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 Cortright, Rollin Leonard, Bunny Rogers, Alexander Porter, Angela Washko, Jayson Musson, Anthony Antonellis, Yung Jake, Jennifer Chan, and Jennifer Catron and Paul Outlaw
EU ARTISTS: Kim Asendorf and Ole Fach, Daniel Swan, Leslie Kulesh, Jesse Darling, Addie Wagenknecht, Saoirse 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).
