ARTIST’S ARTICLE The Community Is Watching, and Replying: Art in Public Places ABSTRACT The author describes her and Spaces public-art projects and installa- tions, in which she has em- ployed various combinations of video, photography, audio, sculpture and performance, Anne Bray often in collaboration with artist Molly Cleator. The pieces spectacularize unresolved conflicts between the artists regarding what is personally truthful as compared to what society dictates, especially will state up front that I am from the East Coast can tap the same power in the same concerning the “three deviants”: I women, art and nature. The of the U.S.A., live on the left coast (in Los Angeles), hate TV, do pop language or expand percep- artists question who defines not watch TV, listen to public radio, wish I ran a TV station or tions of what mass media does and these related realities and how. at least a program and read massive amounts of media- can do. Art using this technology The author has also offered deconstruction theory. Public art-making, video-festival orga- can, more specifically, assist viewers hundreds of artists a forum called L.A. Freewaves, a media nizing and art teaching comprise my creative triumvirate. In my to distinguish their realities from il- arts organization and festival artwork I place intimate images into public arenas or I manip- lusion, a required skill soon to be working in traditional and ulate public, often commercial, language into personal mes- rare, atrophied by pervasive edu- nontraditional venues throughout sages. Through the video festival I set up forums in which others tainment. Los Angeles, in an effort to may express in their own language. And through teaching pub- disseminate community- empowering public art widely. lic and media arts, I let young people know these opportunities exist and give them the tools to make their own images. Public PERSONAL HISTORY art, independent video festivals and education are all about In 1970, while in college in Geneva, Switzerland, I found the speaking one’s mind in the face of very large commercial struc- 35mm still camera to be my vehicle of transition from a state of tures and providing the space for others to do likewise, or at helplessness to that of creating my own visual utterances. I least begin strategizing to do the same. With 3,000 ads in our learned that I could respond. Eventually, however, these static face per day, with only 9% of the TV directors being women and images did not suffice to reflect my worldview, which came to with more extra-terrestrials on TV than Asians, Latinos and Na- include motion, change, language, sound and multiple view- tive Americans combined, there is much missing in our public points. Single frames no longer can convey sufficient com- pictures and many false mirrors presented to us. plexity. Neither does video fulfill all these artistic requirements, Thirty percent of the content of mass media is advertise- but with the addition of slides, projectors, sound systems, 3D ments, i.e. corporate art, pixellated, transmitted and sprayed screens and performers, I feel I am approaching the number over the world. Ads are on our orange peels, protruding from of elements I need to define the realities I want others to ex- the seams of our underwear and on our doorknobs and wind- perience. Projected images and sound fill a space, enveloping shields. They link the articles I read and the songs I hear and programs I do not watch. I try to prevent ads from entering my eyes, ears and pores, alienating me from my fears, desires and culture. I cut labels out. I lobby to prevent the telephone com- Fig. 1. Anne Bray, It’s Dizzying, hand-painted billboard, 14 48 ft, 1990–1991. (© Anne Bray) This work appeared at four sites in Los pany from selling my phone number to businesses. I refuse to Angeles and was meant to console feminist-phobic viewers. It was give salespeople my address when I make purchases and I throw hand-painted by commercial billboard artists from a photographic my junk mail in the recycling bin so it never enters my house. collage, graphics materials and computer text and was sponsored by By contrast, I fantasize about an artist-run TV channel to the artist space LACE and Patrick Media. counteract the numbing but nerve-wracking reruns of ste- reotypes and to fill in some of the constant omissions. Poverty and culture, for example, the homeless and the high brow, would quickly lose their sinful and alien tones. The torrential power of mass imagery and messages would be opposed, redi- rected, diverted, siphoned off . . . or reinvented, diversified, personalized, i.e. reprogrammed with a multicultural skew in- stead of a corporate bottom line. Personally, I think TV could have ended racism in the U.S.A. Using the same instruments as the industry (cameras, decks, monitors, projectors, sound systems, etc.), an artist or activist
