Friday October 14, 2011, 5:00–10:00 pm
Saturday October 15, 2011, Noon–8:00 pm
Locations throughout downtown Greenfield, Massachusetts
Free and open to the public
info [at] greenfieldvideofest.org
413-773-5463
greenfieldvideofest.org
Participating Artists:
Manon De Boer (NL), Seth Cluett (US), Tony Cokes (US), Luke Fowler (UK), Jesse Jones (IE), Paul Lindale (UK/US), Kara Lynch (US), Mirko Martin (DE), The Otolith Group (UK), Jenny Perlin (US), Mathias Poledna (AT), Raha Raissnia & Charles Curtis (IR/US), Steve Roden (US), Billy Roisz (AT), Julian Rosefeldt (DE), Simpson/Meade (US), Miki Tajima (US), Su-Mei Tse (LU), and Daniel Warner (US).
Curated by Christoph Cox
The 3rd annual Brick + Mortar International Video Festival presents a selection of video and film installations that focus on sound, music, and relationships of dissonance and consonance between the aural and the visual. Since the 1990s, sound has become a central concern in contemporary art, with many leading video artists and filmmakers actively exploring the sonic potential of audio-visual media. The 2011 edition of Brick + Mortar showcases some of the most interesting and engaging of these explorations from the past decade by a group of prominent artists from nine countries.
Early avant-garde filmmakers worried that the advent of sound would reduce cinema to an illusionistic portrayal of the world, with sound a subordinate prop for the visual image. These worries proved to be well justified. Present-day avant-gardists have heeded those early warnings, giving sound an equal place and exploring the productive difference between the auditory and visual registers of video and film. Luke Fowler and Raha Raissnia both collaborate with sound artists to develop allied strategies for capturing light and sound. Refusing image altogether, Mirko Martin’s video operates solely through sound and text. Conversely, Steve Roden’s piece is silent but functions as a kind of visual and musical score. Mathias Poledna, Manon de Boer, and Mika Tajima use the camera to capture and intervene in musical performance and recording. Other projects uncover the critical potential of music. The Otolith Group explores the Afro-Futurist mythology of the Detroit electronic duo Drexciya, while Tony Cokes presents a video essay that examines the complex racial politics of House and Techno. Via these and other strategies, the projects presented at this year’s Brick + Mortar festival amplify the “audio” aspect of this “video” festival.
The Brick + Mortar festival takes place in Greenfield, a historic mill town in western Massachusetts. Transforming the city’s downtown into a temporary arts district, the festival presents video projections and installations within a variety of extraordinary architectural sites that are in various stages of renovation. Presented by ConjunctionArts in partnership with local businesses, the Franklin County Chamber of Commerce, the Greenfield Business Association, Greenfield Community College, and Five Colleges Inc., the festival is free and open to the public.
