"Video Synthesis” is an examination of the Inter-relationships of Video Art,
Performance, Experimental Film, & Vanguard
Documentary. The purpose of this exhibition is to survey, expose, and raise the awareness of motion
related art through the medium of video. The works exhibited have all been created using a digital video camera and computer based editing software as a means of expression and communication.
Since the beginning of May, we have initiated a new project which consists in broadcasting a special online program every month. Each month we show another program with a different perspective and theme. To celebrate this development an offline screening of the first Special Program Fragments took place in Geborgen Kamers in April 2009, The Hague, the Netherlands.
Special programs are composed by guest curators, or festival partners.
Updates. Ryan Seslow's Curatorial Debut "Video Synthesis" will be screened as a part of The Streaming Festivals first Special Programs Exhibition: "Fragments" takes place in The Geborgen Kamers Gallery, The Hague, Netherlands. Opening: 15 April 2009 - the screening starts at 20.00. The screening continues on 16 and 17 April 2009
Fragments brings together video work that in some way address the idea of fragmentation, whether through visual technique or concept. Several films in this selection focus on the object of the photograph -a reminiscent of a fraction of time and memory. Others are based on the structural elements of film making such as the close up shot and abstraction as the basis.
This selection is the curator’s response the truly eclectic collection of works from three editions of Streaming Festival database. Therefore, the concept of Fragments becomes an ambiguous expression in this context simultaneously symbolizing a fragment of the Streaming Festival collection as well a metaphor for fragmentation of images and ideas.
The second program: Video Synthesis screened in the Geborgen Kamers has been composed by Ryan Seslow. Video Synthesis is an examination of the Inter-relationships of Video Art, Performance, Experimental Film, & Vanguard Documentary. The purpose of this exhibition is to survey, expose, and raise the awareness of motion related art through the medium of video. The works exhibited have all been created using a digital video camera and computer based editing software as a means of expression and communication.
"Video Synthesis” is an examination of the Inter-relationships of Video Art, Performance, Experimental Film, & Vanguard Documentary. The purpose of this exhibition is to survey, expose, and raise the awareness of motion related art through the medium of video. The works exhibited have all been created using a digital video camera and computer based editing software as a means of expression and communication. It was my intention to select a diverse array of artists that focus on various subjects and techniques to execute their work. The show will present fragments of traditional video art, aspects of performance based art, narrative experimental film, and vanguard documentary. The works have been placed in a chronological order to be viewed one after another. I feel that each piece will add to what synthesizes fragments of a larger whole. The chronological flow of each piece creates a perceptual module.
Ryan Seslow Curator
QCC Art Gallery The City University of New York Queensborough Community College
This program has been archived into the galleries permanent collection. It can also be viewed in full from the galleries website. A PDF. catalog from the exhibition can also be downloaded from the galleries website.
