Digital & Video Art Fair (DiVA)
New York 2006
By Chris Twomey

Featuring some forty international galleries showing works by digital video artists, this second edition of DiVA (digital video art) proves that videos, DVDs and the digital prints/installations that they spawn, have quietly made great strides in the convergence of Art and Technology. Produced by Thierry Alet’s art fair organization, Frere Independent, and curated by Elga Wimmer, the show took place in the Atrium of the Embassy Suites Hotel in Lower Manhattan, with two levels of its spacious rooms serving as exhibition “booths.” Billed as a tribute to Andy Warhol, the real emphasis was on how to integrate this “next wave” niche art fair into the art collecting marketplace.

The time based offerings included a full program of performance documentations, animations, claymation, repetitive loops, narrative film sequences, classic film montage, multi-channel displays, as well as interactive presentations. A panel discussion about collecting digital video art included representatives from the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Reina Sofia National Museum in Madrid. One price listing for limited edition DVD’S listed prices from $3,000 to $20,000, depending on the artist and the equipment included.

Some of this work showed keen ingenuity. From Paris, Galerie Mamia Bretesche' offered Table for Two, by Helga Steppan and Leonora Chan; a DVD loop projected onto a partly set table from above. The viewer perceives a fully set table, complete with tablecloth, silver ware, food and two people, whose arms gesticulate as they converse. Glowing in the projection light, this ghostly installation about communication plays with reality, for on the table the sugar in the sugar bowl is real, whereas much else is a projection, mixing 3D truth with 2D fiction.

Galeria Moises Perez De Albeniz, from Spain, presented an American artist, Dennis Adams, with an evocative single channel video called Make Down. In it, the artist looks into a mirror as he scraps off a thick layer of green make-up from his face with paper on which we see the face of a woman. The woman’s picture is a "still" from the film The Battle of Algiers, 1965. In the film, she portrays an Algerian woman who disguises herself in order to plant a bomb in the French quarter of Algiers. As a mirror of our times, her picture serves as a powerful reference which emotionally impacts the simple act of rubbing clean.

the:artist:network featured a large white balloon hanging portentously from the ceiling, which served as backdrop for Katja Loher’s video installation. Simultaneously, the gallery’s radio network broadcasted interviews with artists live from their exhibition rooms. Called "art after dark," this live digital format presents the "talk show" as performance art, as manifested through the artist.

In the hallways between the exhibition venues, Andy Warhol’s film, Mario Banana played in a continuous loop. The filmed performance of a man made-up like a woman, licking provocatively on a huge banana, offered a fun backdrop to the fair. Other seminal video films by Jonas Mekas and an anthology of Fluxus films selected by George Maciunas were shown in the Maya Stendhal Gallery room, in keeping with the Andy Warhol tribute.

The show organizers also set up “media containers” in public places throughout Lower Manhattan, as an inventive effort to integrate the New York City environs into the ambitious event program, which also included stretch limousine rides around Manhattan with curators, artists, and art world players called "Critical Conversations," provided by AC:Hospitality Suite. Although one of the smallest of the fairs to take place during what has become known as the Art Week in New York (aka the Art Week in Miami), DiVA packs some impressive innovations.

3/9 through 3/12