Sandwiched Between Trauma and Apocalypse: history as it intersects with biography and the rewriting of the past
01:14:55
Collection: Curated Compilations
Tags: Media Analysis, Memory, Politics, State, The, Surveillance, Technology, Television, Time, War



VDB TV: Decades, The 2000s
An original program for VDB TV: Decades curated by Aily Nash.
"By relating history to biography in this way, we find ourselves snuggly positioned between trauma and apocalypse. It is between these two points that this program unfolds, each work radically reconfiguring this relationship between history and biography to make meaning of the present. These videos by Paul Chan, Ximena Cuevas, Jesse McLean, Steve Reinke and Walid Raad propose subjective rewritings of historical events, claiming agency over how these pasts are understood. The works variously articulate the irreconcilability of worlds — we live together in alternate, yet parallel realities."
— Aily Nash
This program is also avaliable on VDB TV: Decades, a unique five-disc compilation that casts a distinctive eye over the development of video as an art form from the early 1970s to the present. This five-disc compilation was released during 2017 in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Video Data Bank. Each program was curated by an inspiring artist, scholar or media arts specialist who has focused on a specific decade, diving into the archive of the VDB to create personal, distinctive, and relevant programs, accompanied by original essays and texts. VDB TV: Decades is the perfect accompaniment to VDB’s iconic anthology Surveying the First Decade: Video Art and Alternative Media in the U.S. 1968-80, providing another essential tool for understanding the development of video and media art over the past five decades.
Included Titles
Collection: Single Titles Tags: history, performance, politics |
Collection: Single Titles Tags: found footage, media analysis, television |
Collection: Single Titles Tags: crime or violence, history, media analysis, middle east, post-colonialism, sexuality, war |
Collection: Single Titles Tags: autobiography, consumer culture, media analysis, television |
Collection: Single Titles Tags: animation, crime or violence, media analysis, middle east, politics |
Related Titles
VDB TV: DecadesThe Electric Mirror: Reflecting on Video Art in the 1970s
Problematizing Pleasure / Punk Theory
The Whole World is (Still) Watching
Future-Past-Present: A Journey Through the Twenty-Tens So Far
Surveying the First Decade: Video Art and Alternative Media in the U.S. 1968-1980