art-folio by michèle laird

Art Basel has expanded into the Herzog & de Meuron exhibition hall

As the art world revs up for the 45^th edition of Art Basel in Switzerland, we look beyond the usual fare of paintings and sculptures and explore why so many top galleries are now presenting films by artists.

Video art has been around since the late 1960s when pioneers Nam June Paik and Bruce Nauman were the first to use the moving image as part of their art installations. In the 1970s, American artist Bill Viola began using video as stand-alone works of art.

And now, younger artists are giving video art a new life. They belong to a generation that has been milk-fed on MTV, brought up in an image-driven world and that is digitally savvy. (It has been whispered that their next stop will be post-internet art.)

As early as 1999, Art Basel set up a film section in recognition of the moving image’s role in contemporary iconography. The strategic move was also made to cater to an up and coming generation of collectors who relate strongly to time-based media, the name given to video, film, audio and computer-based technologies.

Art Basel’s film section, which concentrates on single screen projections, is now included in each of its three geographical editions, Basel, Miami and Hong Kong, but the choice of curators with distinctive cultural sensibilities for each location gives the events very different flavours.

Three different Art Basels

For Miami Art Basel in December, David Gryn, director of London’s Artprojx, creates entertaining events that can compete with the glitterati razzmatazz that Miami generates. Projections take place outdoors, whereas in Hong Kong and Basel, they are generally organised in movie houses, away from the commotion.

Hong Kong curator, Li Zhenua, is a recognized artist, producer and curator of media art, an umbrella term for art experiments conducted with new technologies, also known as digital art.

Growing up in Beijing in the 80s, Li Zhenua was very familiar with the action films pouring out of Hong Kong’s major film industry, but his interest in media art came with the advent of internet, a game changer in his country.

“Most artists born after the 70’s engaged in social issues and in media. Media art was a way for us to explain how we perceive the future,” he told swissinfo.ch. As founder and director of the Beijing Art Lab, he continues to straddle the art and technology divide.

“There has however been a change in the last five years and media artists now want to be referred to as contemporary artists,” he pointed out. For Art Basel, Li Zhenua has introduced a refreshing perspective by selecting films that are “not too long and not too conceptual”.

Out of 41 artists he chose for the film section in Hong Kong, 29 were in fact Asian. “A unique way of using the camera is what I am looking for,” he said.

In Basel, the curator for the past seven years is Berlin film scholar Marc Glöde, in association with collector This Brunner. As an intellectual who analyses the impact of moving images, Glöde’s preference leans towards films that are complex.

He explained that one of his criteria for selecting films by artists is the potential for irritation. “When I was living in the States, the idea of irritation became something I was more and more interested in,” he said laconically, adding: “While people were referring to irritation as something negative, to me it was something that kept me thinking. My capacity to be surprised is intact when I don’t relax.”

The German curator recognises a new energy in his field of expertise. “Artists were always trying to overcome the restrictions of the screen. With beamers, images can be projected more or less anywhere.”

In a demonstration of technical wizardry made possible by beamers, pioneer Bill Viola, who has been working in video for more than 40 years, enhances the architecture of the Bern Minster and the Bern Fine Arts Museum with his powerful imagery.

Glöde also described how a younger generation of artists that has grown up with an everyday experience of the moving image has been increasingly stimulated by the production of art films.

One such artist is Ryan Trecartin. Hailed as a voice of his times, 33-year-old Trecartin, along with his accomplice Lizzie Fitch, transforms candy-coloured images of their camp friends into a riotous kaleidoscope.

Not surprisingly for an artist of his age, he makes his videos available on Vimeo. By doing so, he is upending the traditional business model of art galleries and has provoked a split with his own.

The role of galleries

Time-based media has never been an easy sell, and yet it is becoming more popular. Art fairs therefore remain the best opportunities for galleries to present their artists. Although a few galleries take part in all three editions of Art Basel, they never present the same artists in two locations.

Hauser & Wirth, the global cutting-edge Swiss gallery with outposts in London, New York and, soon, in Los Angeles, presented in Hong Kong the endearing action sculptures  of Swiss artist Roman Signer,, but will be showing the startling Sterling Ruby and spiritually absorbed Rashid Johnson in Basel.

Moving image art has been around for a long time and has always found its place in the selling repertoire of galleries, Hauser & Wirth Executive Director Florian Berktold told swissinfo.ch.

“What has changed a lot in the last five years are the technical possibilities: the enhanced infrastructure in terms of image quality, size of cameras, editing on a laptop, sound engineering on the iPhone and advanced technical standards,” he said.

Berktold cited as examples the hugely complex film with elaborate acoustic features presented by Anri Sala for the French Pavilion at last year’s Venice art Biennale or the recent 11-part multi-channel music and video performance piece by Peruvian artist, David Zink Yi.

He pointed out another important development in the last ten years: the availability of resources in major collections and private institutions to deal with the preservation of time-based media. There are even video restoration classes at university level.

