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Moving Pictures Video and Film Events during Art Basel Miami Beach Weekend
Alison Chernick Alison interviewing Matthew: Jeff Podeszwa.
Matthew with white outfitted (amas) japanese woman]
By Michelle Weinberg
The Art Video Lounge at the official Art Basel Miami Beach is an incredible opportunity to become educated about the state of moving image work today. There are three programs curated by Michael Rush, former head of the short-lived Palm Beach Institute for Contemporary Art, titled Surrender to Illusion: Video in a Time of War, Aesthetic Field: No Appropriation: Directors Direct/Performers Perform, and In Brevitas Formositas: Short and Beautiful. Look for works by Harun Farocki, Joan Jonas, Hans Op Die Beeck, Paul Chan and Miami native Luis Gispert in collaboration with Jeffrey Reed. A videotheque numbering more than 100 other works is also available for random private viewing. In tribute to the late Nam June Paik, who lived mere blocks away in South Beach until he died in January, his innovative, orgasmic work will be shown daily. Open Dec. 6 to Dec. 9 from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m. and Dec. 10 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Lounge is open to the public; admission is free. Short films by Joao Maria Gusmao and Pedro Pavia, which circle around a fictional meteorological phenomenon, will be shown Dec. 9 at 9:30 pm under the name The Magnetic Effluvium.
But this is not the extent of the myriad film and video offerings on the menu. ICAS (Independent Cultural Access Society), a newly formed nonprofit birthed by Nina Arias (who brought you the Wynwood Art District) and lawyer Steve Pestana, has hustled the premiere of No Restraint, a documentary chronicling the making of artist Matthew Barney’s latest cinematic opus, Drawing Restraint. The ultimate art world insider movie, No Restraint follows Barney and his pop superstar bride Björk out to sea on a Japanese tanker that becomes a behemoth cruising sculpture, the setting for Barney’s film Drawing Restraint 9. No Restraint will be screened at the Colony Theater on Lincoln Road on Saturday, Dec. 9 at 8 p.m.
A stone’s throw from the Miami Beach Convention Center, on Española Way, the Miami Beach Cinematheque has created an ambitious three-screen film program titled “Giving Visibility: Representations of Reality and Unseen Worlds” by Michel Auder, Candice Breitz, Gabriel Lester, Jonas Mekas and Francesco Vezzoli. Michel Auder himself will DJ at the next-door café, A la Folie, throughout the weekend. A Jonas Mekas Film Retrospective unspooling there at the same time confirms his role as the “Godfather of American Avant-Garde Cinema,” with such films as Happy Birthday to John, This Side of Paradise and Scenes From the Life of Andy Warhol. Both Auder and Mekas elevated the scratchy realism of home movies to art status as they peered into the lives of celebrated individuals from the ’60s and ’70s, such as John Lennon, the Kennedys and Andy Warhol. Breitz, Lester and Vezzoli explore appropriated media imagery and completely constructed cinematic worlds. Dana Keith, director of the Miami Beach Cinematheque, welcomes visitors from Art Basel Miami Beach to his unique film outpost. See www.mbcinema.com.
Enjoying its last weekend open during Art Basel Miami Beach, Video: An Art, A History at Miami Art Central is one in a line of high-caliber exhibitions in that venue. It’s worth a trip to see works by Isaac Julien, Dan Graham, Vito Acconci, Valie Export, Chris Marker, Pierre Huyghe and Bill Viola expertly installed on big and small screens, in custom installation formats and on many small monitors with comfortable couches for viewing and lingering over catalogs. Organized by curators at the Centre D’Art Pompidou, Miami is once again the lucky recipient of a rigorous show originated in Europe, which might have completely bypassed the United States were it not for MAC’s invitation. On Saturday, Dec. 9, at 11 a.m., MAC presents a very timely discussion on “Curating, Collecting and Conserving Video Art” led by Christine Van Assche from Centre Pompidou, with panelists Chrissie Isles from the Whitney, the ubiquitous Michael Rush and others. MAC is located at 5960 SW 57th Ave., in South Miami. See www.miamiartcentral.org.
Twilight, a selection of recent videos by Sean Dack documenting decay and decline in the American landscape, will be screened at the Moore Space at 4040 NE Second Ave. in the Design District. Dack focuses his lens at failed American enterprises, from a derelict fast food franchise to a closed Christian theme park, to moments in everyday life forever transformed courtesy of the government’s war on terror. See www.themoorespace.org.
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