You walk in to a darkish room where ever-changing shapes move like a school of fish across the walls. After your eyes adjust, you find that the there are two benches sitting among six sculptures that are producing the schools of fish and that the fish are made out of nothing but light beams. These sculptures are metal. Simple geometry (sphere, cube, etc). The room is quiet and calming. Everyone who has been here talks about the unexpected smiles that slip onto their cynical faces, and it happens to you too.

Installation view Otto Piene: Lichtballett. Photo: Gunter Thorn. All photos courtesy MIT List Visual Arts Center

To understand what is going on here, you have to look back to the 1960’s, which may have been the high point of art at MIT. During the sixties, arts funding was partially used as a counterbalance to the political consequences from the institute’s complicated and financially fertile military industrial connections. The Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) was founded in 1967 by Gyorgy Kepes and immediately went about funding exhibitions and visits for some very interesting artists. With the available capital, an unavoidable optimism of postwar boom, and a complete lack of habits (good or bad) Kepes attempted to foster “media geared to all sensory modalities; incorporation of natural processes, such as cloud play, water flow, and the cyclical variations of light and weather; [and] acceptance of the participation of ‘spectators’ in such a way that art becomes a confluence.” (pdf)

Two of the first artists who were invited to visit MIT were Otto Piene and Hans Haacke (as well as Stan VanDerBeek). Piene was in the first round of fellows (meaning he was in residency for a year), and would succeed Kepes as director in 1968. Haacke was invited for a solo show at MIT in 1967. The body of work both presented consisted of systems, those very cloud/water/lights that Kepes hoped to present as art media.

Installation view: Hans Haacke, 1967.

This fall, Haacke’s solo-show has been reproduced at the MIT List Visual Art Center (LVAC). VanDerBeek and Haacke were both deeply influenced by the ideas of cybernetics. Haacke felt that controlling the storm, moving the meteorological indoors, skipped a layer of abstraction and released the artist from reproducing essential features of the world; immediacy was the only type of innovative art left to pursue. Unlike VanDerBeek’s social videos, Haacke created kinetic art systems, objects that set in motion an action that had no end point.

The approachable physicality and comic impossibility of watching a ball float on a jet of air, or seeing a refrigerator coil (covered in frozen ambient humidity) as a sculpture reminds us just how useless art can be; how archaic and aimless we could make our art. These works are unlike our current trends: useful and solemn responses to the internet, the economy, or the social conditions in relation to capitalism. These are objects that bewilder and add to our aesthetic understanding by wonder and query. The closest these sculptures get to being explicit is to make visible the relationship between the whole and the part, between the center and the exterior. 1967 was a very delicate moment in American history: the Vietnam war raging as were race riots, but it was still before the chaos of 1968. Instead of making politics explicit, for which Haacke is usually applauded, these sculptures sing wordless songs about the 1960’s societal changes. These examinations into natural systems granted him tools that he later used to investigate social systems, like the gallery and politics of Germany, but were timely investigations that presage his later work.

Otto Piene: Electric Rose, 1965. Polished aluminum globe with 160 timed neon lamps. Photo: Gunter Thorn

On the other side of the LVAC, Piene’s light sculptures from the 1960 and 1970’s have been painstakingly restored and presented (some for the first time in decades). Despite the opportunity of seeing some vintage Piene sculptures in perfect condition, the two new sculptures, One Cubic Meter of Black Light and Lichtballet steal the show. Both project light through perforations in their skin. Lichtballet is a wall of rotating lights hidden away from sight, the circular pattern of holes in the wall filters the light, manipulating the light into physical motion in the surrounding room. There is almost no reason to look at the objects that Piene has created, instead, you should be looking at their effects on your environment.

The sensations we see flowing around the room are light, directly and with no symbol. Instead of seeing how light lands on a sculptural object, the sculpture provides its own light, and uses the light as a physical material. It may be a sculptural analogy for Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Has Piene released light from being a shadow on the wall? It’s hard to tell, as every time you step into the room, you are enthralled by the light show’s charms. You immediately forget any theory laden narratives you may have about the work, and instead experience the motion and change for what it is, a grand environment that undercuts words and explanations. It’s a direct experience. It’s that visceral art that we’ve left behind. It’s an example of Kepes hope to present the art object as a confluence, a meeting of viewer and natural process.

