Time Test: International Video Art Research Exhibition

Co-presented by CAFA Art Museum and Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Time Test: International Video Art Research Exhibition is a project, presents around 50 domestic and foreign artists with two collateral exhibitions echoing with each other in the axis of the development course of the video art. Moving Time: Video Art at 50, 1965-2015 reviews and researches the greatly significant artworks in the last 50 years of western video art development. Screen Test: Chinese Video Art since the 1980s focuses on organizing and reviewing the last thirty years of video art through representative Chinese voices in active in moving image art, including a special unit of Hong Kong video art presented by Videotage. The project also includes a series of public programs such as a compendium of artistic and social events, extension reading materials for public enrichment, and lectures and discussions featuring the artists and invited scholars.

Moving Time: Video Art at 50, 1965-2015

The Exihibition traces the impact various artists have had on the art form—from its birth in the 1960s with artists Andy Warhol and Nam June Paik, to the performative work of influential women artists such as Joan Jonas, to the lesser-known works of international emerging artists continuing to push the medium forward today. The exhibition is one of the final shows envisioned by Broad MSU Founding Director Michael Rush prior to his passing earlier this year, and is curated by Caitlín Doherty, Broad MSU Curator and Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs.

Rush was internationally recognized for his observations of, and pioneering publication on, video art (Video Art, 2003, 2007). His vision for Moving Time was guided by the belief that, given the ubiquity of all manner of videos in contemporary society, it is of growing importance to focus on the history and progress of video as an art form, as practiced by visionary artists from around the globe.

Moving Time will ask visitors to both contemplate the progression of video art over time and simultaneously put works from various time periods in dialogue with one another. It will also feature five works from emerging, international contemporary video artists—including Sam Jury, Michelle Handelman, and Weng Yunpang. Each artist will showcase his or her work alongside one ‘historic’ work they cite as having been of particular influence to them during the course of their career.

Screen Test: Chinese Video Art Since 1980S

The Exihibition is divided into three sections:

The Infancy of Video Art – introduces the occurrence of video art in greater China and how it became an independent artistic medium and cultural theme.

Media Experiment – showcases video art developed in 1990s with spread of personal computers and new media technologies and the rise of the independent film movement and experimental films. Video art became an expanding aesthetic experiment and a radical transformation.

Transition to Film – encompasses films shot by artists or spatial film installations produced by film directors; both are becoming increasingly important themes in moving image art today. Film has become more than a medium of contemporary art; it is an important tool and methodology for witnessing, recording, participating, and acting in society.

The Exhibition also includes the special unit of Hong Kong video art Simultaneity – Reframing Hong Kong I presented by Videotage. The program proposes (historical) re-readings of artists’ moving image from Hong Kong. By selecting video works of art, animations and documentary films produced by Hong Kong artists from 1989 to 2014, the program will reinterpret the experience of here and now by looking into the potentially excluded and forgotten images of Hong Kong.