I'd to announce the availability of Americas with/out Borders, a collection
of Latin American and U.S. Latino video art available for rental and
purchase through the Video Data Bank.  The collection is invaluable for
teachers of film, video, and television in that it demonstrates a wide
range of video practices across two continents.  While topics vary, the
collection hits on many of the major themes and areas of inquiry important
to media studies (race, culture, class, gender, artistic and political
expression, to name a few).  In fact, the collection is of interest to many
disciplines, so please share it with your colleagues in political science,
spanish, and women's studies departments as well as your media centers.
 
For more information or to place orders, contact:
                Video Data Bank (VDB)
                at the School of the Art Institute
                112 S. Michigan Avenue
                Chicago IL 60603
 
                312.345.0550
 
The Americas with/out Borders catalogue, curated and organized by Ilene S.
Goldman, Chicago IL for the VDB, includes 4 essays which address current
issues in video art production.  An umbrella essay, excerpted briefly
below, puts the collection in context.  This is followed by essays written
by video producers and curators from Brazil, Chile, and Argentina which
focus on the specific issues of aesthetics, production, and exhibition in
their respective countries.  The collection also includes three
compilations--on politics, on performance, and on art--which are available
for your programming needs.
 
excerpted from Video without Borders by Ilene S. Goldman
 
"The title of this collection is at once self-evident and fraught with
problems.  The terms-Americas, borders, and even independent video-have
entered our everyday vocabulary in both the art world and academe.  Yet
their meanings are neither fixed nor universally agreed upon.  That this is
a collection of video primarily produced by Latin Americans and US. Latinos
somewhat clarifies the terms.  But the concept of Americas without borders
is still complex and somewhat subjective.  To further complicate matters,
the combination of these terms leads to multiple permutations of meaning.
The phrase Americas without borders references the ideologies embedding in
its terms as well as ideal "safety zone" in which video makers might
experiment with form, function, and concepts.  The videos which comprise
this catalogue probe layers of meaning, attempting through this medium to
explore contemporary political and artistic issues.  The collection itself
represents an effort to efface actual and ideological borders in order to
share independent video production within and across communities.  The
videos in Americas without Borders ultimately demonstrate that there is no
singular Latin American or Latino video art.  Rather, there exists a
variety of practices. Yet, mostly without knowing the work of those outside
their country or regions, these video makers seems uncannily to experiment
with similar formal elements and issues.  Despite the variety of video
practices, independent video by Latin Americans in the US and abroad have
evolved in much the same pattern across the Americas.  Indeed, Americas
without Borders, as a whole, supports the idea(l) of a collective
subconscious...The videos in Americas without Borders explore the
ideological meanings of Americas and borders.  Moreover, they question and
defy "borders" by which video (and film) are generally understood.  The
categories of narrative, documentary, and experimental audiovisual practice
are herein demonstrated to be elastic and even random...."
 
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