Samuel Beckett Quad
As much as I love taking my time in front of a fresco, I have to admit a short, sharp hit of video art can often do the job just the same. I may be a walking MTV-generation cliché, but at least I’m no culture-snob, well except when it comes to reality TV. Personally I prefer unreality TV, as far away from recessions and oil-spills as possible.
Last week I was wondering around the Pompidou Centre in Paris, when I found something called the ‘new media space’. The name made me feel a bit nauseous but I’d had enough French-strength coffee to give anything a go.
Although on first glance it looked like the school computer hut, use your imagination and it’s your own private art-house cinema. Stick the headphones on and off you go - you’re free to choose any short film or art video you want from the huge collection from five museums. It’s just like nosing through your mate’s DVD collection. Well, that is if your friends are into the kind of films that remind you of a weird dream you had once after eating too much cheese before bedtime.
If you’re too lazy to go into the gallery, or more likely, have better things to do with your romantic city-break the website gives you a short taster of videos from 120 of the artists and film directors, including biggies such as Steve McQueen, Bill Viola, Martin Creed and Jean-Luc Godard. There’s also links to the artists’ biographies, bibliographies and a list of their exhibitions to date. Like Wikipedia and YouTube rolled into one really.
"The Imaginary Historian"
No comments:
Post a Comment