VDB Newsletter ::: August 2013

We are happy to announce that thirteen pioneering works made by Peer Bode between 1976-1985 are now available through the Video Data Bank. Peer Bode's work has shown extensively, including exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art New York, ICA London, Kunstmuseum Bern, and as part of the 1987 Whitney Biennial.

Peer Bode worked for the Experimental Television Center in Owego, New York as program coordinator, collaborating with resident artist/engineers in constructing prototype imaging tools, thus continuing his commitment to “tool expansion” and “personal studio making.” Recognizing the limits imposed by designers of industrial and consumer technology, Bode sought to externalize the “hidden coding and control structures” of the video signal. His videotapes investigate the semiotics and phenomenology of the medium, specifically through the synthesis of audio and video signals.

A list of titles, descriptions, clips, and ordering information for each of the works are now available on our website.

Ximena Cuevas at Conversations at the Edge

Conversations at the Edge (CATE) is a weekly series of screenings, artist talks, and performances by compelling media artists, organized by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Department of Film, Video, New Media and Animation in collaboration with the Gene Siskel Film Center and Video Data Bank.

Pioneering Mexican video artist Ximena Cuevas creates smart, playful works that mix performance, autobiography, and mass-media excesses to explore national identity, celebrity star worship, and life’s everyday melodramas. She returns to CATE after more than a decade to celebrate the Video Data Bank’s recent publication of the retrospective box set Half-Lies: The Videoworks of Ximena Cuevas. Cuevas will screen a selection of recent videos, including the 2010 experimental biography, Marina Abramović, From Tuesday to Friday, in which she follows performance artist Abramović as she prepares for her first exhibition in Mexico, intimately revealing Abramović’s daily rituals and thoughts on her life and career. Ximena Cuevas will introduce her work and will be on hand for a Q&A following the program. Multiple formats.

SCREENING DETAILS: Thursday, September 19th, 2013, 6:00 PM,
Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State Street, Chicago, IL

Videoworks Compilations

Video Data Bank is excited to announce the publication of Jim Finn Videoworks: Volume 2, available for educational purchase and single screening rental. For media libraries and educational institutions, compilations offer a great value as they are substantially less expensive than single titles and provide the opportunity to own a cohesive collection of work by emerging and established artists.

Available now:

Jim Finn Videoworks: Volume 2

To celebrate the publication of the new compilation featuring four of his video works, we spoke with Finn to discuss his practice and inspirations:

Can you tell us something about your background?

I grew up in University City, Missouri on the other side of Forest Park from the city of St. Louis and went to Catholic Schools with the St. Joseph nuns, Jesuits, Benedictine monks and Christian Brothers. I was a smartass and somehow the nuns were better able to deal with that in a way that was not an authoritarian steam crusher. I would get in trouble for talking or acting up or various things but they never hit me and I feel in retrospect that they actually loved me. The quasi-fascistic boys’ schools with male Catholic orders, I only lasted two years each in. The religion department at the Christian Brothers School was very radical. They had their own floor and we analyzed George Harrison lyrics and read Buddhist poetry and had speakers talk about liberation theology. It really had an effect on me.

What inspired you to become an artist?

When I was growing up, KPLR Channel 11 in St. Louis played movies all day on Saturdays with lots of commercial breaks and interrupted by soap box - a citizen venting, public access kind of deal. So we would play outside or whatever and I would always be able to turn on Channel 11 and get this weird disjointed film history course. I had a pretty normal kind of 70’s Midwestern kid upbringing, but I always knew I was a bit different. I saw the world in a different way than most people. My mom’s family were pretty loud, funny furniture salespeople who loved Reagan... Read More

Browse our past Videoworks Compilations which include work by artists such as Animal Charm, Dara Birnbaum, Dani Leventhal, Tom Rubnitz, and many more!