Transmissions

Channelling Cultural Information Through the Medium of Video

Dates

May 9 - July 11, 1998
Opening Saturday, May 9, 6-8pm

Exhibit

Transmissions is about the vision of the curator/critic - how they absorb cultural information and communicate that information to the public. For the exhibition a group of national and international curators and cultural critics are making one hour, unedited videotapes with the purpose of exposing a fragment of their behavior, their modus operandi. The format may vary and is entirely up to the individual - an interview, a visit to an artist's studio, a meeting or conversation, an exhibition, an event, impressions of a place or space - any kind of cultural information they want to transmit. The video camera becomes the eye of the curator/critic, recording and revealing the information each of them absorbs and extracts from their daily experiences and framing that information, in whatever way they choose, for the public to see.

Transmissions is a means of freeing the curator/critic from their usual way of working and opening up another, more immediate form of communication. The exhibition will provide an intimate look at how the curator/critic sees, broadcasting their personal, spontaneous impressions through the medium of video. Transmissions is the presentation of encounters - for example, the curator encounters the artist as a medium and transmits that encounter to the public. The curator/critic becomes an archeologist, an anthropologist, a cultural eye creating a portrait of his professional time, a transmitter of personal information into public information.

The exhibition will consist of a rotating selection of the videos to be shown on an ongoing basis in Exit Art's two gallery spaces. The collection of tapes will be augmented continuously over the course of the show. Videos will be projected on the gallery walls, as well as shown on monitors in more intimate viewing areas. Tapes will be changed every hour . The tapes themselves may be hour-long takes or may consist of a series of short pieces from different encounters - a kind of cinema verité of the individual's experience.

With a diverse range of curators and cultural critics creating tapes, Transmissions will build a bank of cultural images and impressions - an anthology of different languages within the electronic language, an anthology of cultural selections.

Support for Transmissions was provided by The Bohen Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, O'Grady Family Foundation and our members.



Transmissions

Darsie Alexander Curatorial Assistant, The Museum of Modern Art
Bill Arning Independent Curator/Critic
Joseph Backstein Director, Institute for Contemporary Art, Moscow
Tamas Banovich Independent Curator
Amnon Barzel Curator, Judisches Museum, Berlin
Barry Blinderman Director, Curator, Illinois State University Galleries
Dan Cameron Senior Curator, New Museum
Papo Colo and Jeanette Ingberman Curators, Exit Art
Pip Day Curator, Artists' Space
Okwui Enwezor Independent Curator
Fab 5 Freddy Cultural Critic
Richard Flood Curator, Walker Arts Center
Christian Haye Writer, frieze, London
Hou Honru Independent Curator
Laura Hoptman Curator, The Museum of Modern Art
Yu Yeon Kim Independent Curator
Barbara London Curator of Film and Video, The Museum of Modern Art
Amerigo Marras Independent Curator
Jay Murphy Writer, Critic
Dominique Nahas Curator/Critic
Hans Ulrich Obrist Independent Curator
Celeste Olalquiga Cultural Critic
Andrzej Przywara Curator, Galeria Foksal, Warsaw
Hani Rashid Director, Asymptote
Larry Rinder California College of Arts and Crafts
Kenny SchacterIndependent Curator
Ingrid Shaffner Independent Curator
Oleksandr Soloviev Independent Curator, Critic
Patterson Sims Curator, The Museum of Modern Art
Mary Anne Staniszewski Cultural Critic
Robert Storr Curator, The Museum of Modern Art
Adam Szymczyk Curator, Galerie Foksal, Warsaw
Theo Tegelaers Director/Curator, W139, Amsterdam
Christoph Tannert Director, Kunslerhaus Bethanien, Berlin
Cesar Trasobares Independent Curator
Adam Weinberg Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art
Martha Wilson Director, Franklin Furnace Archives
Octavio Zaya Curator/Critic
Lynn Zelevansky Curator, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

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