Point of View: An Anthology of the Moving Image

"Point of View: An Anthology of the Moving Image," features 11 acclaimed artists from all over the world. For this exhibition, each artist created a five-minute long DVD. The viewers can make selections from the DVD menu to either see the artwork on a loop, read the artist's biography, see additional images by the artist or watch an interview with the artist in one of six languages. Artists featured in this exhibition include: Francis Alys (Belgium), David Claerbout (Belgium), Douglas Gordon (Scotland), Gary Hill (United States), Pierre Huyghe (France), Joan Jonas (United States), Isaac Julien (England), William Kentridge (South Africa), Paul McCarthy (United States), Pipilotti Rist (Switzerland) and Anri Sala (Albania). Producers of this exhibition are Bick Productions and New Museum of Contemporary Art.

About the Exhibition

As video art evolved from its low-tech, do-it-yourself origins in the 1960s and 1970s to the high-end production values achieved by more recent generations of artists, its pricing became equally prohibitive. With limited editions by today's most sought after video artists currently selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars, the market for video art is no longer distinguishable from that of oil paintings or bronze sculptures.

On the most pragmatic level, the Point of View anthology is based on the premise that instead of following strict rules of scarcity and demand, a digital medium like video art can also be produced for a broader audience, within a more open framework. In this spirit, the eleven artists commissioned to create new works for Point of View made their contributions with the knowledge that the final result would be distributed within an unlimited format. Point of View: An Anthology of the Moving Image functions simultaneously as an archive, a teaching and research tool, and an exhibition inside a box. Each DVD contains the commissioned work, along with an interview between the artist and a wel I-known critic or curator, a biography, and images of other works. Taken together, the works provide an international, inter-generational overview of the state of video art in 2004.

Francis Alys, El Gringo (2003)
Running time: 4 minutes 12 seconds
In El Gringo, viewers experience the discomfort of being an outsider when the camera is confronted by a pack of snarling dogs.

David Claerbout, le Moment (2003)
Running time: 2 minutes 44 seconds
Claerbout uses cinematic techniques to create a suspenseful ,journey through a dimly lit forest that reaches an unexpected conclusion.

Douglas Gordon, Over My Shoulder (2003)
Running time: 13 minutes 48 seconds
In this simple head-on shot, Gordon uses hand gesticulations against a white sheet to communicate violent and sensual emotions.

Gary Hill, Blind Spot (2003)
Running time: 12 minutes 27 seconds
A brief encounter in the street with a man in a southern French city that has a large North African population is slowed down, forcing the viewer into an intimate relationship with the subject and the shifting emotions in his face.

Pierre Huyghe, .05 (2003)
Running time: 5 minutes
Huyghe's conceptual film references Andy Warhol's Empire State and pays homage to Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters by incorporating the Devil's Tower monument made famous in the film. Huyghe splits the screen in half, creating a mood of suspense, as we wait for a correction
that never takes place.

Joan Jonas, Waltz (2003)
Running time: 6 minutes 24 seconds
Jonas's performance piece, an homage to 18th-century French outdoor theater, incorporates mythology into its narrative alongside spontaneously occurring events.

Isaac Julien, Encore (Paradise Omeros: Redux) (2003)
Running time: 4 minutes 38 seconds
The stunning, color-saturated images that make up this work refer to the African Diaspora and the quest to find roots in a New World.

William Kentridge, Automatic Writing (2003)
Running time: 2 minutes 38 seconds
Kentridge's hauntingly beautiful series of animated black and white drawings brings viewers into the artist's unconscious, using surrealist techniques to explore the point where writing and drawing intersect.

Paul McCarthy, WGG (Wild Gone Girls) (2003)
Running time: 5 minutes 20 seconds
Depicting a sailing party gone wrong, McCarthy questions the effects that violence and mutilation, both real and simulated, have on the viewer in contemporary culture.

Pipilotti Rist, I Want to See How You See (2003)
Running time: 4 minutes 48 seconds
Rist explores the macrocosm of humanity in a video, art, and music collaboration. A lyrical tale of a witch's coven is played over images of a person where each body part symbolically represents an area of the world.