From: gyoungblood (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Mar 01 2007 - 16:22:59 PST
Peter Weibel made the exhibition possible, being the director of ZKM, but
Woody Vasulka conceived, curated and designed everything down to the last
detail. Steina transferred about 80% of the material to digital. Woody is
back here in Santa Fe now and he showed us his documentation. It is truly
brilliant. Makes me want to get on a plane and go...
----- Original Message -----
From: "zryd" <email suppressed>
To: <email suppressed>
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 8:15 PM
Subject: [FRAMEWORKS] amazing ZKM show on Centre for Media Study at SUNY
Buffalo: Frampton, Conrad, Sharits, Blue, Steina, Vasulka, Weibel, O'Grady
> Hi Frameworkers,
>
> There is an EXTRAORDINARY exhibition that you should see--or at least know
> about: MindFrames: Media Study at Buffalo 1973-1990, at ZKM (Zentrum für
> Kunst und Medientechnologie/Centre for Art and Media) in Karlsruhe
> Germany. It covers 7 artists (James Blue, Tony Conrad, Hollis Frampton,
> Paul Sharits, Steina, Woody Vasulka, and Peter Weibel), and the pioneering
> figure in media education who brought them all together, Gerald O’Grady.
> This is by far the most interesting integration of film, video, and other
> media in a museum/gallery setting I’ve ever seen, comparable in quality to
> Chrissie Iles’s “Into the Light” show, and rivaling it several times in
> scope. It’s ironic that an exhibition on the Centre for Media Study at
> SUNY Buffalo should take place in Germany, but the connection is Peter
> Weibel, who runs ZKM and was a faculty member at SUNY Buffalo after
> Frampton’s death.
>
> http://www.zkm.de/mindframes_e/
>
> The exhibition is massive, encompassing installations, film, video, music,
> documents, and, appropriately for a show on a Centre for Media Study, a
> number of original research resources that especially appeal to anyone
> with a scholarly interest in these artists and their context.
>
> Installations (selected): Steina’s beautiful Allvision; and Mynd, 2 of
> Woody Vasulka’s Brotherhood apparati; Sharits’s Epileptic Seizure
> Comparison (digital version), 3rd Degree (on film), Razor Blades
> (digital), and Apparent Motion (film); Conrad’s Articulation of Boolean
> Algebra or Film Opticals (film loop); Weibel’s Dumb Show and Kruzifiktion
> der Identitat. There are some other single channel installations that
> screen works by the other artists. The installations are very smartly
> presented, as the curators have been careful to isolate some and to allow
> others to spill into the main space and ‘overlap’ in interesting ways.
>
> There are 4 rooms presenting time-based material by all of the artists
> (and some of the documentary interviews that O’Grady created): a Film
> Room, Video Room, Concert Room, and Document Room. The genius of the show
> is that all of this material has been digitized (in generally excellent
> transfers) and so can be presented in a schedule that is clearly legible
> (screens outside the rooms show what's on and to come for the next 4
> hours, and other screens in the exhibition present a master schedule of
> screenings). In this way, the exhibition has solved the annoying problem
> of how to avoid presenting all time-based work as video loops. Instead the
> spectator can plan a program of screenings, the only frustration of which
> is the sheer bounty of material to see! The Document Room is especially
> impressive, presenting (rare) video interviews with all of the artists.
>
> http://hosting.zkm.de/mindframes_e/stories/storyReader$33
>
> In addition, each of the 8 figures profiled in the exhibition has been
> given a resource room that presents yet more material, both artistic and
> contextual. Each figure is given a computer terminal which contains Texts
> (usually writings but also reproduced production notes, drawings, and
> ephemera), Images (still images that might be artworks or more informally
> document the SUNY Buffalo scene), and Video (almost all of the films and
> videos in the show can be viewed at the spectator’s command, calling them
> up from the show’s central computer server). In addition, there is a video
> jukebox in each room that allows you to screen selected films and videos
> on a 2 metre high screen, everything from Frampton’s Palindrome or his Q&A
> after a Zorns Lemma screening at the New York Film Festival, to Conrad's
> activist cable access shows, to interviews between O’Grady and Gunvor
> Nelson (and many others). Finally, there are some unique computer
> “analysis” machines that have been devised for the exhibit: frame analysis
> for Frampton; a single frame sequence generator that allow you to make
> your own Sharits flicker film, incorporating colour, text, and modulating
> frame rate; and signal modification functions that allow one to tweak
> several pieces by Steina and Woody Vesulka---all in keeping with the
> literally experimental nature of the SUNY Buffalo "lab" context.
>
> This show is a model for how to present a truly multi-media museum/gallery
> show that not only respects the integrity of the medium-specific artworks
> being presented but also explores how media inter-relate productively. And
> it is all shown to us with historical context that itself presents new
> research material on the artists and period. The show raises important
> questions about film and media history, the relation between creativity
> and ‘research’, and clearly marks the Centre for Media Study, the first of
> its kind, as the remarkable crucible that it was (and still is to some
> degree—Conrad still teaches at SUNY Buffalo).
>
> Karlsruhe is a long way to go for many people, but it is worth the trip if
> you can afford it. It is an hour from Frankfurt and Baden Baden airports
> (I’ve heard rumours of $1 Ryan Air flights from London). ZKM is a 15min
> walk from the train station.
>
> Finally, there is a second extraordinary show at ZKM, The Algorithmic
> Revolution, which has everything from Fluxus to the video game Pong, and
> shows us the future (for better or worse).
>
> If you can, check it out. It closes 25 March 2007.
>
> http://www.zkm.de/mindframes_e/
>
> --
> Michael Zryd
> Associate Professor
> Department of Film, CFT 223
> York University
> 4700 Keele St.
> Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, CANADA
> tel: 416-736-5149
> fax: 416-736-5710
> email suppressed
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.