LA Freewaves
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Freewaves is a Los Angeles based nonprofit organization that advocates for and exhibits uncensored independent new media from around the world. The group sees itself as a media arts magnet currently building one of the largest online archives of streaming new media art works.[citation needed] Freewaves also provides information on media resources on its website.
Artists
Freewaves exhibits works that are generally not taken in by Hollywood, big business, networks or cable television.[citation needed] Works are frequently eccentric and unconventional, favoring content and concepts over aesthetic gimmicks, representing voices not normally heard from in more mainstream festivals.[citation needed] Media artists including Bill Viola, William Basinski, Yes Men, Brad Neely, CrimethInc. and Jennifer Steinkamp have shown works in Freewaves programs.[citation needed]
History
Freewaves was founded in 1989 by Anne Bray.[citation needed] Bray serves as executive director and has been working in the field of media arts since the mid-1970s as an artist and teacher.[citation needed] With representatives of other communities, she founded Freewaves and has administered the program since it was launched at the American Film Institute's National Video Festival in 1989.[citation needed]
Festivals
In 2000, Freewaves hosted Air Raids, a citywide festival of experimental, documentary and new media works by artists, activists and media makers.[citation needed] The festival featured an opening at MOCA, thematic video bus tours, "TV or Not TV" a 10-year LA media arts retrospective that aired on KCET, online exhibitions, as well as 50 additional screenings and installations at over 30 Southern California venues.[citation needed]
Freewaves' eighth festival, TV or NOT TV? was held in 2002.[citation needed] It presented over 300 works in panel discussions, performance events, exhibitions, outdoor community screenings and television broadcasts that dealt with the line between daily life and televised reality.[citation needed] The ninth festival, How Can You Resist? was held in 2004, with over 150 works of video, film and digital media chosen to address the question "How Can You Resist?"[citation needed]
The 2006 festival, Too Much Freedom posed the question of freedom and attempted to answer that question by showcasing work that examined freedom.[citation needed] In 2008, the 11th festival, HollyWould transformed Hollywood Boulevard into a multi-faceted screening room for experimental videos, films and media art from every continent.[citation needed] Selected works were projected onto buildings, displayed on LCD screens inside stores and installed in storefront windows.[citation needed]
Events and projects
In 2009, Statues Unfrozen for One Hour - Clothed Women and Unarmed Men was shown at rooftop of eighteen-thirty on Sunset Blvd in Echo Park, Los Angeles and at the Moscow Film Festival.[citation needed] The two-channel screening featured 18 short videos on actions in public space by artists from USA, India, Kazakhstan, France and Dubai.[citation needed] Also in 2009, Hotbed - Video Cultivation Beside the Getty Garden projected 20 artists' videos onto the exterior walls of the Getty Center court yards, exploring the theme of the body as nature or culture.[citation needed]
In 2010, Freewaves celebrated its 20th anniversary at the LACMA Late Night Art Event, animating the museum’s north plaza with over 20 experimental media art works produced over the previous two decades.[citation needed] The videos presented spanned perspectives from identity politics of the 1990s to post-9/11 reality checks, from deep inside the mass media landscape to observations from media makers in Africa, Asia and Latin America.[citation needed]
Since 2011, Freewaves’ project Out the Window has presented hundreds of artists’ videos on L.A. Metro buses to daily commuters, creating a wired tapestry among the many social, cultural, economic and creative constituencies of Los Angeles.[citation needed] Two thousand metro buses are equipped with Transit TV’s 2 screens and speakers inside, providing a creative platform to showcase innovative media art in a distinctively public space.[citation needed]
References
- The Community Is Watching, and Replying: Art in Public Places and Spaces by Anne Bray
- How Can you Resist? at REDCAT
- TV or Not TV? reviewed by Green Galactic
- Freewaves: Latin America at The Americas Society An exhibition from TV or NOT TV?
- Air Raids article by Bill Lasarow
- Digital Universe by Holly Willis in the LA Weekly
