VernissageTV

At first I thought this was a really stupid idea: a website that offers streaming video of footage taken at art openings. But it’s actually pretty amazing, especially when most of us only get the opportunity to look at a press photo of any show outside of our geographical reach. Here, someone walks around an entire exhibition, allowing prolonged views of works of art (mostly contemporary- I’m sure this is done to help fuel the art market). Even video works are allowed prolonged shots to account for duration (I’m not even going to touch the mediation/simulacra can of worms opened up by videotaping video art). Granted, it would be nice to see some of these exhibits without hordes of people walking around, but in the case of, say, the Felix Gonzalez-Torres American Pavilion exhibition at this Summer’s Venice Biennale (an exhibit that, alas, I am viewing for the first time on a fucking website, but my budgetary restrictions are part of what makes VernissageTV so appealing), the presence of viewers is what activates the work. It’s nice to see people interacting with the work, and I’m sure museum types who are into studying the ways audiences interact with exhibits could get a lot out of this too.