Otto Piene: Lichtballett and Hans Haacke: 1967 are on view at the List Visual Arts Center through Dec 31, 2011.

The world doesn’t need any more films. The world doesn’t need any more video art. So if you’re going to bring an image into the world, you have to think it through. –Kodwo Eshun

After 50 years of production, distinct periods are appearing in the history of video art. Not distinct ism’s or manifesto driven bubbles, but separate works that seem palpably similar. As the technology used to make movies evolves past the time limits of tape, emerging digital technologies have given artists the ability to create works that seem unlimited in size, length, or production schedule. In 1993, Douglas Gordon laid down the gauntlet by slowing Hitchcock’s Psycho to 2 frames a minute, stretching it into a 24 hour composition. Since then, there have been numerous videos that have tested the stamina of the creators through decade long production schedules or the audience by being unwatchable in one sitting. Boston and Cambridge recently hosted three examples of these monumental works: The Cremaster Cycle, the Otolith Trilogy, and The Clock. Together, these movies point to a new, epic sized production practice and away from traditional art school skills (do any art schools teach bull riding?).

The Cremaster Cycle (Brattle Theatre, October 1-4) is a five movie series filmed between 1994 and 2003. It forms a self-referential system that both functions as a movie and an “Aesthetic System” for Barney’s prints, sculptures, and other ephemera. The entire program hangs on a series of analogies to bodily functions (the title is named after the muscle that raises and lowers the testes) that consider the creative act through a biological motif.

Still from Otolith III. HD Video. © The Otolith Collective. Image courtesy of MIT LIst Visual Art Center

The Otolith Group Trilogy (MIT List Art Center, September 6- 22) was filmed between 2003 and 2009. It is the shortest series considered here, all three movies total under 2 hours, but the production involved a multinational filming schedule, help from more than 8 art groups across multiple continents, and do not include the numerous spin off productions. The Otolith Trilogy is a collage of found film segments and original images. Named for a portion of the inner ear, the otolith structure help us keep our balance and handle the effects of gravity. All three movies are obliquely about the effects of time and how we keep our stability in a changing world. Otolith I (2003), assembled in response to the invasion of Iraq, documents a new species of humans who can only live in low gravity. Otolith II (2007) is primarily a visual comparison between Mumbai’s Dharavi and Le Corbusier’s planned city, Chandigarh. Otolith III (2009) is a prequel to the unrealized film The Alien from Indian director Satyajit Ray.

While The Clock (The MFA, Boston, September 16- December 31) is the most hyped, it’s also the least deliberated of today’s “it” art works.  It’s a 24 hour, continuous blanket of samples from movies and TV where the film mentions or shows a clock on screen indicating the time. These segments are cleverly mixed together to reflect the current time as you are watching.

Chrstian Marclay. Still from The Clock, 2010. Single-channel video, 24 hours. Photo: Todd White Photography.

Each of these video works have supplements that define their character. The Cremaster has numerous sculptures used in filming that have been exhibited with the movies. Seeing it in a movie theater, without the supporting material really drives home that even if you owned copies of the movies, somehow, that extra stuff does make the work feel more ambitious. The Otolith group’s sizable body of work overlaps and functions in a recursive way. Trying to outline the edges of their political activism and their art is a unproductive pursuit. Last, The Clock has made visiting the work an experience; waiting in the line to see it or trying to sketch a database of movies as time progresses. The viewer links the features of the work with the hour that they drop by. The size turns the work into something that you can’t completely experience in the aggregate but also doesn’t prevent the moment from having a distinct sense.

All of these movies were created by groups that have head artists, like a design firms. This doesn’t change how each movie should be received, but does point to collaborative practices as being a successful operational strategy today. Though they were all created in a collaborative environments, the aesthetic framework for each is wildly different.

