30 Days Artist Series

THIRTYDAYSNY is a temporary free and public exhibition and performance space located at 70 Franklin St. in Tribeca. Hosting music, performance, comedy, scholarly symposia, screenings, and workshops, the space is truly interdisciplinary and dynamic in its approach.

I have been thinking about the idea of temporary exhibition structures ever since X-Initiative closed in February. For me, it was a central part of last summer. Whether it served as a spot for meeting after work, hearing talks, seeing screenings, or chilling on the roof with a beer; the space was a magnet that will be sorely missed.

Though THIRTYDAYSNY only lasts a month, it is similar in the fact that here we have this presence of a (kind of) institution (in which people tend to invest varying levels of trust) and then it just vanishes. In this regard, the structure becomes ephemeral in the same way as a work of art, which has the capacity to change the way in which people think about, and the very concept of "the institution." The more temporary exhibition sites become manifest in our cultural vernacular, the more people will begin to question what exhibition sites are, what its purpose should be, and what it means for ideas/performances/artistic practice to manifest within physical space de-markated as temporary "site."

Part of me also thinks that for any institution to truly stay abreast to what is contemporary and what is current, they need to exist temporarily. Otherwise, at some point they inevitably risk turning into The New Museum. Bureaucracy and politics prevail, and the original intention and founding principles are obfuscated.

I digress. This post was supposed to be about how THIRTYDAYSNY's website posted a video on Ed Halter and Thomas Beard of Light Industry, but I got carried away. Check out the site and the video.

From the THIRTYDAYSNY website:

"THIRTYDAYSNY is a celebration of the merger of arts and culture. The challenge was building out, organizing, managing, and presenting a live gallery space open to the public for one month in the heart of New York City. The gallery is curated by Family Bookstore, and the accompanying Thirty Days NY website is headed by Dallas Clayton. The completed Thirty Days Gallery, located at 70 Franklin Street, Tribeca, will feature weekly performances, symposiums, and showcases from contemporary artists, musicians, writers, filmmakers from all over the world."

Thirty Days Artist Series: Thomas Beard + Ed Halter from Thirty Days NY on Vimeo.

Videofreex Documentary

Another interesting aspect of the Tuesday night screening at Light Industry was the realization that a documentary about the Freex is in the works. The filmmaker Jon Nealon was present in the audience, and seemed quite excited about the project. I recently received this email from him:

Hi all,

Thanks to everyone who signed up for the Videofreex documentary mailing list the other night.

We've been working on the film for a while now - gathering videotapes, conducting interviews, etc.

And we were quite happy to see the turnout for the screening of tapes at Light Industry on Tuesday.

The Facebook page goes live toady. If you are on Facebook - please become a fan. Just type in 'videofreex' in the search bar.

We posted a short video of the beginning of the restoration process back in '05.

Please spread the word. Building up a network is crucial to the success of independent films these days.

Thanks again,

Jon Nealon and Jenny Raskin
The Videofreex Documentary Project

Videofreex at Light Industry

Last night, Light Industry screened a selection of works by the early video collective, Videofreex shot from 1969-1974. It was followed by a q&a with some of the founding members of the video collective, and the curator, Dara Greenwald. Perhaps the most interesting (and troubling) thing about the night was the realization that only a small percentage of the Freex' original footage has been preserved.

Chicago's Video Data Bank, the holders of the collection, has posted a complete listing of existing Videofreex footage. The table indicates that only 48 titles out of a collection of more than 1400 have been preserved; or cleaned, migrated and transferred from its original format, which are mostly obsolete. Individuals may sponsor the preservation of these works for $400 per title.



The Videofreex collective used video to engage with, document and stimulate activism. Although there certainly are aesthetic particularities to the tapes, the artistic qualities of the material was not their primary concern. The art was not in the means of documentation, but the social and political interactions and dialogs that the Freex facilitated. The tapes are often long and anti-climactic, which makes them somewhat undesirable to show in museums, galleries, or festivals. This being the case, the tapes have little market value, making it difficult to secure funding for preservation. Their cultural capital, however, is invaluable, and hopefully will be enough to influence individuals to sponsor preservation.


From the site:

The archival collection of Videofreex titles consists of around 1400 videotapes
on a variety of formats. Most of these formats are obsolete (1/2 ” open reel,
3/4 ” Umatic, 1 ” open reel, etc.) They are also quite old for videotapes, and
often require cleaning or other special handling before they can be re-mastered
to modern formats, or be made available digitally. This is usually an expensive
process, and there are currently not enough funds to preserve the entire
collection.

We prioritize titles for preservation based on written information sources
(titles, notes on the tapes, etc.), dialogue with the Videofreex, and other
research. If you are interested in a specific tape that has not been
preserved, you can help out by paying for its preservation. This usually costs
$400, and you will receive a DVD of the title for personal or educational use.
Additional rights for footage use can be negotiated. It should be noted that
the results of the preservation are not guaranteed, it is possible that the
tape has been damaged during its lifespan, or has degraded due to storage
conditions. Most of our results however have been positive.

The following is a list of titles taken from the labels on the tapes in our Videofreex
database. Please scroll through it, or use the search function of your browser to find
specific keywords. To find out more about any of these titles, please contact us.