Hollywood and other Myths

Pierre Bismuth, Aukje Dekker, Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler,  Jesper Just, Tom Pnini,  Julian Rosefeldt, Guido van der Werve, Francesco Vezzoli 

Curator: Ruth Direktor

Hollywood and other Myths is an exhibition of video works that refer to cinema: they reflect the ever-growing affinity between video and cinema in terms of production value, contents and viewing experience. The medium, which developed in the 1960s and 1970s from the world of visual art and experimental cinema while rejecting popular cinema, began developing in the 1990s a relationship of fascination and rejection, of enchantment and criticism, of re-evaluation with mainstream cinema. To use a Freudian anthropomorphism, video is at the stage where it seeks another, more glamorous parent, that it previously rejected, i.e. Hollywood.

The video works at the exhibition, dating from 2002 onwards, reflect these dual relationships: adopting the cinematic toolbox, referring to the financial and ideological mechanisms of the cinema industry, using its myths, clichés, heroes and history, all the while observing them from aside. Hollywood as an allegory and a being with a mythical existence is present in the works as a removed testimony and an attempt at self-identification through a neighboring medium, a distant relative.

The exhibition offers an observation of the complex link between video, cinema and art—not only theoretically but physically, too. The high-quality big-screen cinematography, the rich enfolding soundtrack—cinema’s qualities that have made it the most hypnotic medium—are present in the works as raw materials. One would like to surrender to them; one would also like to ponder over the way in which Hollywood conventions have molded our worldview about emotions and passion, the way in which memory is retained and the way in which a story is developed.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue and a series of events.