Anne Bray (artist), 2151 Lake Shore Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90039, U.S.A. E-mail:
© 2002 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 15–21, 2002 15
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402753689263 by guest on 24 September 2021 knowledge the community as their source and return to that origin so oth- ers may perceive them. Awareness follows the perceptual changes that result and can then lead to cultural and political participation. Both art and politics rely on changes in perceptions based in our imaginations. No matter what format, the art that I most appreciate (1) shows that we live in a media culture that can express the per- sonal realm if programmed to do so; (2) contradicts our commercial worldviews by being exhibited without demanding a price tag; (3) reflects technology’s poten- tial use for individual and collective bene- fit; (4) offers audiences a challenge in a milieu that usually associates change and difference with fear; (5) relies on trust in people’s potential and treats them as cre- Fig. 2. Anne Bray and Antonio Muntadas, Media Eyes, a billboard installation, 10 20 ft, l98l. ative equals in a society stratified in every (© Anne Bray) This work appeared on a commercial street in Cambridge, MA, sponsored by other way; (6) emphasizes art as an ex- MIT for the SkyArt Festival. At night, changing pairs of slide projections of excerpted ads perience rather than a commodity or lux- juxtaposing objects with people filled the eyeglass frames, which were blank during the day. ury; (7) offers a surprise; and (8) inclines audiences to reward the artists with ample feedback. As contradistinctive to prevailing practices as these ideals are, the audience in the artist’s world, as year I began collaborating again, this they can still be realized in mundane Muzak Inc. has shown. time consistently with one artist, Molly events and settings. I grew up in a large family and was Cleator. Four years of working at the trained to do social service in a Catholic artist space Los Angeles Contemporary setting. Between 1978 and 1982, I lived Exhibitions (LACE) (1985–1989) taught PUBLIC PROJECTS in a commune, believed in collective me much about the media arts commu- In general, my own public-art projects are processes, socialized with progressives nity and art administration. My public-art site specific in content and form. They and taught large classes. Also during that approach directly influenced my pro- all contain images and texts, written or period I regularly collaborated with other gramming. The concerns of my own art audible, in an accessible style reflective artists, city officials and community mem- projects, meanwhile, came to mandate of the format. Examples include bill- bers to present public art events in the use of collective action. boards, a street banner, an outdoor audio Boston. My media aversion had crystal- installation, a video installation in a lized by that time from contrasting the restaurant, animation on an electronic detestable sound of TV, which had per- PUBLIC SPACE sign, and a “white out” (erasure) of all meated my childhood home, with the In urban streets, there is an unacknowl- commercial signs on six adjacent blocks. stimulation of 8 years living away from edged battle raging between architects I describe the works individually below. television in college and Europe. My po- and media makers, with city planners as Each one comments on the media and litical disagreements with the box, partic- the arbitrators. Ads are sometimes bigger its wider circumstances. In some projects, ularly mainstream news, were sharpened than buildings, and skyscrapers are I manipulate commercial images and by work with my mentors, Aldo Tam- topped with trademarks. As both archi- sounds into personal messages. In other bellini and Antonio Muntadas, at Massa- tecture and media often dwarf the public, works, I insert carefully selected private chusetts Institute of Technology’s Center I try to create a more egalitarian rela- discussions and images into public are- for Advanced Visual Studies. tionship with viewers through my multi- nas. Personalized communication is my In 1982, I arrived in socially discon- media installations, indoor and outdoor, goal [2]. nected Los Angeles, where one’s best and through the L.A. Freewaves festival. My billboard projects used varying de- friend is generally 15 to 60 minutes away, After moving to Los Angeles, where there grees of technology. The first, It’s Dizzy- depending on the time of day and there- are fewer pedestrians than ads, I redefined ing (Fig. 1), used only photography and fore the traffic, and where intimacy is ex- public art to include media arts in order computer graphics for the layout. I pro- perienced most frequently on the to continue to engage a large populace. I duced Media Eyes, a billboard installation telephone or more recently on-line. In thought I could aggressively pump art into with Antonio