Katharina Sieverding, Transformer (installation view at KW Institute of Contemporary Art, 2005), 1973/74, multiple slide projection, Courtesy the artist, © 2007, Katharina Sieverding, Klaus Mettig, VG Bild-Kunst, Photograph Matthias Schorrmann.

Dan Graham, Opposing Mirrors and Video Monitors on Time Delay (installation view at SFMOMA), 1974/1993, Mirrors, video cameras, video monitors, digital time delay mechanism, 360 x 360", Collection SFMOMA, © 2007 Dan Graham, Photograph Ben Blackwell.

Vito Acconci, Command Performance (installation view at SFMOMA), 1974, mixed media and video installation with sound; dimensions variable, Collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase, © 2007 Vito Acconci, Photograph Ben Blackwell.

Vito Acconci, Documentation Panels from Command Performance (detail), 1974, 1 panel of 2, chalk and photographs on paper; 25 x 19" each; Collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase, © 2007 Vito Acconci.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 Third Street (between Mission
and Howard streets)
415-357-4000
San Francisco
Fourth Floor Galleries
In Collaboration: Early Works
from the Media Arts Collection
March 22-June 8, 2008

The first major presentation of SFMOMA's media arts collection in the Mario Botta building features several installations that have not been on view at the Museum for a decade. SFMOMA began collecting and exhibiting time-based media works of art in the early 1970s. The museum established its department of media arts ? one of the first of its kind in the United States ? in 1987, in recognition of the importance of electronic media in contemporary art. Dialogue between the artist and viewer in early media art and conceptual performance art, whether explicitly stated or implied, was instrumental in setting the stage for the more openly interactive and participatory works that eventually would be produced and come to define strategies in new media.

Organized by Rudolf Frieling, SFMOMA's curator of media arts, In Collaboration: Early Works from the Media Arts Collection features seminal works from the 1970s, primarily from SFMOMA's collection, including pieces by Vito Acconci, Dara Birnbaum, Peter Campus, Dan Graham, Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, Joan Jonas, Dennis Oppenheim, Richard Serra, and Katharina Sieverding.

The works gathered for this exhibition reflect on various notions of collaboration. "The collaborative aspect of key works in our collection is highlighted in a range of media, from live camera installations to film, video, or slide projection," says Frieling. "The selected works stage, explore, and play with delayed sounds and images, with a grammar of image production, using still and moving images to sharpen our perceptual senses in an experiential way."

Following the thread of collaboration, the selection concentrates on two thematic sections: exploration of feedback situations — specifically in closed-circuit installations — and the range of recorded collaborative performances. Graham's Opposing Mirrors and Video Monitors on Time Delay (1973/94) and Campus's dor (1975) both emphasize discontinuities between physical reality and depiction on a monitor or in a projected image. Acconci's Command Performance (1974) is another situation that stresses the psychological dimension of being actor and observer. From a video monitor positioned at the base of a column, a reclining Acconci taunts and entreats the viewer to replace the artist by stepping into the metaphorical and literal spotlight. A video camera records an illuminated stool, while other viewers voyeuristically watch the recorded subject on another monitor. Command Performance signals the end of Acconci's live performances and appearances before the camera, integrating his investigation of the public and private realms from his performance pieces while anticipating subsequent interactive architectural installations.

The second section of the exhibition features powerful documents of collaborative performances between artists investigating characteristics of time-based media relating to perception, feedback, and delay. Frieling says: "Artists shared not only the same concerns and interest in process and time-based and work in the early 1970s, but they also often participated in each other's projects. There was a productive network of relations, which indicates the fertile climate of collaborative authorship and the spirit of discovery of the time."

Jonas's Songdelay (1973), Serra's Boomerang (1974), and Holt and Smithson's Swamp (1971) address recording and communication processes, themes furthered in the video documents of Oppenheim's Two Stage Transfer Drawing 1971 performances, enacted in collaboration with his son. Birnbaum's rarely seen first work Attack Piece (1975) juxtaposes still and moving imagery, exploring improvised and immediate use of recording devices. Filmed outdoors in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Attack Piece focuses on a playful confrontation between Birnbaum and other artists — David Askevold and Graham — as they physically approach and film the artist, who from her position on the ground reciprocates the gaze by photographing the participants. The installation of two facing videos is drawn from the original material of Super 8 film and 35 mm slides. In Transformer (1973/74), shown in its original large-scale format, eight slide projections rotate through variations of hybrid portraits of Sieverding and her collaborator and partner Klaus Mettig, playing on the continuum between masculine and feminine. Transformer foreshadows use of large-scale prints in the artist's self-portraits and the field of contemporary photography.

Investigating time-based media characteristics, such as repurposing surveillance technology and possibilities of social interaction, the historic and seminal works from SFMOMA media arts collection gathered for this presentation paved the way for contemporary directions in media art.

Graham's sculptural pavilion Double Cylinder (The Kiss) (1994) will be on view in the Sculpture Terrace, adjacent to the fourth-floor galleries.

Peter Campus, dor (installation view at SFMOMA), 1975, closed-circuit color video; dimensions variable, Collection SFMOMA, Accessions Committee Fund purchase, © 2007 Peter Campus,Photograph Ben Blackwell.