The latest Contemporary Museum exhibit wouldn?t exist if artist Chris Burden hadn?t held a knife to reporter Phyllis Lutjeans? throat on live TV.
Seeing Burden?s knife inspired Museum Curator Irene Hofmann to develop Broadcast, a multi-media exhibit which reminds viewers how media outlets have influenced social, cultural and political events during the past 40 years, Hofmann said.
For Broadcast, Hofmann selected 13 artists who contribute video, radio, photography or multi-media installations.
According to Hofmann, Broadcast brings together many works that have rarely been seen.
In Broadcast, Gregory Green displays one of 27 radio stations he created over the past 11 years, he said. “The installation is an open forum for anyone to broadcast whatever material they choose.”
Broadcast artists, particularly Green and neuroTransmitter, “remind us we still live in a world where the media is regulated and controlled by the powerful and where world events unfold in our living rooms live on television,” Hofmann said.
Among Broadcast?s offerings, New York artist Dara Birnbaum?s archival TV footage stands out to Hofmann. “Hostage [by Birnbaum] is a tour de force that scrutinizes the role that media outlets have played in hostage situations.”
In Hostage, Birnbaum uses media coverage of the kidnapping of the German industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer in1977, Hofmann said.
Technology and Web sites such as YouTube allow almost anyone to produce and post online sound or video material to broadcast themselves, Hofmann said. “And Reality TV makes a star out of anyone … All of this makes it appear [as if] there is a democratizing shift in broadcasting. However, there is an increasing consolidation of media into three or four major companies, producing entities of far-reaching power and influence — the works in Broadcast ask us to consider this.”
Broadcast
Through Nov. 18
100 W. Centre St.
Baltimore
Suggested donation: Adults $5, Students $3
Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.
Thursday, noon to 7 p.m.
410-783-5720
