Phoebe Greenberg @ hirshhorn — Washington DC

“Next Floor” til April 4

Phoebe Greenberg and/or the hirshhorn, got my junk up in a knot in a couple of different ways with this “exhibit”.

I’m not  disgruntled because Next Floor won best Short Film at Cannes in 2008 (amoung numerous other awards).  It is a well done, profound and compelling short film.  But my first beef is that it is a film and film has its own numerous venues for display.

And it’s not the film’s content either.  Portraying a bunch of privileged people gorging on all imaginable animals while the floor continuously falls out beneath them is an apt critique of our western ways, if not a very obvious one.

But my real issue is the gallery’s attribution of authorship of the work to Pheobe Greenberg.  In the gallery notes Greenberg is credited as “creator” and Villeneuve, the director the one who “realized” her vision.  Greenberg is also referred to as “the artist”.

Which brings us to some questions: Is it a film or art?  Can one be the artist of a film? Does there need to be a distinction?

In a gallery with no less than three Sol Lewitt works on display, context and intention might suggest that Next Floor is a piece of conceptual art since “the idea” for the film is what is important.  But is it?  The various persons who contribute to the realization of a film with such high production values are usually broken down by their roles — director, writer, cinematographer, ect.   I think the role of Producer has been confused with that of an artist at the hirshhorn.

If this modus operandi (the artist is the one who pays to have it made) is the new way to become an artist, I’m certain it will suck the life out of art as it has out of film.  Then again Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons and Michealangelo didn’t individually make every artwork that bears their name. So what is my point?

The intention is not to disparage the hirshhorn (or Greenberg) for providing a venue, for little seen short films and artists’ video work, but this need to label and classify in the gallery context is quickly becoming outmoded.  There is more than one way to skin a cat (pun intended).