Daniel Phillips’s three-channel installation RIVER STREET is one of the highlights of Moving Image fair (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Waterfront New York Tunnel
269 11th Ave. between 27th & 28th Sts.
Through March 11, free
212-643-3152
www.moving-image.info
The second annual Moving Image Contemporary Video Art Fair is back in the long, narrow Waterfront New York Tunnel in Chelsea, featuring more than thirty videos and installations from around the world. Upon entering the space from the Eleventh Ave. side, you will find yourself immersed in Janet Biggs’s Predator and Prey, where you can take a seat in the middle of two large screens that follow a polar bear, a horse, and an eagle. For the three-channel River Street, Daniel Phillips documented his rehabilitation of the dilapidated area around his studio and projects the videos on three blocks made from objects and materials he gathered from the construction site. The always playful and innovative Kate Gilmore is represented by Built to Burst, which captures the artist from above as she smashes pots of paint on a series of platforms to create something wholly new. Alex Prager’s Despair, which was recently shown at MoMA, employs colorful, fantasy-like imagery to tell the story of a possible suicide. Martha Wilson uses makeup and camera angles “to deform myself in the way that I fear the most” in the large-screen I have become my own worst fear / Deformation. In Marina Zurkow’s charming black-and-white animation Mesocosm (Northumberland UK), a naked man sits on a tree stump as the seasons pass by around him. There are also creative videos by Sama Alshaibi, Josh Azzarella, Eelco Brand, Susanne Hofer, Jesse McLean, Jenny Perlin, and Yael Kanarek, among others. And be sure not to miss Jesse Fleming’s agonizing The Snail and the Razor, in which a snail ominously attempts to climb over a sharp razor blade. Since you could easily spend much of the day at Moving Image, you can narrow down which videos you want to see by checking out excerpts of every one included in the fair in advance here. On Saturday at noon, Bridgette Howard will moderate the panel discussion “Moving Image Technology of Tomorrow” with Jacob Gaboury, Steven Sacks, and Anne Spalter, followed at 2:00 with Rebecca Cleman moderating the spotlight panel “What Do You Get When You Buy Video Art?” with Lisa Dorin, Jefferson Godard, and Fabienne Stephan.