Friday, August 23 at 8 pm
The Museum of Contemporary Art has announced the finalists that will be featured in Optic Nerve 15, the annual festival of short videos by artists. This open international call initiated by MOCA allows artists worldwide to submit recent work for consideration. These finalists represent 5% of total submissions. Winning work(s), selected by MOCA Curator Alex Gartenfeld, will be acquired for MOCA’s permanent collection.
Finalists are:
Uri Aran (Brooklyn, NY) Untitled (I Love You)
Amy Bessone (Los Angeles, CA), Untitled (Sunny Side Up)
Tony Cokes (Providence, RI) RRK (Reading Rosalind Krauss)
Samantha Harmon (Bronx, NY) Patricia Harmon, John Harmon
Cindy Hinant (New York, NY) SELFISH
Juwon Lee (White Plains, NY) Hidden Stories of Super Mario Bros (part 3/6)
Jillian Mayer (Plantation, FL) How to Hide From Cameras
Mores McWreath (Brooklyn, NY) Sharing Lazy Gains
Takeshi Murata (New York, NY) Shiboogi
Katja Pratschke (Berlin, Germany) ANSELMA
Jon Rafman (Montreal, Canada), In The Realms of Gold
Rachel Rose (New York, NY) Sitting Feeding Sleeping
Mark Aerial Waller (London, UK) TIME TOGETHER – Gravitational Equilibrium
Yunyi Yi (Palisade Park, NJ) Maya (not that)
These 14 finalists were selected by a panel of world-class curators: Andrew Bonacina, Artistic Director of International Project Space, Birmingham, UK; Alex Gartenfeld, Curator; Debbie Grimberg, independent curator, Buenos Aires; Kathryn Kraczon, Assistant Curator, ICA, Philadelphia; Aram Moshayedi, Curator, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and Hanne Mugaas, Director and Curator, Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway. All videos were made in the last two years and are five minutes or less in length.
Optic Nerve will be screened at MOCA on Friday, August 23 at 8 pm, preceded by an Art Talk by Aram Moshayedi at 7 pm. Prior to his new position at the Hammer Museum, Moshayedi served as associate curator of the Gallery at The Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT). He is also the former curator at LA><ART, a nonprofit contemporary art space in Los Angeles. Moshayedi has written extensively on art and film/video in numerous publications including Artforum, Art in America, Frieze, X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly and Bidoun for which he is a contributing editor.
Space for Optic Nerve Screening and Art Talk is extremely limited. Reservations may be made by visiting www.mocanomi.org or calling 305-893-6211. The talk and screening are free with museum admission ($5 Adults; $3 students and seniors, free for members and residents of North Miami.) Optic Nerve 15 will play continuously during museum hours Saturday, August 24 and Sunday, August 25. Audiences will be invited to vote for their favorite entry.