Walker Art Center Announces Shift to Moving Image with Launch of Moving Image Commissions and Walker Mediatheque

Minneapolis, May 28, 2015 – The Walker Art Center is excited to announce the
Film/Video department’s shift to Moving Image beginning in May 2015. The
renaming commences with the launch of two major initiatives: the Walker Moving
Image Commissions, a new series of artist commissions made to premiere online;
and the Walker Mediatheque, a new interactive space to watch projected works
from the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection. The Moving Image department
continues its renowned Walker Cinema programming with special guests,
exclusive content, and work from filmmakers across the globe while further
advancing a commitment to contemporary artists’ moving image practice.

“The transition toward moving image away from the specific formats of film and
video represents the movement of artists and filmmakers to work across a variety
of mediums,” said Sheryl Mousley, Senior Curator of the department. “Walker
Moving Image is responsive to these developments, and to presenting works
across different platforms, in the context of our cinema, in our galleries, and
online.”

“Under the continued leadership of Sheryl Mousley and her team, Walker Moving
Image will continue to support and advance the most innovative artistic work
across formats. Moving image practice and the ideas that surround it have shifted
dramatically in recent years,” added Fionn Meade, Walker Art Center’s Artistic
Director. “Presenting these newly commissioned works from leading artists
alongside and in dialog with expanded access to Walker collections speaks to the
shifting landscape of artists’ moving image and offers more opportunities for
context.”

WALKER MOVING IMAGE COMMISSIONS

Walker Moving Image has commissioned six artists to each create a new work
online launching with Moyra Davey and James Richards in May 2015. Premiering
online for a limited run, the invitation to make new works made with an
awareness to the inquiry, inspiration, and influence of three signature artists
within the Walker’s Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection: Derek Jarman, Bruce
Conner, and Marcel Broodthaers.

The first commissions to premiere online are new works by artists Moyra Davey, a
Canadian artist based in New York, and James Richards, a Welsh artist based in
Berlin, as they present works made with an invitation to think through the legacy
of Derek Jarman. Both commissions will stream from the Moving Image
Commissions page, from June 1 for a limited run, and are accompanied by essays
from Isla Leaver-Yap, Bentson Film Scholar at the Walker.

The future commissions will acknowledge the signature presence of Bruce Conner
within the Walker’s collections, presenting new works by New York-based artists
Leslie Thornton and Seth Price. Price and Thornton both work with an awareness
of Bruce Conner’s complex inquiry into appropriated material and the aesthetics of
new technologies. To be launched later this year, both commissions will also
premiere online for a limited run.

A third pair of upcoming commissions will feature new works from Los Angelesbased
Shahryar Nashat and New York-based artist Uri Aran, who will respond to
the films of Marcel Broodthaers within the Walker collection. Both Aran and
Nashat work closely with found objects and modes of translation in their
respective practice. These commissions will premiere in 2016.

WALKER PREMIERE COMMISSIONS

Notes on Blue by Moyra Davey

Moyra Davey’s new film, Notes on Blue—responds to artist and filmmaker Derek
Jarman’s Blue. A lyrical essay film, Notes on Blue interweaves various biographies
(including those of Jarman, poet Anne Sexton, the writer Jorge Luis Borges, and
the artist herself) to explore the subjective experience of mortality, color, and
identity. (2015, video, 28 minutes)

Davey is a writer and visual artist known for the convergence of photography and
video. Her work attends to familiar objects culled from domestic and everyday
environments. She frequently resituates overlooked aspects of daily life and
everyday consumption within her own intimate narratives and deep personal
histories.

Radio at Night by James Richards

James Richards’ new video responds to Derek Jarman’s visual collage and editing
techniques, as well as Richards’ continued interest in sampling, distorting and
looping gestures. Radio at Night explores ways in which broadcast technology
seeks to preserve obscurity and anonymize individuals by abstracting images of
the human body and estranging its gestures. Echoing Jarman’s own interest in
collapsing together memory, moment, and fantasy, Richards’ video stretches and
refracts his source material, which comprises news broadcasts; popular songs and poems of fraternity, love, and innocence written prior to the era of HIV/AIDS; and
found footage from the artist’s personal archive. (2015, video, 8 minutes)

Richards, known for his provocative and emotionally resonant work, was the
winner of the 2012 Derek Jarman Prize for Film and Video. He was recently
nominated for the 2014 Turner Prize for the video Rosebud (2013). His work often
draws on a range of sources such as home movies, TV shows, esoteric Internet
videos, and archival footage.

Project Coordinator: Isla Leaver-Yap

WALKER MEDIATHEQUE

Open since May 1, 2015, the Walker Mediatheque is a new cinema-style space
that puts visitors in control of viewing the institution’s Ruben/Bentson Moving
Image Collection. Offering unprecedented public access to its rich holdings of film
and video, amassed since 1973, the Mediatheque offers the chance to browse the
collection via innovative touch-screen technology, and play selected titles in the
50-seat screening room.

The Mediatheque merges both on-demand contemporary culture with the classic,
immersive cinema experience. Visitors can play the new Walker Moving Image
Commissions; browse individual works by artists such as Kenneth Anger, Maya
Deren, Joan Jonas, Jonas Mekas and Yvonne Rainer; and view curated selections
from the Walker’s own thematic playlists, which include: “Cinemas of Resistance,”
“Icons and Iconography,” and “Landscapes/Locales.”

As the Moving Image department continues to digitize works within its collection
of over 1,000 titles, the Mediatheque will increase the number of titles free to
play, putting visitors at the heart of its program.

Project coordinators: Caylin Smith and Anthony Tran