Exhibition: “Balance and Power: Performance and Surveillance in Video Art”, Museum of Contemporary Art

Curated by Michael Rush
Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville FL
Sept 29 – Dec 31 2009
Krannert Art Musuem, Champaign, IL
October 22 through December 31, 2005
Rose Art Museum, Waltham MA
Sept. 21-Dec. 17, 2006

At a time when the nation is preoccupied with heightened security and surveillance, and the public is fascinated by Reality TV with its open and surreptitious video exposure of participants, the boundaries between performance, voluntary acting for the camera, and surveillance, involuntary recording on camera by power systems with an interest in the movement of citizens, become blurred.  Since the earliest days of video art in the mid-1960s, artists have negotiated the question of when surveillance becomes performance (and vice versa) and these concepts continue to be central to many video artists working today. This exhibition, which examines both the early days of video art and
current practices, is an attempt to understand the complex relationship between the issues of performance, surveillance, and power. Included in the exhibition are works by some of the earliest practitioners, large-scale installations, and newly commissioned pieces.

︎ Exhibition website

“Video Art” by Michael Rush (Published by Thames & Hudson)