CHANGE
I recently relocated from rural Pennsylvania to San Francisco, taking on the exciting role of executive director at San Francisco Cinematheque. Obviously, this is a huge geographical change, but it is also a return, as I was involved with the Bay Area media arts community from 1974 until 1990. The renewal of my presence here has provoked many thoughts for me about changes in this community. A recent Meredith Monk performance shifted my thinking about change to the concept of “impermanence,” which conjures images of flow, movement, and transition as the way of life.
So, what is the relationship of impermanence to the media arts? I see an attitude and a positioning, an acceptance and an embracing of the ways in which artists and organizations have to confront new modes of working, new media, and shifting audiences, without discarding the past. When I started making art, I used still film in a camera and processed images in a darkroom with chemicals. I moved to filmmaking with a 16mm Bolex, began working with a lab, and edited using a flatbed or a Moviscope with rewinds. Moving away, I embraced digital formats, combining 16mm and Super 8 with DV technology. My work now can be film, video, print, or time-based. I actually control more of the distribution because of the Internet, but I still process negatives, make prints in the darkroom, shoot on Regular 8, Super 8, or 16mm, and hand-process celluloid. I work in whatever format best incorporates my concepts and ideas.
Surveying some of the organizations exhibiting media in the Bay Area now, I see SF Cinematheque and the Pacific Film Archive still showing work by artists working in film but expanding to video, new media, installation, and performance. Artists such as Keith Evans and silt, Luis Recoder, and Kerry Laitala are creating performance and moving-image events. Artists Television Access, the Exploratorium, New Nothing Cinema, and the MadCat Film Festival embrace time-based media, looking to inspire audiences with the incredible visions of artists working today. Maia Cybelle Carpenter is curating film and video work for downloads to iPods. In fact, today there is no consensus as to what to label the “medium.” Is it cinema, film, time-based art, moving image expression, media, new media, interdisciplinary art, multidisciplinary art, other genres, new genres, or visual art?
What is important is that the boundaries between the media are permeable, creating so many fresh opportunities for artists. Yes, film stocks are being eliminated, and VHS and even DVD may be trivialized soon, but artists continue to create, shifting how they work based on conceptual parameters, media availability, financial considerations, exhibition-venue demands, and funder priorities. The field must shift and change and transform itself, accepting technologies as actualities, embracing the new but not abandoning the old, viewing everything as a creative possibility for artists to reach the public.
I am reminded of this quote from Robert Frost: “In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on.”
CAROLINE SAVAGE is executive director of San Francisco Cinematheque. She is an artist working with moving images, a visiting artist teaching film at the SF Art Institute, and an advocate for the arts.
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