Past

Sights and Sounds: South Africa

Oct. 30 – Nov. 24, 2015

Sights and Sounds: South Africa features new work by Dineo Seshee Bopape, Gabrielle Goliath, Jonah Sack, and Lerato Shadi, selected by Josh Ginsburg.

The nonhierarchical interplay of action, feedback, and reflection underpins much of what attracts me to experiments in art. I am drawn to artistic practices that are highly iterative and improvisational, where chance and rule coexist symbiotically.

In selecting these videos, I sought works by artists whose engagement with the technology of sound and the moving image afforded me insights into their practices not evidenced in other works. Further, I was interested in works that treat the medium neither as supplementary nor with polished reverence. Rather, I responded to those in which the medium felt handled, manipulated, rough, and played with. Together, these works form a constellation; guided by sense rather than mind, they push and pull one another in a manner that seemed exciting to preserve as a set.

The result is that there appears to be something of a family resemblance among them. Each in its own way reflects on traces made and erased, on liminal spaces, and the stutter or jitter of memory.

Josh Ginsburg
Curator

Josh Ginsburg (b. Cape Town, 1981) is the director of A4 Art Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the support of contemporary art in South Africa. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electromechanical engineering (2004) and a master’s in fine art (2011), both from the University of Cape Town.

About Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video

This long-term series offers a rotating selection of vigorous film and video works by contemporary artists from around the world — with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.

Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video is a long-term presentation of new film and video works made in the sphere of the visual arts. The series offers a rotating selection of vigorous works by contemporary artists from around the world. It introduces New York audiences to the latest developments in filmmaking within the art context and underlines the Jewish Museum’s holistic and global approach to the understanding and presentation of art and culture.

Sights and Sounds takes advantage of the straightforward way film and video travel: shipped on discs or streamed online, these works provide an instant connection to new creative practices from even the most remote locations.

Twenty-five international curators have selected new film and video work from their respective regions of the world—ranging from Argentina to Vietnam, Nigeria to Romania, New Zealand to China, and many places in between. Their picks are screened for one month each in the museum’s media center, which has been turned into a miniature cinema for the occasion.

The works in Sights and Sounds touch on themes significant to both Jewish culture and universal human experience: spirituality, exile, language, conflict, family, humor, history. The series creates a broad network of artistic expression and curatorial perspectives that takes stock of what is happening in film and video art at this moment in time across the globe—with a particular emphasis on work being made outside western Europe and the United States.

Sights and Sounds will culminate with a selection of highlights from the series. One work from each country will be presented in the gallery from February 5, 2016 to June 30, 2016.

Jens Hoffmann
Deputy Director
Exhibitions and Public Programs

#sightsandsounds

Installation view of Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video in the Goodkind Media Center. Photo by David Heald.

Exhibition highlights

Dineo Seshee Bopape, still from is i am sky, 2013, digital video, sound, 17 min., 48 sec. Artwork © Dineo Seshee Bopape, provided by the artist and Stevenson, Capetown and Johannesburg
Gabrielle Goliath, still from Personal Accounts (Christolene), 2014, digital video, sound, 12 min., 40 sec. Artwork © Gabrielle Goliath