Year in Review

We live in the age of digital self-expression, a YouTube world born of the 1990s technology revolution that landed a new universe of communications and video editing software on the laptops of would-be auteurs everywhere.

That same revolution has radically reshaped the art world, inspiring growing numbers to capture reality in moving images with the power to transform, challenge and sometimes befuddle a viewer.

The Video Association of Dallas, which sponsors the 21-year-old Dallas Video Festival, will highlight those new visions beginning this evening at the first of five consecutive Saturday night exhibitions devoted to video art and other "media-based" art. The series, called "The Program," will present installations and seated screenings and feature more than 50 works by 47 artists at Conduit Gallery in the Design District.

Those tapped for the series include some of the best-known names in video art, such as Bill Viola, Matthew Barney, Ryan Trecartin and Guy Ben-Ner, as well as newer buzz-generating figures such as Meiro Koizumi.

The Dallas Video Festival, featuring documentaries and other videos, will be presented in October at the Angelika Film Center.

Organizers decided to single out video art because of increased interest.

"We felt video art had reached a tipping point," says Carolyn Sortor, who co-curated "The Program" with Charles Dee Mitchell, who is a freelance writer for The Dallas Morning News, and festival director Bart Weiss. "It's also true that artists have started migrating to this medium en masse because its potential for expression is so great."

"The Program" represents an effort to bring the different strands of video art together in one place. Curators reached out to galleries throughout the United States to assemble the series.

"I really don't know where else it would be possible to see both the amount and variety of work that's going to be exhibited," Ms. Sortor said.

Themes vary wildly, though meditations on broadly political topics, such as the tension between control and freedom, abound in more recent works.

Tonight's opening will spotlight several installations, including Mr. Barney's Drawing Restraint 13, which depicts the artist as Gen. Douglas MacArthur in a historically significant moment from World War II that is part of his continuing exploration of encounters between Westerners and Japan.

Other works to be featured in coming weeks include Mr. Ben-Nur's Stealing Beauty, in which the entire Ben-Nur family makes itself at home in a series of Ikea furniture stores – showering, making dinner, washing dishes, doing homework – while discussing ideas about value, property and family.

In Mr. Koizumi's The Human Opera XXX, a man invited to talk about a personal tragedy is interrupted, given absurd stage directions and props, drawn on and finally drowned out entirely by the artist.

"I hope people are surprised by the material," says Mr. Weiss. "I love it when you can tell by the expression on someone's face that they're seeing something unlike anything they've seen before."

The reception begins at 5 p.m. and includes an art talk and a musical performance by Treewave. Works presented during the Saturday showcases will remain on view at Conduit Gallery during the next week.

"The Program" will also offer free screenings at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth on Aug. 5 and 12 and a free panel discussion with screenings at the Dallas Museum of Art on Aug. 10. Starting times vary; complete information is at www.videofest.org.

Kevin Richardson is a Dallas freelance writer.

Plan your life

"The Program" opens at 5 p.m. today and continues on consecutive Saturday evenings through Aug. 23 at Conduit Gallery, 1626 Hi Line Drive. General admission is free, reservations for five seated programs available for $100.214-428-8700, www.videofest.org.

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