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California Video Screening Series

Explore the diversity and creativity of video art made in California with these screenings in March, April, and May 2008 complementing the exhibition California Video (on view at the Getty Center March 15–June 8, 2008). Each of the six screenings is organized by a guest curator and expresses an alternate view of the diverse history of video art in California.

All screenings are held in the Harold M. Williams Auditorium unless otherwise noted. The videos shown in these screenings will also be available for viewing in the Video Study Room within the exhibition.

California Video

Memory Inversion

Date: Wednesday, March 26, 7:30 p.m.
Admission: Free; reservations required.

Rita Gonzalez, artist and assistant curator, special exhibitions, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, hosts a program that focuses on video art from the late 1980s and early 1990s. Critical theory, collage, and allusions to literature, television, and cinematic genres characterize videos from this era as artists pushed video into freeform essayistic modes.

The program features works by Lawrence Andrews, Steve Fagin, Erika Suderberg, and others.


Still from Memory Inversion

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Media/Concept/Art

Date: Wednesday, April 2, 7:30 p.m.
Admission: Free; reservations required.

Bob Riley, independent curator and founder of the Department of Media Arts at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), investigates the legacy of performance art and its relationship to video in California. By adapting vaudeville and experimental postwar theater—including radical forms of public dissent that characterized the era—to the stage of the television image, artists set a precedent for subjectivity in art as the video environment and means of production expanded.

The program features works by Karen Finley, Howard Fried, the Kipper Kids, Marlon Riggs, and others.


Still from Up Yer Bum with a Bengal Lancer by the Kipper Kids

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L.A. Video: Uncensored

Date: Wednesday, April 9, 7:30 p.m.
Admission: Free; reservations required.

Bruce Yonemoto offers an overview of the underside of an urban Los Angeles often glimpsed but rarely seen. Many of the works in this program were originally programmed for a Valentine's Day event at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) and have since been featured at other festival venues. The prevailing 1980s culture of pre-AIDS sex, drugs, cultural theory, and rock 'n' roll made its way into the Valentine Video program. Participating artists felt a freedom to show works without the restrictions imposed by television, film content, or the ever-present museum/gallery curatorial complex.

The program features works by Patti Podesta, Joe Sola, Wenden Baldwin and Mark Trezise, Branda Miller and Norman Yonemoto, David Burns, Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, Nina R. Salerno, Nguyen Tan Hoang, Ben Chase, and Chuck Roche and Black Randy.

Please note that this screening contains mature subject matter and no one under 18 will be admitted. Walk-ins will not be admitted without prior reservation.


Still from Model X by Nina R. Salerno

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TV Art

Date: Wednesday, May 14, 7:30 p.m.
Admission: Free; reservations required.

Kathy Rae Huffman, visual arts director of Cornerhouse and former curator at the Long Beach Museum of Art, hosts a screening of works inspired and influenced by an aesthetic commentary on television; all were broadcast in the 1970s and 1980s.

The program features works by Ante Bozanich, Nancy Buchanan, Chris Burden, John Duncan, Doug Hall, Ilene Segalove, Mitchell Syrop, Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, and others.


Still from Watch It/Think It by Mitchell Syrop

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Without Imagination There Is No Will: The Woman's Building Tapes

Date: Wednesday, May 21, 7:30 p.m.
Admission: Free; reservations required.

Meg Cranston, a Los Angeles-based artist, presents a selection of rarely screened video works produced at the Los Angeles Woman's Building in the 1970s. Founded in 1973, the Woman's Building was a downtown Los Angeles hub for feminist thought, discussion, mobilization, social support, creativity, and art making. The Feminist Studio Workshop provided resources to female artists, including a number of early Sony Portapak video cameras. The tapes that emerged from the program reflect the insight and urgency with which feminist artists were making their voices heard.

This program features works by Jerri Allyn, Nancy Angelo and Candace Compton, Nancy Buchanan, Cheri Gaulke, Leslie Labowitz, Suzanne Lacy, Susan Mogul, Antoinette de Jong Portis, Sheila Ruth, and Chris Wong, as well as a collection of rare video documents produced at the Woman's Building.


Cover of the brochure What Is Social Art

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I'll Be Your Mirror: Works about Celebrity

Date: Wednesday, May 28, 7:30 p.m.
Admission: Free; reservations required. Call (310) 440-7300 or use the "Make Reservation" button below.



Steve Seid, video curator at the Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley, celebrates the Golden State's most renewable resource: celebrity, pure and simple. The works in this screening—which consider celebrity to be one of California's principal exports—function as obstacles in the easy manufacture and circulation of fame and desire.

The program features works by Anne McGuire, Lucas Michael, Karla Milosevich, Leslie Singer, Scott Stark, and others.


Still from Dear Dennis by Susan Mogul

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