Video essays are an important means of existence of the moving image in today’s artistic practice.
In this section of open storage there are works from Garage Collection and by other artists, which outline the multidimensional essence and various contexts of the genre.
As a genre the video essay has too many faces, an endless number of definitions, an uncontrollable quantity of effects and qualities. This term is used for video cinema criticism and a type of documentary cinema with subjective dialogue behind the camera and visual diaries and popular video blogs and some works by contemporary artists and much more. Video essays are an endlessly changing language for academic film studies, experimental art, everyday communication, and diverse new means of expression, from machinima to VR.
The selection of works in open storage does not limit this excessive diversity, but nor does it claim to offer a definitive classification of the types of essayism. It highlights its various qualities in a fragmentary way based on works in the Museum’s collection and marking out important paths, techniques, and connections within the genre through works by invited artists.
Here you will see a wide range of works by very dissimilar artists—from video essay legend Harun Farocki to twenty-first-century media partisans from the group Total Refusal—and their approaches vary, from the sensitive yet strict research in Saodat Ismailova’s work to the presentation of complex vulnerability in the installation by Dasha Likhaya. The essay is often referred to as an action-genre, a work changing the author’s situation, marked by a boldness of thought or the absence of fear of imperfection or randomness.
Video essay practices enable us to trace the history of the splintering and broadening of the classical space of the screen, with the help of which we can interact with moving images.
Some of the works in this section of open storage were created with the support of the Garage Digital video essay workshops.
