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A Dream Walking

The Oklahoma City Museum of Art's Film Curator Brian Hearn explores his love for celluloid through recounting his experience loaning out a film print of a 1934 Popeye cartoon, A Dream Walking.

Documentary Now! Conference

While democracy protesters jammed into Tahrir Square, the Egyptian government cut off and then opened up the internet and Facebook, and British students from the anti-cut movement mounted large demonstrations in the streets of London, the Documentary Now! Conference at the University of Westminster on January 28-30 staged some emerging, key debates about scholarship, exhibition and practice of documentary.

Five Question Q&A: Nina Simon, The Participatory Museum
Rachel Allen

Meet Nina Simon. She’s the author of the Museum 2.0 Blog and The Participatory Museum and she’s been called a “museum visionary.” In our Open Dialogue and on our blog, NAMAC community members have been talking about the challenges museums and art house cinema houses face when trying to engage audiences who desire a more active role in curating their own experiences. Recently I had an opportunity to chat with Simon about her book and about what the "participatory museum" model looks like in action.

Physical Media - Gone with the Wind?
Brian Hearn

I’m a film guy. I like celluloid on reels. I like the whirring machines that play them. This love affair started in my late teens. Seeing Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire changed my life, ditto for Lina Wertmuller’s Seven Beauties. Discovering the nauseating spectacles of John Waters blew my freakin’ mind as did the Rocky Horror cult.

The Last of the Red Hot Filmmaker Tours
Allen Bell and David Dombrosky
Find out how the Southern Arts Federation takes their filmmakers on the road for a unique exhibition experience.
BITE
Bill Judson
What IS this shit? Some stuffed-shirt museums may fit the portrait of "elitist" arts in the NEA's American Canvas (sic!) report. Or maybe the symphony, opera, dance programs... But the media arts? OUR MEDIA ARTS, that sanctified realm of ideological acuity and radical social commitment in the U.S. since before the NEA even applied a name to this field?
WAVES
Anne Bray
L.A. Freewaves is a bottom-feeding festival nibbling at wet crumbs that Hollywood, public TV, ads and industrials don't notice that they have dropped. So what I know pertains for an unknown distance--especially under water. Advocating uncensored independent media, we are a network of videomakers, new media makers, librarians, high school teachers, art administrators, cable TV watchers, students, programmers, and others who have three jobs.

Programming
Sporadic describes the L.A. marginal art screenings, for example, one Sunday or Monday night per month.

TechArcheology2000
Steve Seid
On January 5 and 6, 2000, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art hosted "TechArcheology: A Symposium on Installation Art Preservation." This gathering was billed as an "opportunity to significantly advance the development of conservation practices for technology-based installation art." The approximately 25 invited participants included conservators and curators from the Getty Conservation Institute, New York s Museum of Modern Art, The Tate Gallery, The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pacific Film Archive, and SFMOMA, as well as four important installation artists: Dara Birnbaum, James Coleman, Gary
An Open Letter
Ruby Lerner
We are reprinting this piece that AIVF's (then) executive director and former NAMAC board member Ruby Lerner recently wrote for The Independent because it especially speaks to and about media arts organizations and the infrastructural, systemic changes we are facing. While we are able to come together as advocates during times of direct crisis, these last several years of federal and foundation cuts have revealed a slower, yet more injurious crisis - how weakened our infrastructural ecology has become in comparison to other arts disciplines.
Preserving the Immaterial: The Guggenheim Museum's Variable Media Initiative
Jim Hubbard
On March 30-31, 2001, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York hosted a conference entitled "Preserving the Immaterial: A Conference on Variable Media." The conference made public for the first time the Guggenheim's Variable Media Initiative: a pioneering effort to explore the issues surrounding, and to find solutions to problems arising from, art made in inherently ephemeral media. This effort is spearheaded by John Hanhardt, the Guggenheim's Senior Curator of Film and Media Arts, and Assistant Curator Jon Ippolito.