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Hacking the Timeline: EZTV, Digilantism and the LA Digital Arts Movement

 

Featuring works by:

Victor Acevedo
Rebecca Allen
Denis Brun
Dave Curlender
Michael Dare
Loren Denker
John Dorr
David Em
Kit Galloway
Kate Johnson
Tony Longson
Michael Masucci
Sherrie Rabinowitz
Nina Rota
Anneliese Varaldiev
Michael Wright

Organized by Michael Masucci

February 4 - April 7, 2006
ArtNight Reception event: Saturday, January 15, 6:00 - 8:30pm
1629 18th Street, Santa Monica

 

 

18th Street Arts Center presents the group exhibition, “Hacking the Timeline: EZTV, Digilantism and the History of LA Digital Art,” organized by Michael Masucci, February 4 - April 7, 2006 at 18th Street Arts Center, 1639 18th Street, Santa Monica. With work by over a dozen seminal and contemporary artists working with digital, video and electronic technologies, this exhibition will posit a reconsideration and reframing of the paradigm shifts in artmaking practices over the last 30 years. The reception will be Saturday, February 4, 6-8:30pm with a special preview presentation with French artist Denis Brun and EZTV, 4-6pm.

Los Angeles has been a central hub in the history of the desktop digital art movement. In the 1980s and 90s, artist-run spaces such as EZTV and Electronic Cafe International (ECI) served as meeting grounds for artists, engineers, and intellectuals who saw the computer as a primary artmaking tool of the 21st century. Today, writers, architects, musicians, painters, photographers, filmmakers and even sculptors have all gravitated to this notion, not so widely accepted or obvious 25 years ago, yet now taken as a given. This exhibition focuses on some of the key individuals involved in the creation, advocacy and exhibition of digital art in Los Angeles, many of whom were among the very first to publicly articulate a unique digital and desktop aesthetic. They have served as activists who spearheaded a dialogue between mainstream and experimental art makers and brought journalists and scholars alike into an awareness of the emergence of an international digital culture. From David Em's pioneering experimental artworks created at historical places such as Xerox PARC and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to EZTV's development of a desktop video and microcinema tradition, to ECI's experiments in telecommunication arts, to the work of the Digilantes, who staged guerilla style exhibitions and became a local force for Los Angeles digital art. Hacking the Timeline seeks to help set the record straight and integrate into a larger contemporary art discussion the key individuals, movements and organizations of the digital arts scene.

 

CLICK TO READ CURATAOR STATEMENT.

 

18th Street programs are supported by the James Irvine Foundation, California Community Foundation, Trust for Mutual Understanding, National Endowmwnt for the Arts, Santa Monica City Cultural Affairs Division, L.A. County Arts Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Foundation, J. Paul Getty Grant Program, and others.

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