Semiennial 4

Twice a year at Monkey Town we put together a group program of great video art - a semiennial - of the stuff that made an impression on us in the past six months. The curatorial criteria is no more complicated than this is the best new stuff we've seen.

For this program we teamed up with Gretchen Hogue out in Portland, who hooked us up with some psuper psychedelic pselections, and Don Carroll who always has some art damaged deviants on tap. The artists in the program included:

Guy Benfield
Ondrej Brody
DisneyNASABorg
Marianna Ellenberg
Jesse England
Andrew Erdos and Organ Celebration!
Liz Haley
Michelle Handelman
Gretchen Hogue
Hooliganship
Seth Kirby
Karl Klomp
Mack MacFarland
Shana Moulton
Takeshi Murata
Melody Owen
Michael Robinson
Margie Schnibbe
Grant Worth
Jemima Wyman

The goal of this series is to present challenging video art in a format that draws an audience and holds their attention for an extended program. This is essential for art that requires *time* to be fully appreciated. The gallery format - where people walk in, crane their head around, do the rat-run around the perimeter, and walk out - is biasing video toward flat, non-narrative, every-moment-is-equal directions. We're looking to counter that by putting on a show with a DJ mindset. Art should rock! Art should turn you on! Art should put on a lampshade and make a fool of itself too.