Art and the Documentary Turn with Rachael Rakes & Leo Goldsmith
Wednesday, August 16th, 7-9pm
$7 members / $10 general

Led by Workspace residents Rachael Rakes and Leo Goldsmith, this lecture / processual seminar considers the post-1990s “documentary turn” within contemporary art, taking on coextensive pivots in non-fiction cinema towards a language of video art and installation, from a variety of historical, curatorial, and critical perspectives. In addition to looking at examples in moving-image media, the seminar touches upon artists working with still images, objects, performance, sound, interactivity, and activism as documentary practice. Rakes and Goldsmith will discuss the relative discourses of documentary media and the art world, consider the relationship between the traditions of art, documentary, archival research, and journalism, and raise issues of presentation, contextualization, and preservation for curators and artists alike in the current regime of contemporary art and neoliberal politics. The seminar will touch upon issues of production and exhibition of all forms of documentary art practice, and also consider the politics and ethics of art-making in the social realm. This event should be of of interest to artists, filmmakers, curators, activists, writers, and anyone interested in media and social practice.

Rachael Rakes is a curator, critic, film programmer, and teacher. She was recently a Fellow at Art Center/South Florida, and a Curator-in-Residence in the CPR: Mexico program. Rakes is a Programmer at Large for the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Editor at Large for Verso Books, a and has recently organized exhibitions for Knockdown Center, ISCP, and Malmö Konsthall. Leo Goldsmith is a writer and curator based in New York. He co-edits the film section of The Brooklyn Rail with Rachael Rakes, with whom he is writing a book about the radical filmmaker Peter Watkins. His writing has appeared in Art-Agenda, artforum, Cinema Scope, INCITE, and The Village Voice.

This workshop is part of the Workspace Residency. Workspace Residency is a unique artist residency that supports local, regional and national media artists and researchers who are working on projects in film, video, audio, interactive media and emerging technologies in any stage of production. Initiated in 2016 by Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center in Buffalo, New York, in collaboration with local partners Buffalo Game Space, Buffalo Lab, and Silo City, the residency provides support through equipment, facilities, and technical support for artists experimenting across a range of old and new technologies, such as video, sound, digital platforms, interactivity, virtual reality, and 3D printing. Community outreach and public engagement components include presentation and education activities. More information on the summer 2017 residents can be found here.