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“National #Selfie Portrait Gallery” at the Moving Image Contemporary Video Art Fair in London


September 25, 2013 | Marina Galperina

Earlier this year, the Shortest Video Art Ever Sold! project at the Moving Image Contemporary Video Art Fair in New York made a few headlines with the world’s first Vine sale (Shout out Angela Washko!) Ok, so there was a hacking of Vine involved, but the exciting part in the long-run is the ongoing conversation of a micro-collecting community and the work that artists were able to produce under the constraints of a looping, six-second, square format video and the weight of omnipresent social-media culture.

Next month, we (Kyle Chayka and Marina Galperina, sup?) are presenting our next project at the London edition of the fair — National #Selfie Portrait Gallery! — featuring short-form video #selfies by emerging artists from the EU and the US.

Self-portraiture has a long artistic heritage, with devotees including Rembrandt, the compulsive self-documentarian, Courbet, who styled himself a suave, long-haired Bohemian, and van Gogh, the fragile genius, bandaged at the ear. Today, the genre belongs to anyone with a camera. Self-portraiture is the most democratic artistic medium available, not merely as a performative outlet for the social self, but also as an intimate route of personal catharsis for today’s artists.

Here’s National #Selfie Portrait Gallery line-up. They’re all awesome.

US ARTISTS: Petra CortrightRollin LeonardBunny RogersAlexander PorterAngela WashkoJayson MussonAnthony AntonellisYung Jake, Jennifer Chan, and Jennifer Catron and Paul Outlaw

EU ARTISTS: Kim Asendorf and Ole FachDaniel SwanLeslie KuleshJesse DarlingAddie WagenknechtSaoirse Wall and Carlos Sáez

The artists were selected specifically for their established practices, ranging from poetic internet confessionals to experimental, process-minded new media portraiture and humorous subversive commentaries on exhibitionism.

UPDATE: Also on display will be an interactive app and installation created by Kim Asendorf and Ole Fach allowing Moving Image visitors to take their own warped meta-selfies, suitable for avatar use and sharing everywhere. The app will also be sold in an exclusive edition.

We encourage audience Instagram and Vine #selfie participation with under the hashtag #NationalSelfiePortraitGallery. Ok, so it’s a bit of self-promo, but we’re family here.

 

Moving Image Contemporary Video Art Fair, Oct 17 – Oct 20, The Bargehouse, London. FREE! Oct 17 (2-7pm) Oct 18-19 (11am–7 pm) Oct 14, (11am–6pm). Opening reception Oct 17 (6-8pm).