of
images on the Internet, where events such as the Egyptian uprisings become the domain
of the collective rather than a singular authoritarian vision.

   

Mabel Palacín, 180°, 2011, photograph. Courtesy of the artist and Institut Ramon Llull.    

One of the predominant issues in any discussion regarding cinema and art is the use (or    

misuse) of light. The Chinese artist Yi Zhou consciously engaged with the principle of  
illumination, but utilised it in a way that defied our expectations. The curators Achille  
Bonito Oliva and Chang Tsong-zung brought together Zhou’s eight most recent short
films: DVF (2011), Unexpected Hero (2011), Labyrinth (2011), My Heart Laid Bare  

(2011), Big Feet (2010), The Greatness (2010), The Ear (2009) and Hear, Earth, Heart  
(2008) for one of the Biennale’s collateral events entitled Days of Yi. The films were  
projected onto three different walls of the Spiazzi gallery with each screen playing in a
 
continuous loop, so that the sounds and moving images were interacting, reflecting and
reinforcing the recurrent motifs across Zhou’s œuvre. The visitor’s movement around the  
space was punctuated by some icons from the films (similar to the Ginzburg installation  
discussed above) such as the balloon-shaped Bottle in a Rice Field and the Pharrell Vase,  
which were both constructed in Murano glass.
10. Yi Zhou, Days of Yi, collateral event
 
of the 54th International Art Exhibition
Perhaps the most striking feature of Zhou’s exhibition was her conscious decision to flood La Biennale di Venezia, press release,
the projection spaces with natural light, which at times illuminated her films almost to the 2011.
point of obscurity. On first entering the space, the excess of light was somewhat
disconcerting, forcing us to strain to make out the imagery of her surreal animations.
However, the light also created additional layers of meaning that subtly pointed to Zhou’s
extra-aesthetic concerns. On the one hand, her negation of darkness added to the fantasy
and dream-like quality of her work – as if we couldn’t be sure the films were really there,
unable to entirely capture her complex visual language and the unfolding dream
sequences. On the other hand, as the projections merged with the crumbly, whitewashed
walls of the Spiazzi gallery, Zhou also seemed to call attention to the inherent flatness of
the cinematic image, a reminder that we are not looking through a window, but onto a
flat surface – a wall. These quasi-opposing functions reflect the underlying contrasts that
drive her aesthetic, the ‘limits between dream and reality, imagination and madness,
truth and lies, and life after death’. (10)

   

Yi Zhou, The Greatness, film still, digital 3D animation. Courtesy of the artist and Contrasts gallery.    
Placing video within social spaces as a means to enlarge the scope of the audience   11. Scott McQuire, The Media City:
Media, Architecture and Urban Space
beyond the gallery-going elite is not a new phenomenon; it dates back to the late 1970s (Los Angeles: Sage Publications,
and early ‘80s with works such as Jenny Holzer’s Sign on a Truck (1984). Scott McQuire 2008), p. 130.
has observed, too, that ‘the migration of electronic screens into the cityscape has become  
one of the most visible and influential tendencies of contemporary urbanism’. (11)
 
Working within this contemporary tradition of urban digital screens, but expanding upon it
in a way that both addresses the liminal space between the private and the public and  
what I consider the millennial generation’s increasing desire for interconnectivity, were  
two interesting examples at the Biennale: Dropstuff and Commercial Break.  
 
 
Dropstuff is an ongoing Dutch project that explores the medium of the urban screen.
Three screens were positioned around the island of Venice and three across the  
Netherlands, with each presenting a selection of six artistic games by interactive media 12. McQuire, The Media City, p. 132.
collectives such as Zesbaans and Monobanda. What was particularly fascinating was the
 
way public engagement – the public, by logging on via their phone or the Internet, could
influence the games and play against each other – drove the content and flow of imagery.  
Although the contribution was somewhat limited by the quality of the image and its visual  
aesthetic – based on simplified graphics that recalled the form and style of video games
 
from the 1980s (a similar problem marked Maki Ueda’s Palm Top Theatre in Rotterdam) –
it also demonstrated the presence of a new generation of artists who approach the  
audience in a direct manner, getting out of the four walls to create interactive art and film 13. This URL.
in public spaces. An example of the way new media technologies can offer what McQuire
 
terms ‘more participatory and inclusive forms of mediated pubic space’. (12)
   
Seeking a similar sort of public engagement – but presenting a series of films or moving  
images that drew upon the complex history of art, cinema and the image – was POST
 
Pavilion: Commercial Break, a video art intervention presenting artist’s films, curated by
Neville Wakefield and created in conjunction with Moscow’s Garage Center for  
Contemporary Culture. During the vernissage, it was supposed to be exhibited as a giant  
floating video screen through the waterways of Venice; however, at the last minute this  
was unexpectedly cancelled, and instead the videos were shown at the opening party. For
 
the five-month duration of the Biennale it was also accessible as an iPAD app by POST
magazine (the first magazine made for the iPAD) where the snap-shot-films were 14. McQuire, The Media City, p. 132.
available as updates. (13)  
 
Commercial Break features the work of over 150 international artists in which content is
driven by the speed of advertising and the short attention spans that mark our image-
saturated world. From the ironic self-promotions of Cevdet Erek and Yoshua Okon to the
satirical explorations of commodity culture by Barbara Kruger and Stefan Bruggeman,
from the self-contained short narratives of Nicolas Provost and Jen Denike to the excerpts
of longer films by Marcel Odenbach, Hans Op De Beeck and Gillia Wearing, artists and
filmmakers alike addressed these concerns in vastly different ways. But what I ultimately
found most engaging was the twofold mode of presentation (at least in terms of
intention) that was both very public and very private. The various films, vignettes or
 snapshots had the potential to be shared within a public space or shared by different
publics within the private space of a personal computer or phone; in this way, Commercial
Break suggested new potentialities for the way media can act as a ‘hinge between public
and private life’. (14)
 
With the omnipresence of digital media accompanying most of our waking life and the
Internet dismantling so many of our accepted conventions in the dissemination and
viewing of media art and experimental film, artists and filmmakers are faced with
increasing challenges of how to present their work. What I find exciting is that so many
artists are facing these demands, actively seeking to participate and project their art and
films into the changing social landscape, not constrained by the limits of academic and
institutional discourse.  
 
This is the companion-piece to the author’s ‘The Streets: Breaking Out of the Black
Box/White Cube in Rotterdam’ in LOLA 1.

from Issue 2: Devils    

© Justine Grace 2012.

Cannot be reprinted without permission of the author and editors.

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