Muntadas on a busy com- response, I divided my practice in two: viewers’ homes via television. mercial street in Cambridge, Massachu- producing individual public art projects Vital art lives in a vernacular zone, setts in 1981, sponsored by MIT for the and administering such projects as por- where the individual and collective ren- SkyArt Festival (Fig. 2). The 10- -20-ft tions of the L.A. Street Scene Festival, the dezvous. I find my ideas in the same billboard featured a pair of eyeglasses L.A. Festival, Suzanne Lacy’s Dark places in which I exhibit them, most re- that queried passersby with the text, Madonna [1] and others, particularly, cently, for instance, a mall and a movie “WHAT ARE WE LOOKING AT?” At since 1989, L.A. Freewaves. That same theater. My environmental works ac- night, paired slide projections of close-
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402753689263 by guest on 24 September 2021 ups of ads (evolving gradually from im- ages of people to objects) filled the eye- glass frames. A simple row of black lights nightly transformed the eyeglass image into an eye-catching question mark. Single-handedly, a 40-second animation (1989) (Fig. 3), appeared every 6 minutes on a 20- -40-ft electronic billboard over ultra commercial Times Square in New York. The work was sponsored by the Pub- lic Art Fund. In it, 30 hand-drawn frames were entered into a graphics computer and then programmed to be animated. Its text read, “I DON’T BUY IT, BUT I PAY FOR IT.” The images were scenes of a hand removing ads on a billboard, elec- tronic readout, newspaper, audio cassette player and TV. Next, the hand faced pre- sented its palm to the viewer for the first time and waved good-bye while removing the words “BUY” and “THE PRICE IS Fig. 3. Anne Bray, Single-Handedly, 40-sec animation on a 20- -40-ft electronic billboard, ALIENATION.” That lightboard has 1989. (© Anne Bray) The piece appeared every 6 minutes over Times Square in New York. It since been replaced by a giant video was sponsored by the Public Art Fund. Thirty hand-drawn frames were entered into a graph- screen, and five other kinetic signs now ics computer and then programmed to dissolve, cut and generally animate. The drawn hand dismissed a commercial billboard, radio, TV, newspaper and LED readout and commented share the same building facade. that the price of ads was alienation. Since I favor ideas over format, some projects only used technology indirectly. In White Out, the commercial signage with the words “Arm” and “Me” on ei- ers potentially confronted their own (Fig. 4) for 42 adjacent stores, approxi- ther side, big and bold, against a fluo- xenophobia, misogyny, militarism and mately 500 signs, on both sides of two rescent red background. The words were commercialism. busy intersecting streets were temporar- intentionally juxtaposed to the image to ily covered in white or “erased.” After stir a particular swarm of related issues: months of negotiations, the store owners festering feelings about past Pacific wars, COLLABORATIVE gave their consent for me to blank out all gun control, media manipulation of INSTALLATIONS signs and ads for half a day at Lincoln and women and socially tolerated degrees of Since 1989, I have collaborated with Broadway in Santa Monica, adjacent to feminism. While showing her lack of Molly Cleator, a West Coast native, who Los Angeles, in 1985. Ironically, eight TV power, it basically asked why the viewer watches TV, performs in Hollywood films stations, newspapers and magazines cov- would not give this woman a gun. View- and TV shows, reads magazines and ered the event, which incidentally brought technology into an otherwise very low-tech project and fortuitously dis- Fig. 4. Anne Bray, White Out, 1985. (© Anne Bray) Approximately 500 signs on 42 adjacent stores on both sides of Lincoln and Broadway, two busy intersecting streets in Santa Monica, seminated its ideas far and wide. During were temporarily covered in white or “erased.” After months of negotiations, storeowners this same time period, I performed a test consented to allow this for half a day. The work was sponsored by the UCLA Art Council with and discovered that one person (I, for ex- Wight Art Gallery in 1985 and covered by six TV stations and newspapers. ample) could remove 5,000 ads posted on public property if she spent only 4 hours a day at the task, i.e. maintained her other commitments as well. Doing this felt like housecleaning a city. I chose to show Arm Me, an indoor bill- board composed of fiberboard, fluores- cent paint and black-and-white photos, in the Faculty Exhibition at the University of California Santa Barbara in 1989, because no art organization or billboard company would display it outdoors (Fig. 5). It had, however, been previously shown as a tem- porary outdoor slide projection as part of Projections in Public by Foundation for Art Resources, L.A. Institute of Con- temporary Art and Installation Gallery in San Diego. A 10- -20-ft image fea- tured a Japanese-American woman’s face and cropped shoulders in the center
