(September 1, 2008) – LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions) and Pitzer College Media Studies Program are pleased to announce Resolution 3: Video Praxis in Global Spaces, a project taking place in Hollywood and Claremont, California, from Thursday, September 25, 2008, to Sunday, February 1, 2009. This series of events, a part of LACE’s thirtieth anniversary programs, includes a symposium, traveling exhibition and publication. All Resolution 3 events are free and open to the public.

Background and History

When Resolution: A Critique of Video Art was published in 1986, it was one of the first critical texts to consider video as an art medium, and included essays by many prominent critics and scholars, ranging from Jean Baudrillard to Beverle Houston. The accompanying exhibition of single-channel videos was an important survey of U.S. artists working in video during the early to mid 1980s. The one-day symposium that took place on May 3, 1986, was an important occasion when critics, scholars and artists came together to explore what later became the tenets of discourse on video art. Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices, published in 1996, similarly defined the independent and increasingly global video practice of the late 1980s and 1990s. Now, more than ten years later, Resolution 3, the third chapter of the Resolution legacy, aims to be another field-defining event like its two predecessors.

On the occasion of LACE’s thirtieth anniversary, Resolution 3 investigates LACE’s history as one of the key presenters of video art in Los Angeles while assessing the global, ubiquitous presence of video in almost every aspect of our contemporary lives—ranging from YouTube postings to surveillance in the so-called “war on terror” to elaborate installations in elite museums and galleries. Pitzer College, a member of The Claremont Colleges, brings to this project an institutional commitment to social justice and intercultural understanding. Pitzer’s Media Studies program is specifically interested in combining critical theory and creative practice, a quality that is exemplified by video art, both in 1986 and in 2008. Resolution 3 is co-directed by Pitzer College Associate Professor of Media Studies Ming-Yuen S. Ma and LACE Executive Director Carol Stakenas.

Resolution 3 Symposium and Public Programs

The Resolution 3 Symposium will take place from October 24-26, 2008. On Friday, October 24, the Symposium will be held on Pitzer’s campus and at The Claremont Colleges. Co-hosted by Pitzer’s Media Studies program and the Intercollegiate Media Studies program (IMS), the goal of the day is conversation—among media scholars, video artists, media activists, art professionals, students, and other interested parties. The structure is organized around a series of roundtable discussions. In contrast to traditional academic conferences, there are no plenary sessions, no keynote address and no completed essays. Each discussion is developed from questions that arise out of pre-submitted abstracts for the Resolution 3 book (see below). All participants then further develop and explore these questions at the Symposium. Individual writers can then incorporate these discussions and debates back into their contributions for the book.

To complement the scholarship being generated by day one of the Symposium and to deepen reflection of the exhibition, Resolution 3 will move to LACE in Hollywood on Saturday, October 25, and Sunday, October 26, where a series of public programs will take place. In addition to continued dialogue, there are production workshops, video screenings, and a BYOP (bring your own pillow) 24-hour screening in the gallery. Designed to bring together the international participants of the Symposium in a series of peer-to-peer exchanges with local audiences and communities, these public programs are organized by a subcommittee of local media artists, activists, and scholars Irina Contreras, Lucas Hilderbrand, Micol Hebron, Ashley Hunt, and Jessica Lawless. The programs address issues including the politics of transcultural production, the influence of documentary and broadband technology on contemporary video art; collaboration and collective modes of production; as well as gender, architecture, and the body.

Narrowcast: Reframing Global Video 1986/2008

The exhibition Narrowcast: Reframing Global Video 1986/2008 re-presents selected works from the first Resolution exhibition, with the benefit of more than twenty years’ hindsight, and pairs them in compelling and unexpected ways to contemporary works, thus framing the medium’s brief history both formally and thematically. The ten selected artists in Narrowcast— five historical: Lyn Blumenthal, Juan Downey, Antonio Muntadas in collaboration with Marshall Reese, Michael Smith, Bill Viola and five contemporary: Natalie Bookchin, Mark Boulos, Regina José Galindo, Pablo Pijnappel, Artur Zmijewski—represent the two decades since Resolution in a way that emphasizes resonance and precedence rather than a comprehensive survey. And while the selected works, one from each artist, do not fit conveniently into neat categories, co-curators Pitzer Art Galleries Director/Curator Ciara Ennis and Ma have found historically significant connections that highlight the multi-layered and fragmented narratives inherent in both the contemporary and archival works. Separated into five loose categories—embroidered narratives, autobiographical confessionals, restaging histories, documentary and reportage, trance and ritual—the works in Narrowcast re-frame content as well as formal strategies that are as relevant in 1986 as they are now.

Resolution 3: Video Praxis in Global Spaces

Co-edited by Ma and Erika Suderburg, Professor of Art at University of California, Riverside, the Resolution 3 book seeks to examine the theoretical, historical and contemporary implications of video art and video based praxis in twenty-first century global culture. While Resolution: A Critique of Video Art was one of the first critical texts on video art to be published in the U.S., Resolutions: Contemporary Video Practices was one of the first books to tackle video as a medium across disciplines from a theoretical, activist, practical, hybrid, and transnational perspective, collecting texts from scholars, practitioners and engaged observers. Resolution 3, the third in a trilogy, continues this mandate and embarks on an analysis of the third decade of video as marked within and outside the margins of art production, broadcast interventions, festival codification, projected spectacle, museum entombment, digital tracing, 24/7 streaming, activist tool, essay, and camcorder document. Intending to broaden, contest and amplify the mediated space problematized and interrogated by its two predecessors, this companion volume examines the state of this practice in the third decade of videos deployment as examiner, tool, witness, poetic flight, leverage, and document.

Resolution 3: Video Praxis in Global Spaces is funded through the generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs, The Getty Foundation, Intercollegiate Media Studies at The Claremont Colleges, The James Irvine Foundation, Pitzer College (Pitzer Art Galleries, Frederick J. Salathé Fund and Pitzer Summer Research Assistantship), Scripps Humanities Institute, and the members of LACE.

About Pitzer Art Galleries

Pitzer Art Galleries exists to provide visually arresting and memorable exhibitions that promote the value and understanding of contemporary art within a local, national and international context. The Galleries are comprised of two sites, the Nichols Gallery—committed to solo and group exhibitions by national and international artists both emerging and established—and the Lenzner Family Art Gallery—a space for risk and experimentation dedicated to emerging artists working in all media. Through curatorial creativity and visionary programming Pitzer Art Galleries seeks to provide context, support and a critical framework for artists and curators working today and by doing so inspire meaningful dialogue that fascinates, inspires and invigorates.

Hours: Tuesday-Friday, noon-5 p.m. and by appointment only on Saturdays.

For more information, e-mail pitzer_galleries@pitzer.edu.

About Pitzer Media Studies

Pitzer Media Studies is part of a cooperative program with the other Claremont Colleges (Pomona, Scripps, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd) that teaches the production, theory, history, and social context of the visual media including film, video, photography, and digital technologies. Pitzer’s production courses are not oriented toward traditional narrative film or television; rather they stress “independent” narrative forms, video art, documentary, community-based and activist media. The Media Studies component of the program utilizes theoretical and historical models that link different academic disciplines and eliminate boundaries separating media theory from media production.

For more information, visit www.pitzer.edu/media_studies.

About Pitzer College

Pitzer College is a nationally top ranked undergraduate college of the liberal arts and sciences. A member of The Claremont Colleges, Pitzer offers a distinctive approach to a liberal education by linking intellectual inquiry with interdisciplinary studies, cultural immersion, social responsibility and community involvement.

For more information, visit www.pitzer.edu.