Signals: How Video Transformed the World Exhibition at MoMA Includes Installation Originally Commissioned by GME Consultant

Gretchen Bender’s TV TEXT AND IMAGE INSTALLATION in signals at moma

Video is everywhere today—on our phones and screens, defining new spaces and experiences, spreading memes, lies, fervor, and power. Shared, sent, and networked, it shapes public opinion and creates new publics. In other words, video has transformed the world. Bringing together a diverse range of work from the past six decades, Signals reveals the ways in which artists have posed video as an agent of global change—from televised revolution to electronic democracy.

Featured artists include John Akomfrah, Gretchen Bender, Dara Birnbaum, Tony Cokes, Amar Kanwar, New Red Order, Nam June Paik, Sondra Perry, Martine Syms, Stan VanDerBeek, and Ming Wong. Signals enables audiences to experience video art’s wildly varied formats, settings, and global reach, from closed-circuit surveillance to viral video, from large-scale installation to social networks.

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STREET VIEW OF TV TEXT AND IMAGE ORIGINAL INSTALLATION IN THE FRONT WINDOWS OF THE DONNELL LIBRARY CENTER IN 1990, COMMISSIONED BY THEN FILM/VIDEO HISTORIAN FOR THE DONNELL FRED RIEDEL (CURRENTLY A CONSULTANT TO GME) WITH A GRANT FROM THE NEW YORK STATE COUNCIL ON THE ARTS. IT WAS THE FIRST ART INSTALLATION IN THE FRONT WINDOWS OF THE FORMER LIBRARY CENTER (LOCATED OPPOSITE THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART ON WEST 53RD STREET*)

Nam june paik, whose work is integral to signals, in a scene from Jonas Mekas’ ZEFIRO TORNA DISTRIBUTED ON DVD AND AS A DOWNLOADABLE DSL FILE FROM GME

In addition, Gartenberg Media distributes work by Eugènia Balcells, Valie Export, and Antoni Muntadas, who are represented in Signals: How Video Transformed the World.

*Interesting aside: while Fred was working at the Donnell Media Center as the Film/Video Historian, GME President Jon Gartenberg was working across the street as a curator in the film archive at The Museum of Modern Art, during which time they had been involved in the production of the documentary WARHOL'S CINEMA 1963-1968: MIRROR FOR THE SIXTIES (1989), for British television.