Muntadas: Between The Frames: The Forum

Between The Frames: The Forum by the Spanish born artist Muntadas offers a collective portrait of the people and institutions influencing what art is presented and how the art reaches the public.

Muntadas began working on Between The Frames: The Forum in 1982, and over the following decade he compiled interviews with more than 100 distinguished representatives of the art worlds of North America, Western Europe, and Japan. Those appearing in the videotaped interviews make up a virtual Who’s Who of the 1980’s art scene, including, among many others, artists Joseph Beuys, Hans Haake, and Adrian Piper; dealers Mary Boone and Leo Castelli; museum directors Richard Koshalek and Kathy Halbreich; and critics Benjamin Buchloh, Donald Kuspit, and Lucy Lippard.

These interviews were grouped by Muntadas into eight video “chapters,” corresponding to sectors within the art world: The Dealers, The Collectors, The Galleries, The Museums, The Docents, The Critics, The Media, and an Epilogue featuring commentary by artists themselves. The range of languages spoken by those interviewed reflects the cosmopolitan character of the international art world. Intercut among the interviews are still or moving images that Muntadas refers to as “open visuals.” The interviews with collectors, for example, are intercut with scenes from the Tokyo Stock Exchange, those with critics are intercut with images of an ocean beach, and those with artists alternate with scenes from a factory.

The physical installation of Between The Frames: The Forum is a large, segmented structure with a central, common space opening into several separate “rooms,” each with a video monitor on which visitors will view a single “chapter.” When viewers stand in the central space (likened by Muntadas to a Greek agora or marketplace), they will experience the voices from the rooms as a kind of chorus.

Catalogue with essays by Wexner Center Curator of New Media Bill Horrigan and independent curator Debra Balken