While film is often judged on its artistic merit—or lack thereof—video art that rejects certain elements of cinematic production can prove challenging in determining where the pieces fall on the spectrum of, “Is this really art?”
“Cinema Killed the Video Star” is an upcoming exhibition from the Louisville Visual Arts Association, curated by Andrew Cozzens and Stacey Reason, that explores video from a total of 12 local and international artists
Reason said the curators were not interested in the kinds of videos people are barraged with when scrolling through social media—news clips, sports replays and the token cute kitten video.
With this opportunity to do a video-only show, the curators wanted to choose from works "that were embracing the true characteristics of what video is as opposed to other media,” Reason said.
“So video in general, we narrowed it down to a few characteristics: moving images, passage of time, temporal existence and the creation of mood through sequence and framing," she added.
Aside from the fun play on the Buggles song, Cozzens and Reason chose the title because cinema uses things like studio production, Hollywood characters, dialogue, narrative and plot; sometimes video art is looked at through a cinematic lens, and people are disappointed when they want to see a story be told or a character developed.
But Reason said cinema and video art shouldn't be considered using the same criteria.
“The videos we chose for this show kind of specifically ignore those paramounts of film, cinematic film,” Reason said.
She said that the first thing people will notice about the collection is the diversity in style, production, images and sounds.Everything from documented time to manipulation of color and image—including examples of the natural degradation of analog video processes—will be included in this exhibition.
The collection will also include an interactive installation based off the concept of looking into the sky daydreaming, so turf and pillows will be brought in and the video will be projected onto the ceiling.
“We were interested in including as much video work as we could to show that diverse application of video processes without overwhelming the viewer; so the way we decided to do that was to have 12 artists and to have seven outlets to view them,” Reason said,
Featured artists include:
- Korkut Akacik
- Aaron Bos-Wahl
- Amanda Bowles
- Zlatko Cosic
- Dominic Guarnaschelli
- Joshua Jenkins
- Sarah Katherine Davis
- Claire Krueger
- Kent Krugh
- Tom LeGoff
- Scott Scarboro
- Rob Southard
“Cinema Killed the Video Star” opens at PUBLIC Gallery, 131 W. Main St., on Friday and runs through Feb. 21.