Video Art is not easily definable. Other than working with moving images and being a time based media Video Art have been defying its origins and approaching technical evolutions in a way that challenges its own use and form. It have been creating mutations and, in consequence, a dematerialization of art systems, styles and ways of production. Its own fluid form and existence plays a significant part of the contemporary art dialogue and it provides the viewer with a unique way of rethinking and perceiving our world.
The power of moving images is in our contemporary DNA. We live in an unlimited flux of images invading our life, eyes and senses, in a culture that creates an infinite number of uses and themes for this form of communication. The substance in which Video Art is made is the same that it is out there in the street screens, promoting products or ideas, as well as it is on our digital devices or at home in our TVs and computers. The stimulus of moving images is in an almost permanent call asking for our attention. Will we be able to slow down?
It can be composed of still frames or it can just tell us a story that we never heard. It can be applied to the general characteristics of art like portrait and landscape or it can play tricks on us.
It can be found footage or it can create new archives and new catalogs. It can be fiction or documentary or both. It can be narrative or poetic, complex or simple, about lights or about shadows. It can be about reinventing the way we look at things or about remembering the way things were. It does not matter if it is a utopic democracy or a poetic anthropology because, in the end, it
Artists: John Baldessari, Lawrence Weiner, William Wegman, Harun Farucki, Miranda July, Shelly Silver, Zhang Huan, Xing Danwen, Cui Xiuwen, Caroline Koebel, Jean Marie Casbarian, Mitra Azar, Nuno Cera, Mariana Rocha, João Vasco Paiva, Alejandro Michaelangelo Fargosonini, Alice Kok, João Ó, Bianca Lei, Peng Yun, Ray Chu and José Drummond
