Are you ready for an Art21 Telethon? If you’re in New York on May 6th, be sure to drop by Algus Greenspon Gallery — 71 Morton Street — from 3-11pm for musical acts, animal talents, artist interviews, comedy, audience participation, and much more! If you’re not in NYC, you can catch a live stream at art21.org/telethon. Full details here.

So whose idea was this? Around this time last year, we asked the artists participating in New York Close Up if they had any ideas for public events that we could collaborate on. We were expecting variations on your typical screening or roundtable discussion. What we were not expecting was for artist Tommy Hartung, and his friend artist Ronnie Bass (who we met while out filming one evening), to propose an eight-hour marathon performance that would also serve as a fundraiser for the project.

We’ll let Ronnie explain the idea:

I remember watching telethons when I was a kid and being drawn to the ways in which it broke the rules of television—viewers could directly participate in the program by calling in, and in general, the hosts would speak in a loose, unscripted way. There was room for spontaneity.

In addition to being a functional benefit, I think of it as being a type of performance, with a particular end goal of raising funds. We did a telethon in 2007 as part of my Performa07 project called PERFORMA TV. When we needed additional funding, I immediately thought of a telethon since it’s the most standard way a television station would raise money, at least when I was growing up.

A telethon made sense for Art21. Only this time around, the event will be an extra hour, and in general, will be much more produced. We have a large assortment of varied performers who are all participating, as the organizers are, because they love Art21.

Tommy and Ronnie teamed up with independent curator and writer Miriam Katz to help produce the event. Miriam explains:

I like that we were able to bring together a widely varied group of performers—artists, musicians, comedians—who would not necessarily fit together on a more rigidly thematic bill. Unlike a typical benefit, we expect this event to be more improvised, lively, and fun, along with a sincere expression of our appreciation for what Art21 does for the contemporary art world. We’re not sure exactly what will happen over the course of 8 hours, but we’ve packed in a lot of very special acts to fill the time.

A few of the acts include performances by Dirty Mirrors (Jennifer Coates, David Humphry, Jon Kessler, John Miller, Aura Rosenberg, Dan Walworth), Adira Amram and The Experience, MC Squared, Kate Berlant, DAS, Mike Dobbins, Ryan McNamara, Maria Petschnig, and Art21 artist Mariah Robertson; interviews with Art21 featured artists Lucas Blalock, Kalup Linzy, Shana Moulton, and Mika Tajima; plus special, surprise guests to be announced on the day of the event.

So there you have it. Get your checkbooks ready and shine up those credit cards, because a few of our favorite artists are throwing us a telethon!

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Episode #141: Filmed in his New York studio, artist Hiroshi Sugimoto recounts his student days studying Western philosophy (Hegel, Kant, Marx) in Tokyo, encountering Oriental philosophy (such as Zen Buddhism) in California, and his interest in the history of Modernism—all schools of thought that demonstrate “the human ability to see things in a different way.”

Central to Hiroshi Sugimoto’s work is the idea that photography is a time machine, a method of preserving and picturing memory and time. Sugimoto sees with the eye of the sculptor, painter, architect, and philosopher. He creates images that seem to convey his subjects’ essence, whether architectural, sculptural, painterly, or of the natural world.

Hiroshi Sugimoto is featured in the Season 3 (2007) episode Memory of the Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS. Watch full episodes online for free via PBS Video or Hulu, as a paid download via iTunes (link opens application), or as part of a Netflix streaming subscription.

CCREDITS | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Mead Hunt. Sound: Merce Williams. Editor: Mary Ann Toman. Artwork Courtesy: Hiroshi Sugimoto. Video: © 2011, Art21, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Episode #139: Cindy Sherman reveals how dressing up in character began as a kind of performance and evolved into her earliest photographic series such as “Bus Riders” (1976), “Untitled Film Stills” (1977-1980), and the untitled rear screen projections (1980).

In self-reflexive photographs and films, Cindy Sherman invents myriad guises, metamorphosing from Hollywood starlet to clown to society matron. Often with the simplest of means—a camera, a wig, makeup, an outfit—Sherman fashions ambiguous but memorable characters that suggest complex lives lived out of frame. Shermans investigations have a compelling relationship to public images, from kitsch (film stills and centerfolds) to art history (Old Masters and Surrealism) to green-screen technology and the latest advances in digital photography.

