With museums and galleries closed, it’s time to turn to digital art and new media
Source: UbuWeb
While museums, galleries and art fairs are turning to virtual exhibitions and online showrooms to sate a suddenly isolated public’s need for art and culture, video art platforms have things to offer, the Art Newspaper writes and offers a selection of the best projects
UbuWeb
Founded by the conceptual poet and artist Kenneth Goldsmith in 1996, UbuWeb was designed as a platform for conceptual poetry. As technology developed, Goldsmith began posting videos and audio tracks.
“I modelled it on a museum, trying to get the best of everything under one roof,” Goldsmiths says. “It’s an older model, but it still works. The site is exactly the same as it was in 1996, it hasn’t changed.”
Goldsmith runs UbuWeb alone and calls the project a community service that usually falls outside of the mainstream economic models.
On UbuWeb you can find country music by Julian Schnabel or listen to Joseph Beuys’s short lived pop band, watch Richard Serra’s early films, view the groundbreaking works of Vito Acconci or Yoko Ono, the selected works of Bas Jan Ader, the super-8’s of David Wojnaworicz, a documentary on Agnes Martin, or the only film written by Samuel Beckett (and starring Buster Keaton).
Electronic Arts Intermix
Electronic Arts Intermix is a nonprofit organisation founded in 1971. Today,it functions as a large archive of video and media art.
Visitors can make an appointment and visit its viewing room in New York to watch any of 3,500 videos, including works by Charles Atlas, John Baldessari, Ana Mendiata, Bruce Nauman and countless others.
As the viewing room is currently closed because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the team has opened access to the online viewing room for $20 a month (the typical rate for students).
Contact info@eai.org for information about weekly or monthly streaming access.
Vimeo and YouTube
Though Video and YouTube are not directly associated with video art, many authors post their works here. The platforms offer works by young artists around the world, as well as video art stars Nam June Paik and Dan Graham (though you have to try hard to find them).
Video Data Bank
Video Data Bank was founded by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1976, at the dawn of the video and media art movements. Today, its collection includes some 6,000 video works by over 600 artists, from the early pioneers like William Wegman to the modern savants like Bill Viola.
Works from VDB’s collection can be rented, but an individual purchase can cost from $50 to $120.
Video Data Bank has a streaming channel, offering free access to works by one artist from the site’s archive every few months. 29 videos are now available.
Art21
Though the nonprofit organisation Art21 does not specialise in video art, it has showed the public the lives and practices of contemporary artists since it was founded in 1997.
The website offers nine seasons of the Peabody Award-winning show Art in the Twenty-First Century.
Art21 other series include New York Close Up, Extended Play, Artist to Artist and others. The organisation regularly updates its YouTube channel and has recently added a new section “Staff picks for things to watch, read, and hear” to its weekly newsletter. In the section, the Art21 team and guest artists discuss what they are interested in at the moment. Among the latest recommendations, are, for instance, Jenny Odell’s book How to Do Nothing and the television show American Ninja Warrior.
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