MINNEAPOLIS, MN.- The Walker Art Center announced the Film/Video department’s shift to Moving Image beginning in May 2015. The renaming commences with the launch of two major initiatives: the Walker Moving Image Commissions, a new series of artist commissions made to premiere online; and the Walker Mediatheque, a new interactive space to watch projected works from the Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection. The Moving Image department continues its renowned Walker Cinema programming with special guests, exclusive content, and work from filmmakers across the globe while further advancing a commitment to contemporary artists’ moving image practice.

“The transition toward moving image away from the specific formats of film and video represents the movement of artists and filmmakers to work across a variety of mediums,” said Sheryl Mousley, Senior Curator of the department. “Walker Moving Image is responsive to these developments, and to presenting works across different platforms, in the context of our cinema, in our galleries, and online.”

“Under the continued leadership of Sheryl Mousley and her team, Walker Moving Image will continue to support and advance the most innovative artistic work across formats. Moving image practice and the ideas that surround it have shifted dramatically in recent years,” added Fionn Meade, Walker Art Center’s Artistic Director. “Presenting these newly commissioned works from leading artists alongside and in dialog with expanded access to Walker collections speaks to the shifting landscape of artists’ moving image and offers more opportunities for context.”

WALKER MOVING IMAGE COMMISSIONS
Walker Moving Image has commissioned six artists to each create a new work online launching with Moyra Davey and James Richards in May 2015. Premiering online for a limited run, the invitation to make new works made with an awareness to the inquiry, inspiration, and influence of three signature artists within the Walker’s Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection: Derek Jarman, Bruce Conner, and Marcel Broodthaers.

The first commissions to premiere online are new works by artists Moyra Davey, a Canadian artist based in New York, and James Richards, a Welsh artist based in Berlin, as they present works made with an invitation to think through the legacy of Derek Jarman. Both commissions will stream from the Moving Image Commissions page, from June 1 for a limited run, and are accompanied by essays from Isla Leaver-Yap, Bentson Film Scholar at the Walker.

The future commissions will acknowledge the signature presence of Bruce Conner within the Walker’s collections, presenting new works by New York-based artists Leslie Thornton and Seth Price. Price and Thornton both work with an awareness of Bruce Conner’s complex inquiry into appropriated material and the aesthetics of new technologies. To be launched later this year, both commissions will also premiere online for a limited run.

A third pair of upcoming commissions will feature new works from Los Angelesbased Shahryar Nashat and New York-based artist Uri Aran, who will respond to the films of Marcel Broodthaers within the Walker collection. Both Aran and Nashat work closely with found objects and modes of translation in their respective practice. These commissions will premiere in 2016.

WALKER PREMIERE COMMISSIONS
Notes on Blue by Moyra Davey
Moyra Davey’s new film, Notes on Blue—responds to artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman’s Blue. A lyrical essay film, Notes on Blue interweaves various biographies (including those of Jarman, poet Anne Sexton, the writer Jorge Luis Borges, and the artist herself) to explore the subjective experience of mortality, color, and identity. (2015, video, 28 minutes)

Davey is a writer and visual artist known for the convergence of photography and video. Her work attends to familiar objects culled from domestic and everyday environments. She frequently resituates overlooked aspects of daily life and everyday consumption within her own intimate narratives and deep personal histories.

Radio at Night by James Richards
James Richards’ new video responds to Derek Jarman’s visual collage and editing techniques, as well as Richards’ continued interest in sampling, distorting and looping gestures. Radio at Night explores ways in which broadcast technology seeks to preserve obscurity and anonymize individuals by abstracting images of the human body and estranging its gestures. Echoing Jarman’s own interest in collapsing together memory, moment, and fantasy, Richards’ video stretches and refracts his source material, which comprises news broadcasts; popular songs and poems of fraternity, love, and innocence written prior to the era of HIV/AIDS; and found footage from the artist’s personal archive. (2015, video, 8 minutes)

Richards, known for his provocative and emotionally resonant work, was the winner of the 2012 Derek Jarman Prize for Film and Video. He was recently nominated for the 2014 Turner Prize for the video Rosebud (2013). His work often draws on a range of sources such as home movies, TV shows, esoteric Internet videos, and archival footage.

Project Coordinator: Isla Leaver-Yap

WALKER MEDIATHEQUE
Open since May 1, 2015, the Walker Mediatheque is a new cinema-style space that puts visitors in control of viewing the institution’s Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection. Offering unprecedented public access to its rich holdings of film and video, amassed since 1973, the Mediatheque offers the chance to browse the collection via innovative touch-screen technology, and play selected titles in the 50-seat screening room.

The Mediatheque merges both on-demand contemporary culture with the classic, immersive cinema experience. Visitors can play the new Walker Moving Image Commissions; browse individual works by artists such as Kenneth Anger, Maya Deren, Joan Jonas, Jonas Mekas and Yvonne Rainer; and view curated selections from the Walker’s own thematic playlists, which include: “Cinemas of Resistance,” “Icons and Iconography,” and “Landscapes/Locales.”

As the Moving Image department continues to digitize works within its collection of over 1,000 titles, the Mediatheque will increase the number of titles free to play, putting visitors at the heart of its program.

Project coordinators: Caylin Smith and Anthony Tran