Artists Films and Videos Today – Works and Words. SELECTED #11

If interested in buying the book, please send an email to: loopstudies@screen-barcelona.com 

Artists’ films and videos challenge many of the established notions in contemporary art. From its creation, LOOP Barcelona has been committed to meeting these challenges. Ist concern with such practices aims at producing works and knowledge, providign visibility, ensuring a high standard of curatorial practice, and supporting the professional community.

In line with its ground philosophy, for its 14th edition, LOOP has worked collaboratively with local and international artists, curators, institutions, galleries, and collectors to develop the different projects of this year’s programme, one of the most ambitious to date. With 273 participating artists, some 30 exhibitions, and over 20 activities, it not only provides a picture of contemporary audiovisual creation, but it also proves that joining efforts can lead to even greater achievements.

Understood as one whole exhibition, LOOP Barcelona 2016 is the result of a process of locating artoworks. staging performances, drawing new relationships, and encouraging encounters. As usual, it takes place in museums, art centers, galleries, but also temporary spaces such as hotel rooms, schools and private homes. From May 26 to June 10, each of these sites will display projects by artists and thinkers whose ideas, in differents shapes and forms, can speak to and with film and video.

This publication aims to provide an introduction and a guide to some of these ideas. It presents the 47 films and videos by contemporary artists and their galleries selected for LOOP Fair. It also includes curators’ introductions related to the initial artistic  direction of LOOP Festival, “video art & cinema. Faraway, So Close!“, which aim to explore how the moving image has migrated back and forth from the black box to the white cube. Finally, it presents a preambule of the conversations between theorists and artists who participate in the LOOP Talks, aroudn the fluctuating bonds among cinema as an institution, practice and industry, and contemporary art.