Location="Yes"


Become a Member

Video, performance, and installation artist Kate Gilmore often draws on pop culture and musical lyrics to frame her work. We think, then, that she might not mind our saying that the elaborate, yet beautifully and sophisticatedly straightforward challenges she designs for herself might best be described by reciting the first words of the theme song for perpetually syndicated sitcom, Cheers: "Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got." This melancholy refrain is the perfect truism against which to witness Gilmore's physical testimony to the facts that life is hard, the life of an artist is hard, and the life of a female artist is, well... hard. But of course, Gilmore manages to make clear--in a way that channels Valie Export as much as Charlie Chaplin--that there's no reason that one can't have fun climbing whatever furniture piles life may throw in one's way. In fact, if one dolls themselves up in slick satins and slathers themselves in the lipstick befitting a lady, then snaking one's way through the kinds of trap doors and tumultuous tunnels the artist creates in her work is nearly a piece of cake--not that she doesn't put a pot of elbow grease into conquering every such obstacle. On September 5th, Philadelphia's Institute for Contemporary Art will open a solo exhibition of Gilmore's work. It will survey previous projects and present a new entry to this trademark series in which installation, performance, and video documentation commingle. - Marisa Olson

Montreal-based artist Matthew Biederman is daring to speak out about what he sees as military and government hijacking of what is "arguably one of Earth's most important, and only inexhaustible resources": air waves. Whereas radio was once intended as a many-to-many mode of communication, tight regulation of frequencies has led to a scenario in which the few (mostly corporate entities) are entitled to speak to the masses. His project, DAREDX, "seeks to re-establish the public's presence and right of occupation within the radio spectrum." In an effort to restore some of the utopian ideals initially associated with radio, the project will connect the public with the voices that float in the air around them and yet often go unheard: the voices of amateur broadcasters. Working almost like an astronomer, Biederman (under the call sign VA2XBX) will pluck transmissions out of the night sky, playing them back in Montreal's Cabot Square and logging and mapping them online. Drawing a connection between free public speech and the right of public assembly, DAREDX will amplify the voice of the people. Radioheads will be excited to know that non-vocal signals will also be charted, as the artist will "work with digital communications on HF, in order to send and receive SSTV (SlowScan Televsion), WEFAX (from NOAA Satellites), PSK31, Hellschrieber, and many more." In case you don't feel dialed-in enough to understand what that means, consider attending one of the talks, walks, or workshops associated with the project--including the one on how to build and take home your own FM transmitter! - Marisa Olson

In the first decades after film was invented, its practitioners wrote brilliant, poetic essays debating whether what they had on their hands was a new medium or simply a tool for furthering existing practices like theater or painting. These artists very often used the words "magic" and "wizardry" to describe what they were up to in creating moving images. Today's films use devices further removed from the real to give us the illusion of reality and whether to perpetuate the appearance of seamlessness or to assuage the ADD-addled minds of contemporary net-surfing viewers, everything is way way sped up. Enter Kurt Ralske. He'd like to slow things down. The Boston-based artist's video installations, performances, digital prints, and software art have long addressed the formal questions many people have ceased asking about film, particularly the relationship between sound and image and stillness versus motion. This was the case with his "Alphaville" (Motion-Extraction-Reanimation), in which he reprocessed elements of Godard's famous film and stretched and repeated them across a wider plane, questioning the function of surface and duration in the original piece. In a new project entitled Zero Frames Per Second, Ralske has dissected the films of Godard, Kubrick, Murnau, and others into a series of still images. Each film is represented by two frames--one condensing all motion into a single image and the other accumulating all moments of non-movement. The artist explains that, "Within these images the cinematic experience is freed from duration, narrative, and signification, producing a visually abstract record of the information from the 150,000 or so frames per film." The works free the mind to quickly take in a film in the slowest of slow-motions. They are on view at New York's School of Visual Arts through September 12th. - Marisa Olson

