E-flux Video Rental

E-flux video rental is an ongoing work by Anton Vidokle and Julieta Aranda, comprising a free rental, a public screening room, and a film and video archive that is constantly growing. This collection of over 850 works of film and video art has been assembled in collaboration with more than 400 artists, curators and critics.
The art project initially presented at a storefront in NY Chinatown and made possible by Anton's and Julieta's large network of institutions and individuals gathered thru e-flux's (electronic flux corporation) newsletter and international biennials, came to Lisbon this summer after landing in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Seoul, Paris, Istanbul, Canary Islands, Austin, Budapest, Boston, Antwerp, Berlin, Miami and Lyon.
The setting for exact replica of NY store (missing only the water dripping air condition mounted in front) couldn't be more unsettling- EVR was placed in a foyeur of a powerful private foundation with public interest, relying on oil traffic, which still remains the primary in-flux of money for this 'national' institution of good reputation, funded by an armenian emigré in the times of turkish genocide, and exercing unquestioned influence and power in the local art context.
But that's yet another of inumerous contradictions of our present condition.
EVR is a poetic exploration of alternative processes of circulation and distribution, and it is structured to function like a typical video rental store, except that it operates for free. VHS tapes can be watched in the space, or, once a new member fills out a membership form and contract, they can be checked out and viewed at home.
It's a great idea to enable public access to around 800 video works, that even the art goers that 'operate' internationally would have little chance to see, and have to content themselves with occasional stills spotted in this or that magazine, this or that electronic portal, a newsletter, an exhibition(but these are almost exclusively dedicated to a single artist or historical works, with some exceptions).
As well an emphasis on circulation (here Anton referred to Marx and video art in its beginnings) and use of out-dated technology (VHS video tape) work as a concept, but when you're there in the screening room, choosing and playing one video after another in an attempt to watch all, in fact the bad quality of the image can become very irritating, especially when you know that most of the videos are part of the current art production, HD, and imagine that some elites actually have the opportunity to see them in better screening conditions. Why archives have always to be so boring?
However, this horrible tech makes you aware of the circulation and distribution, that is the idea behind the art project.
To propose my personal 'cut' on the film and video works, to write history in the present, I would destaque An Artist Who Cannot Speak English Is No Artist by albanian Jakup Ferri, based on Mladen Stilinovic's conceptual work from the '70s. Here the artist appears talking to the camera in his studion in a kind of improvised creepy english, not articulated, repeating, with local sotaque, an outcast, impossible to understand, looking like he is trying his best to give meaning to this babbling, though in fact mocking with the artworld.
Letters à Francine consists of b&w stills, and a voice-over of a man, travelling in Istanbul who's dealing with uncurable disease attempting to comunicate his feelings and observations to beloved one, a woman called Francine. It evokes La Jetté.
Sunset at Corniche was repeatedly filmed by The Atlas Group, a project to investigate the contemporary history of Lebanon. I Only Wish That I Could Weep could be filmed as well in Lisbon or any other city by the sea, could it be? Sunset in Beirut looks so uncannily familiar.
Soviet illegal women in Turkey are the protagonists of Unawarded Performances by Gülsün Karamustafa. “When Soviet Union broke up, our families broke up.”
Another document, Khiam, provided by Hadjithomas&Joreige incitates the victims of torture perpetuated at Israeli detention camp to talk.
Oda Projesi Revisited documents the Istanbuli 'room projects', a socially oriented art practice engaging with the community, somewhat akin to esthetique relationelle, that was tested already by Claire Bishop in her widely discussed article Social turn: Aesthetics and Its Discontents in Artforum.
Hala Elkoussy's Candy Floss Stories are strange and poetic fictions about worker of wonders on a black and white Cairo beach accompanied by wicked elctronic beats and president's speech at the end.
This Day by Akram Zaatari is a feature, a political meditation about Bedouin and the Desert, employing documentary approach and tackling notions like space, nomadism, migration, perpetual movement and the reconstruction of history.
This autumn EVR is travelling to Colombia, Argentina and Brazil.
Having outlived the technology that made it possible, the project will be premanently archived at the Arab Image Foundation and Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, in 2009.