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402753689263 by guest on 24 September 2021 (Fig. 7) in an unleased retail space in Santa Barbara’s downtown shopping mall. From an inside vantage point, the mall’s doors framed the passing consumers in their social/cultural/recreational milieu, while audio loops provided a soundtrack to the scene. The shoppers’ recorded di- alogue was contrasted with personal state- ments about our own self-worth, fears and desires as opposed to hasty, judgmental projections upon random passersby. Shoppers became the subject, object and audience for this piece: we discussed them, placed them at center stage and provided seats for them. Everyone who passed participated in the piece, whether they merely walked by or sat, listened, climbed the walls (as some children did) or spoke back. In our 1994 work What Can I Say Fig. 5. Anne Bray, Arm Me, indoor billboard, 8 16 ft, 1989. (© Anne Bray) Shown at Univer- (Fig. 8), part of an exhibition about pub- sity of California Santa Barbara and previously shown as an outdoor slide projection by F.A.R., lic art and collaboration [5], we insti- L.A.I.C.A. and Installation Gallery. The piece basically asked viewers why they would not give gated a cultural-personal exchange with the depicted young Asian American woman a gun. female art patrons who were among the sponsors of the exhibition. In individual needs to be plugged into pop culture; in communicative forum. I insisted that meetings in the homes of nine affluent other words, my opposite. Our projects mass media blocked communication and white volunteers, we addressed each combine my interest in politically se- inhibited self-knowledge. other’s power, alienation, conformity, ste- lected personal material appearing in Video, performance art, and installa- reotypes and other psychological con- public spheres and my history of creat- tion merge both formally and concep- ceptions. Our intentions were to discuss ing media installations with her interest tually in Easy Chair, Electric Chair. The art’s role in each of our lives, to discover in autobiographical material and her ex- initial intimacy of our conversation and our similarities and differences as cul- perience as a performance artist and ac- our references to autobiographical ma- tural volunteers, to develop more com- tress in film, theater and television. terial were impinged upon by the tra- munication across the gulf between Through our work, we confront our cul- jectory of the mechanized chairs, whose artists and supporters and to explore tural alienation and enter different sec- seemingly random and aimless mean- class differences in the arts. tors of the mainstream to explore, clarify, dering interrupted and shattered com- The “public” participation in this ex- evaluate and come to some understand- munication. The contrast between the hibition was narrowed to the exhibition’s ing of the dialectic of selfhood and social live, performance-based imagery and our nine local patrons and the two artists as participation, which refers back to the conversation was mediated by the TV a microcosmic educational process that audience. We examine other polarities as frames in which our images appeared. all viewers could experience at the final well: male/female, class divisions, pop The monitors undercut both of our ar- exhibition. The result was an installation versus fine art. Their synthesis or non- guments regarding television, reminding of life-size photographs, chairs, personal resolution is assumed to be a process in- viewers to decide for themselves. possessions and two soundtracks com- dividual to each observer. The installation encouraged partici- paring woman as object with art as object. Our first joint effort, entitled Easy pation. The wheelchairs were ringed by One track, a poetic list of objects noted Chair, Electric Chair (1992) (Fig. 6), was 165 assorted chairs lent by the local com- during visits to each other’s residences, staged inside a 5,000 square foot gallery munity as they collided, conversed, zig- encountered during the project, was [3]. Our facial images were shown on two zagged and swiveled in an open-ended, recorded by all participants and em- portable TV sets mounted on two videotaped dialogue. Viewers first chose anated from speakers placed among the computer-controlled, motorized wheel- their subjective positions among dinette, objects; the other track was a list of neg- chairs [4]. The subject of our unscripted patio, reclining, beanbag, office-swivel, ative, positive and neutral terms referring but outlined one-hour recorded conver- director’s, barber, student, auditorium to women and emanated from speakers sation was communication and the me- and many other single or collective aimed at our portraits. A viewer could sit diation