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VIDEOFORMES presents:
VIDEOBAR #76: “NONSELF” by John Sanborn
Performance / interactive online installation
Thursday, September 12, 2019 | 6:30 pm > 8 pm
Chapelle de l’Oratoire
Free access
VIDEOFORMES is pleased to present – NONSELF – a performance by John Sanborn, opening the 2019 fall season of the Chapelle de l’Oratoire. A preview that will precede its presentation at the Galerie du Jeu de Paume in Paris on September 17.
A performance of the interactive online installation NONSELF, on the themes of self-portraiture and memory, this VIDEOBAR will also be an opportunity for the Clermont-Ferrand public to meet and exchange with the artist in a convivial setting.
A conventional self-portrait is the representation that an artist makes of himself through writing, drawing, painting, photography, recording or sculpture. This process of asserting a version of oneself expresses what IS – reflected by an unambiguous reality – transformed by intention and technique. The question, then, is: can we define ourselves using a negative space?
“Our definition of negative is empty or null, but as with music or design, the reverse verifies positive. We don’t know joy without pain. In creating NONSELF, I offer evidence of consciousness, built from the negative space around me. It is easy to say what IS, but the impression created from what IS NOT summons what is “not me” and our immediate understanding of “truth”.
NONSELF consists of a series of 110 short videos, each of which uses “not me” attributes, attitudes, and perspectives to create an inverted self-portrait. These are neither lectures nor prose, but elusive moments and fleeting feelings captured by video and woven together through interaction with the audience.
Have fun with NONSELF wondering what is true and what is NOT.” – John Sanborn.
John Sanborn is a key member of the second wave of North American video artists including Bill Viola, Gary Hill, Dara Birnbaum and Tony Oursler. Sanborn’s work spans the early experimental video art of the 1970s to current digital media art.
He is known for his multiple collaborations with contemporary virtuoso performers. His work primarily addresses themes of music, mythology and memory. Vanity Fair has called him “the acknowledged genius in the field” and Vogue has named him “the acknowledged genius of video”.
Sanborn’s work has been shown in almost every contemporary art museum in the world, including the Whitney Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Prado, Madrid; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Tate Gallery, London; and the Seibu Museum, Tokyo. His video works have been broadcast worldwide, including by PBS, with Bill T. Jones, Philip Glass, Nam June Paik, Twyla Tharp, The Residents and David Gordon.
More info at: www.johnsanborn-video.com
Media partner: Kinic – Agence de communication globale