TIME : : CODE

Oreet Ashery, Dara Birnbaum, Alina and Jeff Bliumis, Robert Boyd, Hans Breder, Tania Candiani, Stefano Cagol, Gordon Cheung, Jaime Davidovich, Braco Dimitrijevic, Adolfo Doring, Dieter Froese, Gary Hill, Ferrán Martín, Mary Mattingly, Jonas Mekas, Yucef Merhi, Igor Molochevski, Iván Navarro, Damian Ontiveros, Dennis Oppenheim, Jean-Gabriel Périot, Larissa Sansour, Arleen Schloss, Carolee Schneeman, Kiki Seror, Michael Snow, S&P Stanikas, Javier Téllez, The Blue Noses, Wojtek Ulrich, Roi Varaa, Helena von Karkkainen, Ai Weiwei, Sislej Xhafa

TIME : : CODE is an exhibition of video art selected from White Box Art Center’s archive. The exhibition’s title and curatorial framework metaphorically weave the technical nomenclature for video and film synchronization, and the experimental film directed by Mike Figgis. The former is addressed in the ostensible historical arc of the exhibition consisting of important works by early video pioneers including Michael Snow, Carolee Schneeman, Dara Birnbaum, Dennis Oppenheim and others, which are shown along side a succeeding generation of video artists who have innovatively engaged the medium as their predecessors. The exhibition, however, resists conventional sequential mapping of video art via its other point of thematic departure: Mike Figgis’ Timecode (2000).

Timecode was created by four cinematographers whom each shot a non-stop, 90-minute take. These individual shots were then simultaneously played on one screen split into four sections. TIME : : CODE adopts this trope via a constellation of video works that coalesce in their disparate shifts between single and multichannel, analog, digital and animation, as well as diverse display formats including LCD, CRT, projection, sculpture, and installation.

Like the split screen of Timecode and its fracturing of both time and space, the exhibition creates a rhizome-like environment of video works that are as much in dialogue with each other as they are independent. This curatorial strategy often appears more like an artistic act. Conversely, some of the curatorial decisions are informed by artists in the exhibition such as Ferran Martin, Alina Bliumis, Arlene Schloss, and Andrea Monti, subsequently engendering a creative reciprocity between the blurred roles of curator as artist and artist as curator. The individual works selected run the gamut of subject matter that draw from the personal to the public, from reality to the imaginary, and coupled with TIME::CODE’s idiosyncratic exhibition presentation, critically engage social and political issues of our global contemporaneity.

Curated by Raul Zamudio and Juan Puntes

Special thanks to artists Arleen Schloss, Alina Bliumis, Ferrán Martín, Hans Breder, David Rong and Andrea Monti for their curatorial advice and participation.

Yasira Nun Organizer. Ivo Stoop Technology Consultant.

Fernanda Bonilla Ast. to the Curators. Issac Aden Chief Preparator.