Cindy Sherman is featured in the Season 5 (2009) episode Transformation of the Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS. Watch full episodes online for free via PBS Video or Hulu, as a paid download via iTunes (link opens application), or as part of a Netflix streaming subscription.

CREDITS | Producer: Ian Forster, Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Joel Shapiro. Sound: Roger Phenix. Editor: Joaquin Perez. Artwork Courtesy: Cindy Sherman. Video: © 2011, Art21, Inc. All rights reserved.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

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Episode #136: “I just wanted to approach the idea of war in a more complicated and more challenging way” says artist An-My Lê, whose photographic series and film “29 Palms” (2003-04) explore the training exercises and desert landscape near Joshua Tree National Park as a staging ground for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

An-My Lê’s photographs and films examine the impact, consequences, and representation of war, framing a tension between the natural landscape and its violent transformation into battlefields. Suspended between the formal traditions of documentary and staged photography, Lê’s work explores the disjunction between wars as historical events and the ubiquitous representation of war in contemporary entertainment, politics, and collective consciousness.

An-My Lê is featured in the Season 4 (2007) episode Protest of the Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS. Watch full episodes online for free via PBS Video or Hulu, as a paid download via iTunes (link opens application), or as part of a Netflix streaming subscription.

CREDITS | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Joel Shapiro. Sound: Roger Phenix. Editor: Mary Ann Toman. Artwork Courtesy: An-My Lê. Video: © 2011, Art21, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Episode #135: Filmed in his New York studio, artist Hiroshi Sugimoto gives a tour of his private cabinet of curiosities which includes meteorites, stone age tools, and whimsical toys.

Central to Hiroshi Sugimoto’s work is the idea that photography is a time machine, a method of preserving and picturing memory and time. Sugimoto sees with the eye of the sculptor, painter, architect, and philosopher. He creates images that seem to convey his subjects’ essence, whether architectural, sculptural, painterly, or of the natural world.

Hiroshi Sugimoto is featured in the Season 3 (2005) episode Memory of the Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS. Watch full episodes online for free via PBS Video or Hulu, as a paid download via iTunes (link opens application), or as part of a Netflix streaming subscription.

CREDITS | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Mead Hunt. Sound: Merce Williams. Editor: Mary Ann Toman. Artwork Courtesy: Hiroshi Sugimoto. Video: © 2011, Art21, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Episode #134: In his 2005 production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute (1791), artist William Kentridge reframes the opera’s original themes of Enlightenment philosophy through the bitter legacy of colonialism. “The most toxic combination in the world is…the certainty of being right and a monopoly of power,” says the artist, who casts the character of Sarastro in the role of a colonial overlord, “a benevolent figure that hides a monster.”

Having witnessed first-hand one of the twentieth century’s most contentious struggles—the dissolution of apartheid—William Kentridge brings the ambiguity and subtlety of personal experience to public subjects most often framed in narrowly defined terms. Using film, drawing, sculpture, animation, and performance, he transmutes sobering political events into powerful poetic allegories. Aware of myriad ways in which we construct the world by looking, Kentridge often uses optical illusions to extend his drawings-in-time into three dimensions.

William Kentridge is featured in the Season 5 (2009) episode Compassion of the Art in the Twenty-First Century television series and the Art21 special, William Kentridge: Anything Is Possible (2010), both on PBS. Watch full episodes online for free via PBS Video or Hulu, as a paid download via iTunes (link opens application), or as part of a Netflix streaming subscription.

CREDITS | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Bob Elfstrom. Sound: Ray Day. Editor: Mary Ann Toman. Archival Footage Courtesy: Mann Made Media & Theatre de la Monnaie. Artwork Courtesy: William Kentridge. Video: © 2011 Art21, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Episode #133: Filmed at the Interrogative Design Group offices at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, designer Adam Whiton discusses his work with artist Krzysztof Wodiczko. By developing innovative technology for projects such as The Tijuana Projection (2001), Dis-Armor (1999-2000), and AEgis (2000), Wodiczko and Whiton explore the potential for design to be used in a way that will “get people to think more…trigger questions and make people uncomfortable.”

