About Time
Distraction, attention and boredom: how do you feel about watching videos or films in the museum? This question will be addressed by artists Stan Douglas and LA-based Sharon Lockhart, who will be joined by media theorist Vivian Sobchack and curators Rita Gonzalez and Alex Klein for a consideration of duration in contemporary time-based media at LACMA next Tuesday night. Both Douglas and Lockhart have grappled with this issue in fascinating ways, both as conceptual elements within their work, and as considerations for the gallery-goer, who more and more often encounters artworks that ask us to rethink traditional gallery habits. Theorist Helga Nowotny describes contemporary time as an extended present: everything is about the now and we move rapidly from project to project without the ability to imagine a future because the horizon of time no longer exists. In the museum space, then, finding a dark room with moments for reflection is both rare and precious. In addition, it's clear that traditional boundaries separating media practices are blurring. Lockhart's Pine Flat, for example, takes shape as a feature film composed of 12 unmoving 10-minute shots, but has also appeared in the form of a book, a moving image installation and a gallery show of photographs. All four forms question their status, and you can't help but wonder about the specificity of individual media forms while staring at often unmoving images on a screen, or at stills of moving images captured in a book. What is time, then, and duration in these contexts? It should be a good discussion... Image: from Pine Flat
the details
Conversations on Experimental Film in a Museum Context: DURATION
Tuesday, March 9, 2010, 7:00 pm
Brown Auditorium, LACMA
Free, tickets required: available one hour before the program