Art films or film as art

For more than 50 years, the use of moving images in art has been primarily conceptual or used within performances or installations. The ground-breaking Schaulager in Basel has presented in succession four artists of worldwide stature who blend the genres, all of them men: Matthey Barney, Francis Alys, Steve McQueen and Paul Chan.

Notwithstanding Switzerland’s Pipilotti Rist, and Gillian Wearing from the UK, there have been very few women video artists.

But in a screen-obsessed environment, artists are inventing new ways to look at the world and for two years running, in 2012 and 2013, the prestigious Turner Prize has gone to women. British Elizabeth Price creates works that take video art to a new dimension. Her elaborate montages are lush in form, content and meaning. They take more than a year to make and she says, interestingly, that they are never finished.

French Laure Prouvost won the prize in 2013 with an installation entitled Wantee. At the core of her work is making art an experience, like the feeling of the sun on skin, the subject of one of her latest videos.

Perhaps time-based media is acquiring a sensorial status it did not have before. Something for the Art Basel film curators to consider.

Art Basel

Art Basel, one of the first international art fairs and branded “The Olympics of the art world”, was founded 45 years ago by three gallerists, including Ernst Beyeler.Year in year out, it attracts the premier art galleries of the world who arrive with their droves of collectors, curators, artists and celebrities. The fair was originally dedicated to selling modern art, but has now become a showcase for contemporary art as well, most of it cutting edge (Statements) and some of it monumental (Art Unlimited). Generally only a third of the galleries that apply are selected.  In Basel in 2014, there will be 300 leading galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa in exhibition spaces that now include the recent Herzog & de Meuron extension. Art Basel draws tens of thousands of visitors every year.

This year’s edition will also include ’14 Rooms’ curated by Klaus Biesenbach and Hans Ulrich Obrist who have invited international artists to each activate a room, including Marina Abramović, Ed Atkins, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Damien Hirst, Bruce Nauman, Roman Ondák, Yoko Ono, Tino Sehgal and Xu Zhen.

Seminal figures in video art

Nam June Paik, a Korean American artist who died in 2006, was considered to be the founder of video art. He made his debut by scattering televisions and using magnets to alter or distort their images.   Doug Aitken uses large-scale multiple screens indoors and out in what he calls “liquid architecture”. His work explores the root of creativity. Dan Graham started using video as early as 1969 primarily as a means for performance and to explore relationships between bodies and language.   Matthew Barney is an American artist who works with sculptural installations combined with performance and video.   Bill Viola is a leading figure in video art who focuses obsessively on the fundamental experiences of life, including loss of consciousness. With Aitken, he is one of the few who only uses film.   Bruce Nauman is a contemporary American artist whose practice spans a broad range of media. His videos are invariably disturbing and often focused on the human body.   Douglas Gordon is a Scottish artist who has plunged into video to use images repetitiously, as if to overturn time.   “Pipilotti” Rist is a Swiss visual artist who displays an infectious exuberance through a colourful imagery that speaks essentially of womanhood.

Some younger artists that pundits say look out for

Maria Antwander, born 1980, is an Austrian artist who records her fleeting in situ performances. Programmed at Art Basel on 18 June.   Aida Ruilova, born 1974, is an American artist who gives her films mesmerizing atmospheres. Programmed at Art Basel on 20 June.   Aaron Young, born 1972, is an American artist who works on the borderline of danger.   Mika Rottenberg, born 1976, is an Argentine-born artist who lives in New York. Her videos tell the story of women with unusual physical characteristics.   Ed Atkins, born 1982, uses a disturbing avatar of great beauty to talk of bodily processes, especially death. He has a show this summer at the Serpentine Galleries in London.   Elizabeth Price, born1966, is a British artist whose elaborate montages weave into a novel form of art. Programmed at Art Basel on 19 June. Laure Prouvost, born 1978, is a French artist living and working in London who uses film to communicate sensorial experiences.

Famous art collections on film and video

Richard and Pamela Kramlich have one of the world’s largest private collections of video and new media arts. They have been collecting since the late 1980s, including Bruce Nauman, Steve McQueen, and Matthew Barney. Their first purchase was the videotape by Swiss artists Fischli & Weiss called The Way Things Go.

Julia Stoschek Collection is an international private collection of contemporary art with a focus on time-based media art. The collection opened to the public in Dusseldorf in 2007 and comprises installations, videos, photographs, paintings and sculptures. The young Julia Stoschek has made a name for herself not only as a collector, but as a patron of video art.

Julia Stoschek Collection

The Goetz Collection in Munich, one of the world’s foremost collections of contemporary art since the mid-1980s, includes an important body of time-based media works constituted by the collector Ingvild Goetz. The purpose-built private museum, that was recently donated to the state of Bavaria, was designed by Herzog & de Meuron. Sammlung Goetz M+ Museum due to open in Hong Kong in 2017 is building up a collection of moving image art. The Herzog & de Meuron’s design will include a LED façade transforming it into a unique canvas for multimedia, film, video and projection.