of information and imagination chairs, which we saw as absent human in each chair depicted in the photo- through mass media. Sculpture and cin- forms ready for viewers to fill. We offered graphs and reflecting each of our social ema verité–like dialogue combined in a the viewer this choice of chairs as com- positions and thus experience each of us motorized dance to reveal the psychic dis- fortable but challenging new positions personally and collectively. placement we experience as we try to ne- from which to form their judgments, ob- Our 1996 piece God Doesn’t Have a gotiate our way through the world, servations and projections onto our vi- Mouth (Fig. 9) also used familiar chairs, accepting or rejecting the dominant cul- sual and verbal dialogues. audio, video and photographs. This time, ture and its imposed values. In 1993, in conjunction with Santa Bar- we created a world in which every prop Cleator presented her conception of bara Contemporary Arts Forum, we pro- and costume was either black or white: a mass media as a powerful and potentially duced The Gap, an unguarded installation black judge’s robe, a white lifeguard
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402753689263 by guest on 24 September 2021 chair, a black witch’s hat, a white bridal veil, a black-and-white polka-dot dress, a houndstooth circle skirt, etc. While again inviting viewers’ psychological projec- tions onto our work, we literally projected slides and video onto 3D objects that fur- ther multiplied their interpretations and judgments. For example, the word “no- body” was projected rapid-fire among other terms for women on Molly, who was wearing a gown and lying in an odalisque pose. Concurrently, live spoken text in- vestigated the differences of our opinions regarding the negative and positive in- trinsic qualities of power. From our per- spectives as women, we examined definitions of power in order to create new relations to the powerful and pow- erless within ourselves and others. Some definitions and questions regarding power directly and indirectly included Fig. 6. Anne Bray and Molly Cleator, Easy Chair, Electric Chair, kinetic video installation, within the piece were: 1993. (© Anne Bray) Two motorized wheelchairs were each mounted with video-projected • Power determines how much time talking heads discussing their mutual alienation and contrasting their respective embrace and and space others allot you. rejection of mass media during a one-hour unedited intimate conversation at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in 1992 and at Banff Centre and Images du Futur in 1993. The work’s • Power is the ability to have others 165 chairs offered many social positions from which to see the piece. heed your definition of reality. • Power and powerlessness are intrin- sically neither good nor bad. determined by where film and TV com- and identified the need for a democrati- • Power can be both creative and de- panies allow them to go. Many cultures cally run, pluralistic festival celebrating structive. have no feature-length self-images (i.e. the diversity of independent video in • Everyone ultimately feels powerless. movies) but do have at least short inex- Southern California. In November of that • Power may be merely the feeling of pensive, independently produced video- year, L.A. Freewaves’s 1st Celebration of kinship with the powerful. tapes. L.A. Freewaves works hard to get Independent Video took place, with 35 • One can be unqualified to have the those tapes to the same cultures that different exhibitions and 31 repeated power that one has or wants. made them and to their neighbors, i.e. screenings of 185 tapes at 30 sites, plus 8 • Powerlessness is relative: Is it every- the rest of us. hours of programming on 14 cable sys- thing short of omnipotence? In April 1989, a coalition of regional tems. Screenings were held at galleries, • Is power getting one’s way or bring- arts and community organizations met museums, cafes, cable outlets and com- ing about changes in other people’s actions/conditions? • Can powerlessness be eliminated? Or Fig. 7. Anne Bray and Molly Cleator, The Gap, audio installation, 1993. (© Anne Bray) This can power be universalized? work appeared in a mall as part of Backtalk, Women’s Voices in the 90’s, curated by Marilu Knode The issue of power is appropriately ad- and Erica Daborn; a 20-minute two-track audio loop played in the rafters of this unguarded dressed using technology to amplify our storefront installation, discussing fears and desires incited by shopping. capacities to question power, often nar- rowly defined by mass media as money and might. One way I define power is my ability to make effective art for audiences accustomed to media bombardment. Another is my ability to question these is- sues with the public without a personal trust fund, which leads me to my other project, L.A. Freewaves, a nonprofit media arts organization.
