New Media Series: Kota Ezawa, Lennon Sontag Beuys

Kota Ezawa (German, born 1966) is best known for the videos that he makes by hand-tracing film and television footage with a computer software program––an approach that flattens the images, eliminates details and amplifies the remaining gestures. For Lennon Sontag Beuys, Ezawa selected clips from John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1969 “sleep-in” for peace in Amsterdam, a 2001 lecture by Susan Sontag at Columbia University and Joseph Beuys’ 1974 lecture at the New School for Social Research in New York, redrew them as simplified animations and ran the animations in a continuous loop. Each clip crystallizes an influential position in the cultural and intellectual tumult of the later half of the 20th century. The New Media Series is curated by Robin Clark, associate curator of contemporary art, and will be on view in Gallery 301 through April 20, 2008. For more information, please call 314.721.0072 or visit www.slam.org.