Bill Viola<\/a>, a young artist who was interested in the ideas I was trying to develop, that is the public having some interaction with the work – affecting the video somehow. <\/p>\n Sander<\/strong>: What was the result of that final project?<\/em> <\/p>\n Kathy<\/strong>: This was an installation by Bill Viola, part of a group show that was our final class project. The exhibition was called ‘Beyond the Artists Hand,’ Bill’s work was ‘Olfaction’ and the date was 1978. It was a sound\/video installation where the viewer would sit in a chair, and Bill’s image (pre-recorded) would also sit in the chair, super-imposing his body on the body of the viewer. You could also hear him breath and chew (carrots I think).<\/p>\n After this, I joined a project called Some Serious Business (SSB) and we organized screenings in Venice, California. Some were in collaboration with LBMA. But Bill became a mentor to me, in a sense. I learned about things that one never learns in a class: what artists expect from an institution, how to treat artists so that their work evolves well, etc. Bill also brought news to Long Beach about the world, the international video community, and that was all exciting to me to learn about. <\/p>\n
Sander<\/strong>: Let’s talk about the curatorial process for this show. There was a rather vast catalog to choose from. What criteria did you use for the selections?<\/em> <\/p>\n Kathy<\/strong>: Pacific Standard Time is about contemporary art from 1945 to 1980. Some institutions are extending those dates, like we did, because if we stop at 1980, we can’t tell the story properly. <\/p>\n There was a very big exhibition in 2008, at The Getty, called California Video, curated by Glenn Phillips. That show included all the California artists who made significant works. we could not repeat that concept, so I took a look at what was unique about the museum’s video history, what would be a different look at the video program, what was significant. In fact, it was also what influenced me, and that is the international associations that grew from this program. <\/p>\n
When Nancy Buchanan and I agreed on this focus, we had a lot of work to do! We could not include everyone. There are space issues, and there are certainly budget issues to be concerned about. We did a lot of viewing at the Getty Research Institute of the LBMA Video Archives, and also from the collections of distributors, like Electronic Arts Intermix. We established which exhibitions were significant, and what works in particular we recalled, that had influenced us and made an impression on us. We had conversations with former curators at LBMA, artists, and did a lot of reading. <\/p>\n
We didn’t particularly try to be ‘inclusive’ or to cover the entire history of the program, but somehow it worked out that way! It’s really a spread of work from the 70s, 80s and up until the last commission, a wonderful work by Thomas Allen Harris. He is here now, installing his work ‘Afro is just another Hairstyle’ — you can read about it in the catalog. <\/p>\n
I must interject here for just a moment to explain that when Kathy uses the word ‘catalog,’ it really doesn’t do the book justice. It is a beautiful, full color volume filled with a broad and intimate study of the museum’s program, the artists, their work, and the art form. Now, back to Kathy.<\/em> <\/p>\n We finally selected foreign artists who had multiple exhibitions at LBMA, were in group shows as well as solo shows, and American artists who worked abroad, bringing new images, new ideas and new perspectives to our program. <\/p>\n
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We have 30 artists in the museum exhibition, and another 40 artists in four screening events that will take place in Long Beach and in L.A. at REDCAT. We also decided to not duplicate any artists who had been in California Video and, except for Bill Viola. We included his work Hatsu Yume: First Dream, which was the work he made immediately before coming to live in Long Beach, back in 1983. He made that work in Japan. He was living there for some time and had a residency at Sony. <\/p>\n
Sander<\/strong>: What interesting discoveries have you made in the process of installing the works?<\/em> <\/p>\n Kathy<\/strong>: Well, for the first surprise we found out that it’s almost impossible to get the old style CRT monitors that these vintage works require. Also, some of the works had really deteriorated, and were problematic to include. We didn’t have the budget to restore any works, which is a big issue with artists who were working in video in the 70s and 80s. <\/p>\n We finally were able to get everything we needed from a company in Berlin called Eidotech. And, this company provided monitors that were calibrated to have matching color, etc. It’s impossible to find this here, where it is all now digital, HD, and widescreen, which does not work for 3:4 ratio works. <\/p>\n
The LBMA now has proper gallery space, with proper lighting, air conditioning, etc. In former times, the works were installed in the Anderson House, the old Museum building, in less than optimal conditions. So, we can bring a higher level of professional installation now. <\/p>\n
There is a space issue. LBMA is not as large as other Contemporary Art Museums, so we needed to find a solution for the single-channel videotapes. We are showing them on rotation, one per week, for the duration of the exhibition, in an especially designed screening room. <\/p>\n
Sander<\/strong>: What makes these works particularly compelling?<\/em> <\/p>\n Kathy<\/strong>: They show the variety of concerns that artists explored using video, a time-based medium that can look at issues that other media can not. I have ‘grown up’ in the art world with video. I understood why art was so important by watching video and meeting video artists. It is a medium that has gone through many changes. What was once considered to be ‘broadcast quality,’ and very expensive to produce, can now be made on a laptop, and the artistic experience changed with the times. <\/p>\n But, while looking at this work, it is also important to think about the content, and consider the context that the work was created in, and not only the technique. It is complex sometimes, but most important art is complex. We learn from art, we experience new situations via art, and we gain understanding of cultural, political and social differences through art. <\/p>\n
Video has the added significance that it was often made as a reference to television and, at the time, the overwhelming influence TV had internationally, especially where American culture was concerned. The world learned about America via television sit-coms, for example. Artists were interested in this power, and many of the works utilize it as irony, and as a point of departure.<\/p>\n
—<\/p>\n
Note: In conjunction with this exhibit, the LBMA is presenting two screenings. The first, taking place on Thursday, October 13th at 8 PM <\/em> at the Art Theater on 4th Street,<\/em> focuses on the evolution of video as an art form, including work by Oskar Fischinger, John Whitney Sr., Bill Viola, Max Almy\/Teri Yabrow, Janice Tanaka, Rebecca Allen, Michael Scroggins, and Ko Nakajima.<\/p>\nThe second screening takes place on Thursday, November 17th at 7 PM at the Long Beach Art Museum, and will focus on institutional partnerships between the LBMA and groups in New York, and around the world. <\/p>\n
More information about this and other exhibitions is available at LBMA.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kathy Rae Huffman is the curator for the new exhibition, opening October 7th, at the Long Beach Museum of Art. Exchange and Evolution features video art work created at the museum over a span of three decades, when its production facility attracted artists from around the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":69923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hi-lo","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4960"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=4960"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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