Making Space
40 ans d’art vidéo

In 1973 video celebrated its tenth birthday, and Nam June Paik made what would become the cult tape of the history of video – Global Groove. That same year the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts of Lausanne started its collection of videos by acquiring Limite E (1973), a work by Jean Otth.

Making Space suggests an unusual and novel way of looking at a medium that is most frequently associated with the recording of time and the staging of a story. It brings together works in which the common denominator is the recording or reconstructing of the space that can be seen, the space inhabited by the artist’s body, and lastly the space enlivened by the presence of onlookers. Structured
non-chronologically round such themes as TV as Exprimentation Space (from Closed Circuit to Broadcasting), Spaces for Creation (the Street, the City), Measuring Space (from Land Art to the Politics of Space), and Imaginary Space, Mental Space, the exhibition presents works by major artists in this genre, with all generations intermingled. It explores the way in which artists have played with the medium itself, creating scenarios where television features itself as an object and a means of broadcasting, subversively misappropriating both the medium and the message (Nam June Paik, Global Groove, 1973; Dara Birnbaum, Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman, 1978-79). The exhibition also presents the way in which the artists explore the link with viewers, by turning them into an integral part of the work, at first by the device of closed circuit television, then, from the early 1990s on, through installations in which the projection literally encompasses the viewer (Emmanuelle Antille, As deep as our sleep, as fast as your heart II, 2001).

With works by
Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Judith Albert, Francis Alÿs, Emmanuelle Antille, René Bauermeister, Dara Birnbaum, Paul Chan, Silvie and Chérif Defraoui, VALIE EXPORT, Dan Graham, Joan Jonas, Kim Sooja, Ana Mendieta, Bruce Nauman, Jean Otth, Nam June Paik, Anne-Julie Raccoursier, Pipilotti Rist, Anri Sala, Gerry Schum, Richard Serra, Salla Tykkä, Bill Viola.

The exhibition has benefited from generous loans from MoMA, New York, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Kunstmuseum Bern, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Musées d’art et d’histoire de Genève, as well as numerous loans from the artists and their respective galleries.