Towards an Artbeat: New Media in Los Angeles
PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, May 2003, v. 25, no. 2, pp. 71-76
In 2002, the Freewaves' Festival's TV or NOT TV component was comprised of 300 works, 350 artists, and 65 venues. The installations in this part of the festival sought to explore the "distance between daily life experience and televised reality, [and] present puzzling questions and dynamic alternatives to corporate-filtered entertainment and alarmist, biased news reporting". Hernandez highlights some of the pieces that explored these themes in varied ways, namely Ann Kaneko's Tokyo (Video Billboard), Jayce Salloum's untitled: part 2: beauty and the east (excerpt), and Jones Sanchez' The Southland Sketches. Most of the TV or NOT TV pieces were available on the Internet, and some of the pieces were designed explicitly for the web, such as Michelle Handelman's DJ Spooky vs Webspinstress. The closing night of TV or NOT TV involved a piece entitled Karaoke Style: Step Up to the Mic, which featured over 40 experimental film and video works. Viewers were invited to sing along with the videos/films, thus transforming the viewer into the viewed. All in all, TV or NOT TV provided an antidote the the commercialism so rampant in LA and, with the announcement that they plan to start a television station, Freewaves' Festival is helping to give a steady pulse to LA's art scene.
ITEM 2003.156 – available for viewing in the Research Centre
Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited
Tokyo (Video Billboard) – Ann Kaneko
untitled: part 2: beauty and the east (excerpt) – Jayce Salloum
The Southland Sketches – Jones Sanchez
DJ Spooky vs Webspinstress – Michelle Handelman
Interview – Jacqueline Salloum
Backwards Birth of a Nation – Les Leveque
4 Vertigo – Les Leveque