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Agitated Histories:
Video Art and the Documentary
September 16 — November 26, 2000
Agitated Histories: Video Art and the Documentary brought together large-scale
video projection installations by four internationally acclaimed video artists
whose works each in some way engage the structure, format or history of the
documentary film genre. The artists in this exhibition are not documentary
film practitioners, nor are their works considered documentaries, yet they
have each chosen to adopt or manipulate some of the conventions and formats
of the documentary genre as a means of either exploring the impact and power
of the medium, or as a framework for providing a potent and direct engagement
with powerful personal and historical issues and events.
Either through the use of archival documentary footage, the straight forward
filming of historically potent sites, or the conducting of in-depth real life
interviews, each of these works references documentary styles and practices
while engaging a particular aspect of recent global history. In Johan Grimonprez’s
dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, for example, the history of worldwide airplane
hijackings and the politics of global terrorism comes to life with a visually
stunning and gripping montage of historical news broadcasts of hijackings
and footage of the Cold War’s world leaders from Kruschev to Reagan.
In Mats Hjelm’s White Flight, Detroit’s troubled history of race
relations and the 1960s riots are painfully recalled as Hjelm skillfully combines
vintage documentary footage of the riots shot by his father with contemporary
video of his own. In Lutz Bacher’s Olympiad, echoes of Nazi Germany
are evoked as Bacher revisits the site of the 1936 Berlin Olympic games with
a "tourist’s" walk through Berlin’s historically-charged
Olympic Stadium. In Kutlug Ataman’s Women Who Wear Wigs, personal interviews
with four Turkish women about their often emotional experiences wearing a
wig give way to first-hand accounts of a country experiencing profound political
and social change.
Agitated Histories was organized by Cranbrook Art Museum and curated
by Curator of Exhibitions, Irene Hofmann.
Johan Grimonprez dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, 1997 (video still).
Mats Hjelm, White Flight, 1997 (video still).
