{"id":5743,"date":"2014-10-15T15:37:55","date_gmt":"2014-10-15T21:37:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.saic.edu\/cate\/?p=5743"},"modified":"2025-01-09T22:52:18","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T04:52:18","slug":"on-john-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/2014\/10\/15\/on-john-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"On John Smith…"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems apt this week that Chicago is experiencing such a torrent of rather British-like weather, as we prepare to welcome the legendary John Smith to Conversations at the Edge (CATE). This week is a very special event due to the fact Smith was the first artist to present at CATE in 2001. We are delighted to welcome him back to the Gene Siskel Film Center and Chicago. I would like to take this opportunity to thank one of our cosponsors Video Data Bank<\/a> (VDB) for their continued support in bringing world class moving-image practitioners to Chicago. VDB has distributed<\/a> much of Smith’s work for many years and I’m delighted to publish the following essay written by Lindsay Bosch, VDB’s Development & Marketing Manager (and avid John Smith fan.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Still<\/a>
Still from Dad’s Stick (John Smith, 2012). Courtesy of the artist.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I sometimes have the privilege of talking to classes and student groups about the history of the Video Data Bank.\u00a0 The compilation I regularly show includes John Smith\u2019s The\u00a0<\/a><\/em>Girl Chewing Gum<\/i><\/a>.\u00a0 The work shows up in the lecture somewhere between the invention of the Portapak and the rise of installation art. I can always rest assured that no matter who has dozed off or is checking their phone, I will get a laugh and reel the group back in with this classic work.\u00a0 A few years ago, I showed \u00a0The\u00a0<\/em>Girl Chewing Gum<\/i>, along with John Smith\u2019s Slow Glass<\/i><\/a> and Associations<\/i><\/a> to my parents at Christmas.\u00a0 They had asked me to give them a better explanation of \u201cWhat it is I do.\u201d which leads inevitably to the question: \u201cWhat is video art?\u201d\u00a0 (They loved the works, and have since stopped telling people that I am a librarian.)<\/p>\n

Why do we turn to Smith in these introductory situations? I\u2019m continually drawn to Smith\u2019s film and video work because it offers a certain core accessibility.\u00a0 Smith\u2019s pieces are a video art gateway drug\u2014translating the world of artists\u2019 moving image to the uninitiated. \u00a0One need not be among an art school in-crowd to \u201cget it,\u201d to feel like Smith\u2019s work is addressing you.\u00a0 Smith\u2019s videos posit the existence of the massive audience that I want for video art; an audience encompassing young students, fans of popular cinema, my parents (and yours too!). Much of Smith\u2019s work offers a certain viewing pleasure, dare I say it, even entertainment\u2014that is often deliberately withheld in video art. This is not to say Smith\u2019s work is ever simplistic.\u00a0 Instead, he savvily speaks of complexity in readily available languages: those of humor, of quick Brit wit, of direct and personal voice-over, and recognizable cinematic tropes.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As a viewer I\u2019m also drawn to Smith\u2019s use of his immediate surroundings to point fully outward.\u00a0 The artist\u2019s meditations on the objects (unusual Red cardigan<\/i><\/a>, Dad\u2019s Stick<\/i><\/a>), or places around him (Flag Mountain<\/i><\/a>, Worst Case Scenario<\/i><\/a>, Hotel Diaries<\/i><\/a>) fascinatingly connect the mundane and personal with their more universal and politicized reverberations. \u201cNothing in any of my films is researched; I come across things,\u201d Smith modestly told Sight and Sound <\/i>in 2010. \u00a0Smith\u2019s close consideration of those elements he \u201ccomes across\u201d allows us, as his audience, to do the same. \u00a0We read Smith\u2019s images thoughtfully, accepting small and specific observations as a bridge through which to engage the wider world.\u00a0 Throughout the Hotel Diaries<\/i> series, Smith relates the microcosm of his lodgings to the ongoing strife in the Middle East.\u00a0 In these and other works, Smith achieves a unique position, balancing between the opposing artistic poles of personal diary (it\u2019s all about me<\/i>) and impartial documentary (it\u2019s all about the subject).<\/i> I find this is a relatably human and truthful point-of-view. \u00a0As subjects, we are neither standing fully outside the larger movements of history and politics, nor are we at their epicenter. We are always poised somewhere in-between, attending to both our own small world and the world at large. I\u2019m so grateful that John Smith has allowed us to stand, sure-footed, in this place and to \u201ccome across things\u201d with him; and I\u2019m thrilled that he is joining us for Conversations at the Edge.<\/p>\n

Founded at the\u00a0School of the Art Institute of Chicago<\/a>\u00a0(SAIC) in 1976 at the inception of the media arts movement, the Video Data Bank (VDB) is a leading resource in the United States for video by and about contemporary artists. The VDB Collection includes the work of more than 550 artists and 5,500 video art titles, 2,500+ in active distribution.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The VDB makes its Collection\u00a0<\/a>available to museums, galleries, educational institutions, libraries, cultural institutions and other exhibitors through a national and international\u00a0distribution<\/a>\u00a0service. VDB works to foster a deeper understanding of video art, and to broaden access and exposure to media art histories, through its\u00a0programs and activities.<\/a>\u00a0These include preservation of historically important works of video art, the perpetuation of analog and digital archives, publishing of curated programs and artists’ monographs, the commissioning of essays and texts that contextualize artists’ work, and an extensive range of public programs.<\/em><\/p>\n

Operating under SAIC’s not-for-profit status, the VDB is supported\u00a0in part by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Art Works.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems apt this week that Chicago is experiencing such a torrent of rather British-like weather, as we prepare to welcome the legendary John Smith to Conversations at the Edge (CATE). This week is a very special event due to the fact Smith was the first artist to present at CATE in 2001. We are […]<\/p>\n

Read More… from On John Smith…<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":5744,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[872,206,211,423,476,623],"class_list":["post-5743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-19","tag-essays","tag-europe","tag-experimental","tag-monographic-shows","tag-political","tag-video-data-bank"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5743"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9930,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5743\/revisions\/9930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.saic.edu\/cate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}