2008 marked the first installment of Ballroom Marfa’s film and video series, Art in the Auditorium. Ballroom Marfa collaborated with Whitechapel Gallery, London, and other international art spaces in China, Europe, Latin America, and the United Kingdom for the first season of the film and video program. Each of the nine participating institutions selected an artist from their country to be included in the program; Ryan Trecartin was chosen by Ballroom Marfa as the North American artist.

Born in Webster, TX  Trecartin is among a wave of artists whose work is informed by the evolution of net aesthetics, the hyperactivity of the world wide web and the proliferation of broadcasting platforms like YouTube. In Trecartin’s videos, characters dress up, play up and pose up for the camera – sometimes as fictional personas, other times as themselves – as they share the minutiae of their mashed-up romantic and domestic lives. Their relationships and attitudes are deeply affected by a hyper-awareness of media; the slew of pop culture references and artistic forms from which his characters draw reflects Trecartin’s own post-media generation.

Art in the Auditorium brought Trecartin’s work together with a diverse group of artists and institutions including Lene Berg (Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo); Nathalie Djurberg (Moderna Museet, Stockholm); Leandro Erlich (Fundacion Proa, Buenos Aires); Wang Jianwei (Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing); Ali Kazma (The Institute for the Readjustment of Clocks, Istanbul); Shahryar Nashat (Kunsthaus, Zurich); Cornelia Parker (Whitechapel Gallery, London); and Diego Perrone (Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Bergamo).

Across this disparate group, many themes emerged and recurred as artists explored the tensions between image and reality, the state of the environment, power relationships, media culture, human mortality, nationalist history and video and cinematic lineages. Ballroom Marfa screened works by two different artists every Saturday through November at the Crowley Theater.

Art in the Auditorium was free and open to the public.

Art in the Auditorium at Ballroom Marfa was organized by Associate Curator, Alicia Ritson.

Acknowledgments

This program has been made possible by the generous support of Ballroom Marfa members.