Janet Biggs’s “Airs Above the Ground” is one of the many highlights of the free inaugural Moving Image art fair (image courtesy Janet Biggs)

Waterfront New York Tunnel
269 11th Ave. between 27th & 28th Sts.
March 3-6, free
212-643-3152
www.moving-image.info

We consider ourselves “vide-hos” — we rarely meet an experimental video that doesn’t intrigue us in one way or another. So we’re excited about the inaugural Moving Image art fair, an invitational show consisting of single-channel videos, video sculptures, and video installations. Held in the Waterfront Tunnel on the far northwest side of Chelsea during Armory Arts Week, the four-day fair is the brainchild of Winkleman Gallery’s Edward Winkleman and Murat Orozobekov and has been organized by P·P·O·W Gallery’s Penny Pilkington and Wendy Olsoff, with an advisory committee made up of Zoe Butt of Ho Chi Minh City’s SanArt, John Connelly of New York’s Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, Elizabeth Dee of Chelsea’s Elizabeth Dee Gallery, Raphael Gygax of Zurich’s Migros Museum, and Kevin McGarry of LA’s Migrating Forms. Video-based works from approximately three dozen international artists are being shown, including Shana Moulton, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Glenn Fogel, Miguel Angel Rios, Amparo Sard, Carolee Schneeman, Martin Solo Climent, and Leslie Thornton, ranging from one minute (Johanna Unzuta’s hypnotic “Natural Movements”) to thirty-three (Simon Gush’s soccer-as-political-metaphor “In the Company Of”). The majority of the works are shown on individual flat-screen monitors suspended from above and lined up along each side of the vertical passageway, some with chairs and headphones. When you first enter the Waterfront New York Tunnel, on your left will be Kasmalieva and Djumaliev’s “Trans Siberian Amazons,” featuring three video sets embedded within plaid Chinese bags filled with clothing. It’s okay to step on Cal Thompson’s floor video, “The Orb,” on your way to such wonderful special installations as Michal Rovner’s brilliant “June,” Jim Campbell’s light sculpture “Exploded View,” and Corban Walker’s “TV Man,” in which the diminutive artist (actual size) looks out calmly while seemingly trapped in a video booth.

Flat-screen video monitors line both sides of the Waterfront New York Tunnel in Chelsea at the Moving Image art fair (twi-ny/mdr)

There are a number of other outstanding works, and not only from such late legends as David Wojnarowicz (“Heroin”) and Hannah Wilke (“Intercourse with . . .”). In “Alive — An Essential Guide to Survival,” Cecilia Stenbom spends nearly fifteen minutes sitting at a table reading a playful modern-day guide on how to defeat such constant threats as germs, terrorist attacks, and eating out in restaurants. Made in 2002 when he was a graduate student in London, Hiraki Sawa’s “Dwelling” turns his dorm room into airspace for plane activity, with flights taking off from tables and carpeting and flying through hallways and bathrooms. Janet Biggs’s “Airs Above the Ground” follows a synchronized swimmer as she first prepares to get in the water, then delves into her aquatic training. In “Danse Serpentine (Doubled and Refracted),” Miranda Lichtenstein transforms the Lumières’ classic 1896 film of Loie Fuller into an intoxicating endless loop. On Saturday at 2:00, a spotlight panel will examine “Current Takes on Video,” with artists Leslie Thornton and Lucy Raven and curators Chrissie Iles, Barbara London, and Glenn Phillips, moderated by McGarry. As an added bonus, admission to the fair and the panel is free. Moving Image has made an impressive debut that we hope keeps it coming back year after year after year.