The Brooklyn skyline has been changing
for years, but now everyone is taking notice.
On Dec. 3, Adam Kendall, a Park Slope-based video artist and
curator, aims to capture the borough’s current landscapes in
a new and ingenious way before they all fall before the wrecking
ball with "vBrooklyn," a one-night video festival at
the Galapagos Art Space in Williamsburg that will include music
and performance art.
Okay, so not everything is falling, but many buildings are disappearing.
The look of our borough will soon change radically; there’s no
denying that. Whereas it took certain Manhattan areas – SoHo
comes to mind – a generation to turn from an artists’ colony
to a shopping mall, in Brooklyn the transformation is taking
place in much less time. From Atlantic Yards to Coney Island,
massive development projects are on the table.
Kendall has lived in Brooklyn for almost 20 years, and so he
has seen the changes first-hand. As an artist, he’s also seen
the transformation of video art into a digital medium encompassing
many forms of moving image in combination with music as well
as live performance.
With the "vBrooklyn" festival, he aims to bring a changing
art form and a changing cityscape together. And he sees it as
a perfect match.
"Video art, like Brooklyn, has been going through a renaissance,"
Kendall told GO Brooklyn. "With changes in technology and
the interest of artists, video is more and more a part of everyday
cultural events and nightlife, and is understood much more by
audiences."
This fits in with the changes the borough is going through, but
he insists "vBrooklyn" is not making a political statement.
" ’vBrooklyn’ is apolitical by design," said Kendall.
"It’s not pro-development, nor is it anti-development. It
does not condemn or applaud the changes. Artists were free to
choose their subject matter. I wouldn’t have excluded anyone
with an overt political message, but it is not the purpose of
the festival."
His aim was to explore the idea of place, and most of the artists
seem to be on the same page. Places to be explored will include
the Gowanus Canal, Floyd Bennett Field, as well as the Brooklyn
waterfront and various landmark structures.
Kendall told GO Brooklyn that this festival has been two years
in the making. He put out an open call for artists and spent
time researching those whose work he wasn’t familiar with. Yet,
in the end, he already knew most of the artists in the show.
"Most of the artists live or have lived in Brooklyn,"
said Kendall, and this makes sense. How do you ask an artist
from California to come to New York and capture the essence of
this complex borough? Each media artist was asked to document,
in her or his own way, various aspects of Brooklyn. Much of the
work will be new, created specifically for "vBrooklyn,"
but in some cases, an artist’s older video may speak directly
to the subject.
Other pieces – specifically Andy Graydon’s "Conductant"
and Bruce Tovsky’s performance piece "Underpass" –
will revise pre-existing work especially for "vBrooklyn."
In fact, Kendall himself will do a video performance that evening
that will most likely incorporate footage he shot a while back.
Many pieces will incorporate live performance. (Since most of
the work is new – that is, not yet finished or will be performed
live – nothing was available to GO for advance screening.) Kendall
did show us a work-in-progress of what he calls "vBrooklyn
Interstitials," an undulating, dream-like view of the borough
that will be used as a background between the evening’s three
distinct sections – one "set" of videos and two of
live performance.
With this, "the screen will never be dark," according
to Kendall.
Musicians will also be represented, among them Elliot Sharp as
well as Stephan Moore and Scott Smallwood of Evidence.
Other participating artists include Benton-C Bainbridge, Elle
Burchill, Naval Cassidy, Karl Channell, Christopher Curtin, Luke
DuBois, Madeleine Gallagher, Giles Hendrix, Janene Higgins, Chika
Iijima, Bettina Johae, Chris Jordan, Leif Krinkle, David Last,
Zach Layton, Anton Marini and Elizabeth Smolarz.
Among the sponsors of "vBrooklyn" is Forward Motion
Theater, a Manhattan-based dance-theater-media organization.
As part of their support for the project, Forward Motion will
take care of the entire technical set-up (no small feat), as
well as documenting the event to create an experimental – yet
historical – record, a way to save some of Brooklyn as it was,
as it is now, and as it might have been.
"vBrooklyn: A Video Festival about
Brooklyn as a Place and Video as an Artform" will take place
Dec. 3, from 7 pm to 11 pm, at Galapagos Art Space (70 N. 6th
St. between Kent and Wythe avenues in Williamsburg). Admission
is $5. For more information, call (718) 782-5188 or visit www.vBrooklyn.org.
Marian Masone is the associate
director of programming for the Film Society of Lincoln Center
(FSLC) and chief curator of FSLC’s annual "Scanners: The
New York Video Festival."