Constant Dullaart's series "YouTube as Subject" plays with the image of the arrow-in-a-square button that appears in an embedded YouTube video. When clicked, Dullaart's videos retain their initial black backgrounds, but the arrow-buttons remain, plummeting, strobing, trembling, or turning into a mini-disco light show. In true YouTube spirit, Ben Coonley recently posted his own series as response, this time appropriating the spinning wheel of dots that eager viewers need to sit through as a video loads—in keeping with his longstanding interest in media breakdowns and frustrations. Coonley's dot-wheel now drifts off into the distance, accelerates rotation, and (betraying Coonley's Providence-scene roots) expands into a psychedelic black-and-white OpArt swirl. Better not put off watching Dullaart and Coonley's 'tubed conversation, however. Cory Arcangel's Blue Tube, made only last year, has quickly become near-obsolete. Back then, YouTube embedded a logo bug in the corner of its videos, and Blue Tube simply turned that logo blue. Now, however, after its host site's redesign, it doesn't always function in quite the right way. Who knows how long our friends arrow-button and spinning-wheel-thingy will last? - Ed Halter
Image: Constant Dullaart, "YouTube Disco" from the series "YouTube as Subject", 2008
In this work by Pascual Sisto, a plastic bag obstructs the Google Maps Street View of Minnie Street in Fairbanks, Alaska. Discovered while researching Google Maps Street View, Sisto preserves this "found object" by redirecting it to its own url, lastbreathinalaska.com, as well as capturing it as a back-up video, in case Google decides to reshoot the location. Swirling on a constant panoramic loop, the movement of the camera gives the abstract image an almost 3D-like quality. The piece documents Google's fraught attempt to supply an accurate representation of Minnie Street, and, as such, Sisto sees Last Breath in Alaska (Found Object) as a response to the purportedly omniscient eye of the Street View feature, and the issues of transparency and privacy it raises. - Ceci Moss
The ongoing US Presidential race is coming to such a head that even media stories about media coverage of the campaigns are flooding the wires. But how does this grand spectacle translate abroad? Given that America is so invested in branding itself as an exporter of democracy, the elections are a key opportunity to transmit this ideology. A new performance exchange project initiated by artist Elana Mann, entitled "Exchange Rate," invites artists from Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, Israel, Lithuania, Mexico, Nicaragua, Portugal, Scotland, South Korea, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, and, of course, the USA to collaborate on "producing, exchanging and interpreting performance directions related to the election campaign." Towing the choose or lose line, the participants will post instructions for creative acts that other artists will elect to perform. Part of the effort is to see how the further development of mass media has effected the evolution of collaborative artistic models borne in the Fluxus era, by strategically conflating artistic media, the communicative media by which the work is broadcast, and the news media through which the President is arguably elected. The resulting performances will be highlighted in partnership with the upcoming UnConvention project, with Trade & Row's "Campaign Trail" series, and in other online and offline events. Stay tuned to see if "Exchange Rate" can bring new meaning to the phrase "making change." - Marisa Olson

Way back before most people had even heard of new media art, one publication (a classy zine, really) was charting the rise of the field. Intelligent Agent was founded in 1996, still the early days of the net for all intensive purposes, by a smart German woman named Dr. Christiane Paul-- she'd later go on to become new media curator at the Whitney. Like many such DIY ventures, the publication has gone through a series of phase changes, from print to online, to hiatus, and back. Now edited by artist and media scholar Patrick Lichty, under Paul's guidance as publisher, the venerable magazine is available in both print and PDF formats. It continues to present the front wave of art and theory, and the most recent issue, which is built around the catalog for the "Social Fabrics" exhibition curated by Lichty and Susan Ryan, is no exception. While big fashion magazines produce their fattest ad-driven issues during the summer months, IA's latest free PDF will give readers a chance to see projects by a handful of forward-thinking artist/designers who not only design wearable art that marries textiles and technology, but also push fashion from the realm of pop culture into deeper social engagement. The resulting portfolios, interviews, and essays offer critical insight into the work and, in keeping with the fashion mag analogy, posit trend alerts for the future of media art. - Marisa Olson
Subscribe via email or RSS feed to Rhizome's blog, newsletters, community discussion, or announcements (jobs, opportunities and events)!
Due August 30, 2008
Call for birth video: AFTERBIRTH
Due August 31, 2008
Call for Proposals: Call for submissions - contemporary art writing: articles, reviews, etc
Call for Proposals: Proposals for 2009-2010 Exhibition Calendar
Call for Video: The Horizon is Dead, Long Live the Horizon
Call for Proposals: netEX: calls & deadlines -->August 2008
Due September 1, 2008
Call for Proposals: Streaming Festival | open call for submissions | 3rd edition 2008
Call for Proposals: Four internal calls
Call for Video: Everson Museum of Art Open Call for Video Submissions
The Scale of Intervention
Every year, Rhizome awards commissions to a group of international artists for the creation of new work. Read about the nine projects commissioned in our 2009 cycle!
Rhizome seeks creative, energetic, and bright candidates to fill three internship positions starting this fall. We are now accepting applications for the positions of Curatorial Fellow, Technology Intern, and Social Media Intern.