Still from Otolith I. Video © The Otolith Collective. Image Courtesy of MIT List Visual Art Center.

The Cremaster Cycle is five distinct movies. There are connections between the films, but each stands alone and to decode them you need nothing more than a basic understanding of anatomy (and Masonic rituals for the third movie). Philosophically speaking, the movies are a closed system, that functions independently. Created by traditional filming, the movies have a beginning that flows to an end. Certain portions have stood the test of time, but formally, it feels dated. Their state of the art graphics are passé. The film quality is uneven, the third film (the last filmed) looks best. The myth is just as momentous, but I can’t imagine that this type of work would be possible in today’s economic environment. We should value it for that reason alone: the Cremaster is a time capsule from a time when a gallerist would fund a motivated, but relatively unproven young artist’s five movie cycle and make his career go from promising to prominent.

The Otolith Trilogy is not quite a closed system nor is it a completely unsettled and open ended. Made from a mix of new and historical photos and video, texts spoken over them, and an ambient soundtrack, the result resemble Chris Marker‘s works (Sans Soleil for example). In effect, the trilogy is a collage of real and imaginary events, where “the future feeds forward into the past” creating a confederated present.

The work is a lively montage, but a distinct post-colonial politics shaped these works, so it would be easy to disregard their proficiency as a pedantic heuristic. The non-political elements of each film amplify with repeated viewing, though. Each film is stratified with techniques and themes that are exacting for the viewer. Otolith I is a made up of real events transformed into a visual and textual poem. It asks, but does not answer, if it’s possible to find the courage needed in the face of change. Otolith II concerns itself with the effects of architecture on people. This “reconstruction of gravic space” changes resident’s attitudes and their aspirations. Otolith III questions the capacity to question via artworks. It examines the consequences of our creativity and who owns the lives that are created in narrative.

The Clock, feels larger than you on more than one level. You can’t see the whole thing very easily. Even if you live near one of the institutions that has purchased a copy (MFA Boston/National Gallery of Canada, MoMA, and LACMA), access to the whole 24 hours is hard to come by. It’s a wall of motion and activity from every part of the world and film history. It’s unwilling to reveal the why or what of its aspirations. Why this monster was created, if it a celebration of film’s moments or an allegory, isn’t answered and we are left to unravel what ties the individual moments together, other than obvious sonic and visual associations.

Chrstian Marclay. Still from The Clock, 2010. Single-channel video, 24 hours. Photo: Todd White Photography.

The Clock is a rich tapestry of subjectless players and sounds, with no objective goal. Christian Marclay‘s work depends on emotions and characters that made it through a double editing process, as each movie is edited before he can sample it. Marclay arranges film’s past into the present tense. Breaking the rules at times, implicit watches that don’t explicitly mention the time show that the feeling of these moments are more important than the exact time.

His creative mode is that of a dj rather than a singer/songwriter. Instead of crooning a tightly scheduled album about his/our love life, he selects segments of songs that work together, mixing them in the same witty way a dj cuts and remixes songs live. It’s is one of the best mixtapes I’ve ever looked at. It’s impressive for being able to deliver palpable atmosphere. You go to funerals at 10 AM and not at 10 PM. 6, 7, and 8 PM are different types of after-work experience (commuting, getting drinks, and movie/concert time, respectively). This may be the result of Hollywood’s reductive inclinations. Movies need to be believable and methodical for story telling. Movies distill each moment into consensus, presenting moments that pass our cynical minimum for believability. Despite that, a bad dj can ruin the mood. Marclay does not.

VanDerBeek’s career was filled with experimental projects in film, early computer art, and the cybernetic-tinged utopian non-verbal communication that moved art into uncharted waters. If Al Gore invented the internet, than VanDerBeek envisioned it first. The working model of visual and cultural lateral leaps found in Mankinda (1957) carries through his later works like Newsreal of Dreams (1976). Each relies on associative leaps made out of a psychedelic arrangement of random things– frenetic, non-stable images morphing and fluctuating their meanings in the blink of an eye. The central work, a recreation of Movie-Drome, contains popular movies, art history slides, and contemporary music entangled in an overwhelming collage that is impossible to completely experience.

