February 7 – March 20, 2005
This exhibition spotlighted contemporary video from those east-central European countries that recently joined the European Community. It included fifty-two works by over three dozen artists from sixteen countries including Estonia, Romania, Serbia and Croatia. The videos encompassed a dozen themes including:
1) The lingering trauma of civil war and violent regime change as countries move into democracy. 2) From isolation to globalization and subsequent concerns about artisanal labor, national identity, and a country’s Gross Domestic Product. 3) Ethnography, or the scientific description of specific peoples, 4) Various film techniques including documentary, diary, and disclosure. 5) Experimental video pre- and post-digital and pre- and post-MTV. Curated by Hamza Walker of The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, the show also traveled to the Saint Louis Contemporary Museum, London’s Tate Modern, and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
