CONNECT 2020
Worldwide showing Oct 23rd-Oct 25th, 2020.
June 9th, 2020 / October 23-25th, 2020
The juried selections for this year’s festival demonstrate the broad range of work being done in Video Art today. I’ve come to think of this genre as the ‘playground’ for time-based artists. If there is one common thread through the program, it’s in the value placed on exploration. These artists all seem to love the flexibility of the medium, juxtaposing ideas, visuals, and sound in time. They are joining fragments of our world in quirky new rhythms and pushing common thoughts into strange contexts.
Because of the Covid 19 lockdown, this event like many others had to be postponed for several months. During that time, I worked collaboratively with some of these artists and others around the globe to create, ‘Chant For A Pandemic’. The whole process was done during the last weeks of March and the first week of April. I decided to include the video in our program as a sort of marker of this time in our world.
I want to thank The Firehouse Cultural Center and The University of Tampa’s Film, Animation and New Media department for their ongoing support of The Connect Festival. I’d also like to thank Santiago Echeverry for co-curating this year’s program and for his boundless enthusiasm for everything art and technology!
Congratulations to all the artists! I hope you continue to explore and press the possibilities of Video Art.
Dee Hood
http://www.deehood.net/