The show’s title comes from one futuristic option that came out of his Buckminster Fuller-esque dome for the original Movie-Drome, at Gate Hill Co-op in Stony Point NY. The idea was, that “non-verbal international picture language” could be beamed out via satellite to other domes. These were not motion pictures, but emotion pictures, filed with deep utopian notions of what we are capable of becoming in the future. Today we just make do with UbuWeb, YouTube, and tabbed browsing, but an alternative art broadcast system would be an excellent invention.

VanDerBeek’s cybernetic cold-warrior surroundings pop up in Breathdeath (1963) a few times. This and other works were a huge influence on Terry Gilliam, both during the Do Not Adjust your Set and Monty Python eras. Both Gilliam and VanDerBeek grew up in the post world war era and wore their politics on their sleeves. A central concern was if these new technologies would end in mutually assured self-destruction or if they would free us. There was a fear that technology was out to get us.

His Violence Sonata is probably the most utopian of the work shown. It’s a two hour video that was broadcast on channels 2 and 44 in Boston on January 12, 1970. He hoped that neighbors would get together and watch two televisions simultaneously. This experiment was designed to spark discussions about race relations and violence. There was even a live call-in portion and a studio audience who were asked  “Can man communicate?”

Part of VanDerBeek’s originality stems from his quoting. The use of altered, but popular and accessible images and their loaded messages allowed for cybernetic feedback loops and open systems that MIT was known for during VanDerBeek’s tenure as a Fellow at CAVS. I think in 2011 it is easy to see this type of artwork unconsciously quoted by freshman video classes, but this exhibition creates a coherent vision of VanDerBeek trying to harness these technologies for art’s sake, even if he wasn’t sure that it was possible.

Stan VanDerBeek: The Culture Intercom Will be on view at MIT List Visual Art Center from February 4- April 3, 2011. There will be a gallery talk by Fred Barzyk and David Atwood of WGBH on Thursday March 10 about Violence Sonata. March 31 there will be a screening of 16mm films not included in the exhibition. It will also be on view at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston from May 14- July 10, 2011.

Matthew Day Jackson: The Immeasurable Distance at MIT List Visual Arts Center

Currently on view at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston is the solo exhibition, Matthew Day Jackson: The Immeasurable Distance. The exhibition, which features works based on Jackson’s artist residency at MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, MA, was originally on view at MIT from May through July of 2009. The work on view reflects Jackson’s curiosity with aspects of MIT’s research, as well as his own while in residency at the institution—particularly the Energy Initiative, since the Brooklyn-based sculptor has historically employed the use of recycled and repurposed objects in much of his work. Chariot—a crashed race car frame that the artist’s cousin, Skip Nichols built, raced and then crashed—has a body rebuilt by Jackson and is lit underneath in a ROYGBIV spectrum of lights generated by solar panels on top of the museum. In a video interview with MIT, Jackson says that “bringing it [the piece, Chariot] to MIT and working with the Energy Initiative was a…seamless, perfect fit in the sense that it was an opportunity to sort of explore perhaps…some poetic aspects of what they’re doing.”

Matthew Day Jackson: The Immeasurable Distance at MIT List Visual Arts Center

Born in Panorama City, CA, Matthew Day Jackson lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He earned his BFA from University of Washington and his MFA from Rutgers University. Jackson’s solo exhibitions include Terranaut, Peter Blum Gallery, New York, NY; Diptych, Mario Diacono at Ars Libri, Boston, MA; Paradise Now!, Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; and By No Means Necessary, The Locker Plant, Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX. His work was included in the 2005 exhibition Greater New York at P.S.1 in New York City. For the 2005 Whitney Biennial of American Art, Jackson contributed Chariot, The Day After the End of Days (2005-2006), a pioneer covered wagon floating above a bed of fluorescent tubes.