Video Synthesis
Artists:
Simon Gris Danielle Abrams Ryan Seslow John Fekner Darren Foster Lee Wells Ray Neufeld Monica Spier
Video Synthesiscan be shown upon request, or check the galleries program guide for more information on special programs. Video Synthesis can also be viewed online from the galleries website. All screenings are in the Media Room at:
The QCC Art Gallery Queensborough Community College The City University of New York 222-05 56th Avenue Bayside, NY 11364 (718) 631-6396
Official Website - http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/ArtGallery/Programs/Exhibits/videoSynthesis http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/ArtGallery
Contact the Curator: theongoingrms@gmail.com
VIDEO SYNTHESIS TRAILER
About the Artists: Simon Gris: Born in Saint-Maurdesfosses (Paris suburbs): Lives and works in France. Through experimental music, photography, literature and video art, Simon Gris, is a self-taught artist. He builds representations of his French contemporary unhappy consciousness. “I am a general artist. Like a practitioner and like an officer. I aim to build a general view of the world and our time. I know that it implies that I’ll never be the number one in a particular domain. I don’t care. I don’t want to be perfect. I want to be total.” “Ikea Blues” 2007 – about 5 minutes A slow motion artwork about Scandinavian social-democracy and its international symbol Ikea. (clue: zombie) “Aneurysm” 2007 – about 3 minutes A Situationist artwork with an image-made man. (clue: medical imagery)
Ryan Seslow: Artist & Curator Ryan Seslow is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in New York. Working in all mediums Seslow shows his work both nationally and internationally. “ I am not concerned with making beautiful pleasing pieces of art; I act upon immediacy.I am living and teaching art because I believe that this expands the potential of human creativity. The artist is the Art itself. I am here to record the world as I perceive it, Through that process I will give it many tangible forms.” Ryan Seslow is an adjunct professor of fine arts teaching studio art courses simultaneously between 4 colleges in the NY area. “Random Acts & Inner Politics“ 2007, 0:157 Up and down we go, can the inner politics of your psyche try to pull one over on you?The subconscious aspect of " the change " that you have made feels a need to react.This reaction becomes your next cause. What is your connection to the oneness of politics? “TK” 2006, 0:5:36 The artist manifests a physical representation of how one may use nonphysical energy as a contemporary Art medium. TK is indeed an experiment. The artist performs the action of transcending an idea ( invisible non physical energy ) into manifest physical reality.
Monica Spier: Monica Spier is a Dutch born artist, currently living in and working in New York. “I am most interested in the process of creating and the intimacy of being in that space.“ Ms.Spier has transcended her ideas throughout different mediums to help communicate her artistic vision. The medium of video has recently captured her interest. The challenge of reformatting a still image, in this case her daily drawings into motion based art has become a process of further exploration. Monica Spier holds a BFA in printmaking from Long Island University. “365” 2007, 03:65 The concept of recording each day for 365 days is an exercise in the awareness of the passage of time . The work becomes a memory of each days existence marking its irretrievable loss. In this loss I have retained a visual pleasure that remains as an ode to the past. I have chosen the shape of the square to represent my constraint and boundaries for this project. My dedication to the repetition of this discipline is part of my process.
Darren Foster: Darren Foster is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. His work has taken him to all corners of the earth to cover conflict, migration, the environment, art and culture, etc. Born and bred in New York, he now lives in California with his wife and film making partner. "Domino, MuthaFucka. God wins!" 2007 . "Domino, MuthaFucka. God wins!" was shot in a Brazilian prison in 2004. It's just one of many scenes that were captured and then shelved. Documenting reality is subjective. Editing is a series of choices. Freed from the archive and the constraints and structures of narrative story telling, this perspective on reality is resurrected. "I Think in Profound Cliche's" 2007 . "I Think in Profound Cliche's" is what it is.
