The Greenroom: Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art

Highly recommended

CCS Galleries and Hessel Museum of Art,
September 27, 2008 - February 1, 2009

[from their website]:
The Greenroom: Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art is the inaugural event of a long-term CCS Bard research project on "the documentary" that will include a large-scale exhibition in the CCS Galleries and Hessel Museum of Art, as well as related screenings and discussions throughout the year.

The research project will investigate the heritage of documentary practices in contemporary art, in relation to the history of film, documentary photography and television as well as to video art. The project aims to situate these contemporary documentary practices within current cultural production, and will explore their role within mainstream media. Artist and theoretician Hito Steyerl will collaborate with the Center on all aspects of the project., which will begin in March 2008 and run for approximately three years.

Documentary art works have played a defining role in art production of the late 20th and early 21st century. At the same time their status in an art context has been questioned. In the context of globalization, the representation of the real became once again an important problem in the field of art. Political and economical upheavals prompted a renewed interest for social reality and its documentary mediation. Furthermore, the failure of mainstream media to deal with current events in apropriate ways made documentary art practices take up a compensatory position. By merging with art traditions such as video-, performance- and conceptual art, documentary forms were reinvented and reinvigorated. A wide range of recent documentary works attests to a new diversity of forms, ranging from conceptual mockumentaries to reflexive photo essays, from split screen slide shows to found footage video reportage. Although innovative documentary art forms abound, little has been discussed and even less has been written about the contemporary boom of documentary forms. The Greenroom will address urgent questions about the history of documentary art forms in the context of globalising media and an expanding art world. It will investigate the relationship of fact and fiction, media and mediation, the question of archive and copyright, and the shifting role of documentary forms in the age of digital reproduction.