L.A. FREEWAVES In reply to the gushing media hose aimed at each of us, I conceived of, founded and continue to direct an organization in which media and public art intersect. Most people venture beyond their cul- tural boundaries only through film and TV [6]. Where they may venture is then
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402753689263 by guest on 24 September 2021 and were quickly rectified by other cura- tors. This disparate group combined video art, narrative, documentary and an- imation, thus creating a more inclusive definition of independent video as well as many new thematic ways to combine tapes. For example, one program in- cluded tapes by single heterosexual women and gay men, illustrating that is- sues about the body among feminists and gay males were parallel. In two other pro- grams, young video makers examined sexual issues without the moralizing of their elders, while another explored dif- ferent sizes of turf, from individual to inter- galactic. Despite many risks, the democratic process generated 10 provocative exhibitions and a model for better programming in future festivals. Driven in part by increased access to Fig. 8. Anne Bray and Molly Cleator, What Can I Say, audio-photo installation, 10 chairs, 10 desk-top video technology, video has be- sets of objects and 10 photos, 1994. (© Anne Bray) Two audio tracks opposed the images of come more diversified, with new aes- eight art collectors and the two artists. Viewers could try “walking in the shoes,” i.e. sitting in thetics emerging daily from home the chairs, of these 10 women, while women as objects were compared to art as objects. The work appeared at The Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, CA, as part of Collabora- workspaces, schools and art centers. As tions, curated by Karen Moss. a culmination of its 4th Celebration of Independent Video, L.A. Freewaves pre- munity centers in four counties. Four the- after the civil unrest in the city, L.A. Free- sented a new spectacle event, TV at matic programs, called Road Shows, trav- waves’s network of contacts produced Large, at Los Angeles County’s outdoor eled to most parts of the city, to many two 1-hour programs, which aired and amphitheater, projecting independent audiences who had never seen indepen- screened in all parts of the city to give very videos on a large scale, describing dent material by makers of their own cul- different, less class-biased and distant artists’ critiques of television as well as ture or any other. The results varied from views of these events and situations than their proposed alternatives. We pub- dead-silent respect to yawning indiffer- TV did. In our 3rd Celebration of Inde- lished and distributed 30,000 guides to ence to thrilling cheers. pendent Video, L.A. Freewaves toured over 100 media resources throughout L.A. Freewaves’s debut became the showing these two programs and two the Los Angeles area, which are now country’s most extensive video festival. other programs about racism to all parts available via our web site. Its scope and public reception brought of the city, generating very lively discus- In 1995 and 1997, L.A. Freewaves had together individuals and organizations sions. This hot-off-the-presses material of- librarians and teachers repackage the lat- from grassroots to high profile into an fered thoughtful, inside perspectives that est festivals into exhibitions for Los An- ongoing media alliance of Los Angeles’s were desensationalized, eclectic, youthful, geles’s 74 major public libraries and 40 social, cultural and economic diversity. less defensive, personal instead of institu- public high schools. Teachers of lan- In 1991, our 2nd Celebration of Inde- tional, and revealed their biases blatantly guage arts, social studies, American stud- pendent Video caused our budget, book- instead of subconsciously. They helped to ies and interdisciplinary teams selected ings and press coverage to double. render the information comprehensible subjects such as immigration, racism, Curated video programs appeared at 104 and mend the information gap that in- gender formation and labor issues. Each art and media venues, school and cable cited so much of the telecast misinforma- subject was difficult to find information stations throughout Southern California. tion, omissions and distortions. about outside of mainstream material. In 1992, despite having the same budget, In 1994, L.A. Freewaves formalized its The librarians