Danielle Abrams: Danielle Abrams is an interdisciplinary artist who works in performance and video. She is a monologist, orchestrates social interventions, channels figures of kin, and provides dance lessons. Abrams performs at art galleries, museums, theaters, and performance spaces. She also waxes poetics from park benches, advertises her meal plan service as she bar-b-ques for art-hungry crowds, leads Conga lines as a Borscht-Belt “toomler,” and emerges from the afterworld via wireless phones. Recalling Flushing, Queens; a Coney Island heyday; and Mount Morris Park in Harlem, Abrams utilizes the tropes of identity to survey social oppressions. She challenges our relationships to origin and biography as she embodies her own multiracial cast of family members. Her personae sight the toxicity, as well as poignancy, of social interactions and conditions that lie undetected in our communities. Danielle has performed at art spaces, galleries, festivals, and museums nationally. Her performances and videos have been programmed at the Bronx Museum of Art, Queens Museum of Art, Arizona State University Art Museum, Institute of American Indian Art, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, WOW Cafe, Dixon Place, The Kitchen, Galapagos, and Ladyfest East. Lisa Bloom has written extensively about Danielle’s work in Jewish Identities in U.S. Feminist Art: Ghosts of Ethnicity (Routledge 2006). Her work has also been written about in the New Art Examiner, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, the Village Voice, NY Arts, fluent collaborative, CURVE, and Queer Ramblings. Abrams is the former artistic director of BUILD, a performance space in San Francisco’s hub of queer performance: the Mission District. She is also a founding Board Member of the Harvey Milk Institute in San Francisco. Abrams has been awarded residencies at the Yale School of Painting, the Skowhegan School of Art, the Bronx Museum of Art, and she was an artist-in-residence at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, NYC. She has been a recipient of fellowships from NY Urban Arts Initiative and NY Foundation of the Arts. She has lectured at the University of Massachusetts, Barnard College, Ohio University in Athens, and at numerous national conferences. Abrams has taught at Goddard College in Vermont, School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Queens College (CUNY), and York College (CUNY). She is currently an assistant professor at the School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “Early Bird” 2004, Performed by Danielle Abrams Videography: Kara Williamson Editing: Kara Williamson, Robert M. Foster, Jr. In Early Bird, Dew Drop Lady (performed by Abrams) converses and shares jokes with a community of seniors in conversations about Passover, Florida, and her lineage that is Jewish and Black. As their dialogue unfolds, Dew Drop Lady uncovers the racist beliefs that lie latent in the minds of a Brighton Beach community of Jews.
Lee Wells: Lee Wells is an artist, exhibition organizer and consultant currently living and working New York. Curating since 1996, his projects have recently been included in the 2nd Moscow Biennial, Chelsea Art Museum and Art Basel Miami Beach 2006. He is co-founder of [PAM] the Perpetual Art Machine ( www.perpetualartmachine.com) an online community video art portal and traveling interactive installation founded in January 2006. Wells most recently was invited to curate an international program for "In Transition Russia 2008" a project in collaboration with the National Centres of Contemporary Art (NCCA), Yekaterinburg and Moscow. NDSM Dockland #1, 2007, Single channel video projection with sound Black Helicopter#1, 2007, Single channel video projection with sound
RAY NEUFELD RAY NEUFELD is a visual artist and scenic designer living and working in New York City. His work has been exhibited in galleries across the United States and abroad, most recently in Hungary, Scotland, Korea and Japan. In addition to creating video, installations, sculpture and large-scale drawings, Ray enjoys teaching and working in theater and television. In my art I explore elements of line and shape through video, sculpture and installation as drawings in space. Whether working with reanimated, reclaimed objects or reframing images of the ordinary through video, I create site-specific, confrontational work. While created with a formalist's eye for clarity and an expressionist's sense of process, the resulting conceptual work transcends an intellectual analysis and warrants emotional interpretation as well. Further inspection and introspection exposes a bleaker side to the seemingly nostalgic and whimsical. Shell-forms, waterless pools, dry fire hose, folded paper shark egg sacs – all rely upon absence for their visual strength. The empty vessels allude to both the mind and to the body, human or otherwise. Through this physical investigation I reference memory and loss. I risk evoking nostalgia in order to reinvent the familiar, to provoke personal reflection, and to inspire change in our view of the everyday. DESCRIPTIONS The first three works I have selected all reflect my interest in the meditative beauty of the mundane. While the medium is video I view each of these as a moving painting. In Swim II, swimmers shot from an underwater vantage point pass by in endless succession. In Water Painting, a spillway shot from directly overhead rushes continuously and creates an elegant line over its edge. Balaton Bus Stop, Bath Tub Balna is video documentation of a sculptural installation: two cast paper bath tubs suspended in a bus stop in Lake Balaton, hungary.
Video Synthesis All screenings are in the Media Room at:
The QCC Art Gallery Queensborough Community College The City University of New York 222-05 56th Avenue Bayside, NY 11364 (718) 631-6396
Official Website - http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/ArtGallery/Programs/Exhibits/videoSynthesis http://www.qcc.cuny.edu/ArtGallery
took place in Geborgen Kamers in April 2009, The Hague, the Netherlands.
