This anthropology-themed program surveys strategies used by video artists who disavow “objectivity” in exploring cultural experiences different from their own, and instead actively participate with their subjects. In The Singing Mute (1978), Juan Downey spends nine months with a Yanomami tribe in the Amazon. Other artists critique the outsider gaze—Terese Svoboda in Headhunters (1992), Sandra Kogut in What Do You Think People Think Brazil Is? (1990). Wendy Clarke’s Love Tapes (1974–88) invites 800 people to record thoughts about love, while Lowell Darling and Ilene Segalove befriend retired prizefighters-turned-Hollywood entertainers in The Cauliflower Alley Tapes, Part One (1976). In Rahime, Femme Kurde de Turquie (1979), a Kurdish villager recounts her trials in Istanbul to Nil Yalter and Nicole Croiset, who construct imagery to complement her story. Finally, Azian Nurudin’s What Does Pop Art, Pop Music, Pornography and Politics Have to Do with Real Life? (1990) is a Warhol remake exhorting us to pay closer attention to our surroundings.

In person: Nancy Buchanan, Kathy Rae Huffman, Azian Nurudin

Curated by Nancy Buchanan. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Exchange and Evolution: Worldwide Video Long Beach, 1974–1999 at the Long Beach Museum of Art, curated by Kathy Rae Huffman.