selected work that others L.A. Freewaves’s 3rd Festival expanded democratic curatorial process. We con- had censored, to reflect with their long- its exhibitions, screenings and broadcasts tracted 10 very diverse curators to select standing commitment to upholding free to include nearly 425 local venues and the festival’s programs for our 4th Cele- speech. The 90s Channel (now called 330 international video makers with a live bration of Independent Video. Although Freespeech TV), Deep Dish TV and audience of 29,000 and a broadcast au- designed as an experiment in multi-ethnic Moscow TV aired L.A. Freewaves pro- dience of 25,000. programming, it evolved into far more, in- grams nationally and internationally. The year 1992 was also a pivotal one for corporating inter-generational, multi- The 5th Celebration of Independent video in Los Angeles: Home video cap- genre, hetero/homosexual perspectives, Video Etc. in 1996, entitled Private TV tured the beating of Rodney King by po- replacing the old model of curation by cat- and Public Living Rooms, turned the con- lice, TV aired it thousands of times, cable egorization, and the consequent ethnic, ventional living-room television viewing TV showed the trial and broadcast TV in- age and gender ghetto-ization that was experience into an idiosyncratic re- flamed the violent reaction to the not- common at that time. thinking of our personal and public re- guilty verdict. In a highly emotional During the screening of over 400 en- lationships to TV. In the enormous situation, many viewers saw live coverage tries, a number of hidden, simplistic or Geffen Contemporary Annex of the Mu- that lacked the perspective that time erroneous perceptions by curators about seum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), 12 and/or familiarity provide. Merely months unfamiliar communities came to light artists designed “living-room” installa-
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/002409402753689263 by guest on 24 September 2021 tions that complemented, interpreted and contextualized L.A. Freewaves’s pro- grams of videos, CD-ROMs and web sites by 140 artists about home, girlhood, long- ing, masculinity, culture jamming, media, economic issues and current urban myths. After one weekend the video pro- grams dispersed to 50 other venues and public-access TV stations. The introduction of web and CD-ROM art to the festival mirrored L.A. Freewaves artists’ growth into these formats. The cu- rators wanted to offer a model to muse- ums for their future presentations of these new formats. They therefore cu- rated the works thematically and showed them both on-line and one piece per computer at the museum. The festival it- self produced a CD-ROM and distributed it widely for free to provide access for people unfamiliar with the Web. It con- Fig. 9. Anne Bray and Molly Cleator, God Doesn’t Have a Mouth, installation-performance, 1996. tained manifestos, copies of web sites, (© Anne Bray) This 1-hour piece at Civitella Ranieri Center in Umbria, Italy, used audio, video, shareware for web browsing and web au- slides and two performers to explore definitions of power from our perspectives as women, to create new relations to the powerful and powerless within others and ourselves. thoring, and an updated list of Southern California media-arts resources, includ- ing low-cost new-media services and the • teaching media literacy in the schools exchange, community truths and finan- new wave of youth-access centers. in all grades cial force—the power of consciousness. The 1998 and 2000 festivals, All Over the • encouraging video productions by Map and Air Raids, returned to MOCA people living within cable districts References and Notes with screenings, CD-ROMs and web sites • wide access to Internet production 1. L.A. Street Scene was a very large, traditional, city- there, yet dispersed throughout the city and information via libraries run festival in Downtown Los Angeles in the 1980s. again, this time via video tour buses, cable • dissemination of independently L.A. Festival was an unconventional citywide festival coordinated twice by Peter Sellars, in 1990 and 1993. shows, public television, video installations made tapes through video stores and Suzanne Lacy’s Dark Madonna was a one-night per- at other venues and a web site with links libraries formance culminating a race-and-gender–based se- to selected artists’ sites at
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