Shana Nys Dambrot
Independent conceptual art project another year in LA moved its presentations to an online format way back in 2015. Operated by David and Cathy Stone — both artists themselves — they were always interested in serialized and performative projects, so the move made a lot of sense even when it was still a bit ahead of its time.
Most of its exhibitions feature artists who are directly using the internet as a medium, especially with live performances and time-based work. For example, in November and December of 2019 their Exquisite Corpse show featured artists working on each other’s uploaded works in a discourse that was unveiled over the course of two months. Previous exhibitions have frequently featured in-studio performance works such as a video series by Pierogi2000’s Joe Amrhein, where he videotaped forging famous artists’ signatures.
But their current presentation is even more perfect for these art-at-home times. Their Winter Film Festival (running March 1-April 30) highlights a curated selection of avant-garde artist videos made since the 1970s. It’s the follow-up to their Summer Film Festival last July and August, which covered the first half of the 20th century through the 1960’s, and is still viewable at the site.
From Georges Melies to Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Jack Smith, Kenneth Anger, Tony Conrad, Bas Jan Ader, Man Ray, and Maya Deren, dozens of the most influential and interesting pioneers of conceptual and surreal video and short cinema are collected for your click-through pleasure. It’s a low-fi interface that opens new tabs to sites where the works are publicly hosted — galleries, museums, archives, universities and so on — in what is basically a self-guided one-day seminar of the history of art cinema in Europe and America. It’s a lesson that will have you reaching for your own camera next.
Another year in LA, open online 24/7/365.
Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.