Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck in collaboration with Media Farzin, Chronoscope, 1951, 11pm (still), 2009-11, Single-channel video
Green Art Gallery is thrilled to announce that gallery artist Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck in collaboration with Media Farzin are the selected winners of the inaugural Moving Image Award. The Moving Image Award funds the acquisition by Tate of artwork exhibited at the Moving Image Art Fair, as selected by Tate's Curator of Film, Stuart Comer.
Presented at the Moving Image Art Fair in London by Green Art Gallery, Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck & Media Farzin's work Chronoscope, 1951, 11pm is a collaboration between an artist and an art historian. It is a video-collage of six television episodes of an early American current affairs program called “The Longines Chronoscope.” The discussions that have been selected are mostly from 1951 and relate to the situation in Iran soon after the nationalization of the oil industry by Mohammad Mosaddegh, as prime minister under the young Shah and before the 1953 coup by the British and American secret services.
Since the mid-‘90s Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck (born 1972, Caracas, Venzuela) has developed a hybrid practice that incorporates the activities of a researcher, archivist, historian, and curator. He has worked with a wide range of themes and mediums, challenging traditional conventions of style and categorization. His productions formally resemble or incorporate the works of others, stressing notions of authorship and cultural authority. Balteo-Yazbeck’s work aims to reveal the political strategies and motives at work in the world by analyzing the dynamics of power and propaganda in modern history and aesthetics. His productions have been shown internationally since the mid-‘90s and are represented in institutional and private collections.
Media Farzin (born 1979, San Diego) is a New York-based critic and PhD candidate in art history at the City University of New York. She received her BFA in Painting from Tehran University and MA in Curatorial Studies from Columbia University. She is the author of numerous monographic essays on artists, and a regular contributor to Bidoun and Art-Agenda. Her curatorial work includes “Turning Points” (Neiman Gallery, 2004), and “Fluxus Scores and Instructions” (Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde, 2008). She is a lecturer at the City College of New York, and instructor at the Museum of Modern Art.
Regarding his selection, Stuart Comer noted "Chronoscope, 1951, 11pm highlights the convergence in the early 1950s of images, information, global politics and the emerging cultural dominance of broadcast media. Through careful research and clever appropriation, Alessandro Balteo-Yazbeck and Media Farzin provide an archaeological approach to media and a blueprint for understanding the intricacies and contemporary legacies of the Cold War."
ABOUT THE MOVING IMAGE AWARD
The award was established by Gallerist, an integrated web platform designed spesifically to meet the needs of art work professionals, to raise awareness of the importance of incorporating video and film into the permanent collections of major art institutions. The award was inspired by San Francisco collectors Pamela and Richard Kramlich, who have supported contemporary artists working in video, film, and new media through their private collection and through the New Art Trust, a non-profit organization they founded to advance the collection, preservation, exhibition, and understanding of technology-based art forms, particularly at the Trust's three supported organizations, Tate, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The Moving Image Award grants $10,000 to Tate Modern to purchase new work for their collection.