By appropriating public buildings and monuments as backdrops for projections, Krzysztof Wodiczko focuses attention on ways in which architecture and monuments reflect collective memory and history. Projecting images of community members’ hands, faces, or entire bodies onto architectural façades, and combining those images with voiced testimonies, Wodiczko disrupts our traditional understanding of the functions of public space and architecture. He challenges the silent, stark monumentality of buildings, activating them in an examination of notions of human rights, democracy, and truths about the violence, alienation, and inhumanity that underlie countless aspects of social interaction in present-day society.

Krzysztof Wodiczko is featured in the Season 3 (2005) episode Power of the Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS. Watch full episodes online for free via PBS Video or Hulu, as a paid download via iTunes (link opens application), or as part of a Netflix streaming subscription.

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Gary Henoch. Sound: Steve Bores. Editor: Joaquin Perez

. Artwork Courtesy: Interrogative Design Group & Krzysztof Wodiczko. Special Thanks
: Catherine Tatge, the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). @ 2011, Art21, Inc.

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Episode #132: Filmed in his Los Angeles studio alongside his son and frequent collaborator Damon McCarthy, artist Paul McCarthy reflects on the documentary process and on being interviewed about his work, drawing conclusions about how it’s the nature of television “to simplify existence” and the “difference between making art and making entertainment.”

Paul McCarthy’s video-taped performances and provocative multimedia installations lampoon polite society, ridicule authority, and bombard the viewer with a sensory overload of often sexually-tinged, violent imagery. With irreverent wit, McCarthy often takes aim at cherished American myths and icons—Walt Disney, the Western, and even the Modern Artist—adding a touch of malice to subjects that have been traditionally revered for their innocence or purity. Whether conflating real-world political figures with fantastical characters such as Santa Claus, or treating erotic and abject content with frivolity and charm, McCarthy’s work confuses codes, mixes high and low culture, and provokes an analysis of fundamental beliefs.

Paul McCarthy is featured in the Season 5 (2009) episode Transformation of the Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS. Watch full episodes online for free via PBS Video or Hulu, as a paid download via iTunes (link opens application), or as part of a Netflix streaming subscription.

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Bob Elfstrom. Sound: Doug Dunderdale. Editor: Joaquin Perez. Artwork Courtesy: Paul McCarthy. Special Thanks: Damon McCarthy.

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Episode #131: Featuring excerpts from her groundbreaking video installation Text and Commentary (1977), artist Beryl Korot discusses how information has been encoded in lines and patterns throughout human history, whether in print media, through video, or on a weaving loom

An early video-art pioneer and an internationally exhibited artist, Beryl Korot’s multiple-channel (and multiple-monitor) video installation works explored the relationship between programming tools as diverse as the technology of the loom and multiple-channel video. For most of the 1980s, Korot concentrated on a series of paintings that were based on a language she created that was an analogue to the Latin alphabet. Drawing on her earlier interest in weaving and video as related technologies, she made most of these paintings on hand-woven and traditional linen canvas. More recently, she has collaborated with her husband, the composer Steve Reich, on Three Tales, a documentary digital video opera in three acts that explores the way technology creates and frames our experience.

The exhibition Beryl Korot: Text/Weave/Line—Video, 1977-2010 is on view at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum through January 2, 2011 The exhibition presents her latest body of work as well as the 5 channel weaving/video installation Text and Commentary which premiered at the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1977.

Beryl Korot created the opening segment, featuring actress S. Epatha Merkerson, in the Season 1 (2001) episode Spirituality of the Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS. Watch the full episode online at PBS Video and Hulu, or purchase it for download from iTunes.

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Wesley Miller. Camera & Sound: Nick Ravich. Editor: Mary Ann Toman. Artwork Courtesy: Beryl Korot.

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Episode #130: Beryl Korot discusses a recent work — Babel: the 7 minute scroll (2007) — which takes the form as both a large-scale print and an animated digital video. With pictographs that reference ancient Egypt and the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, Korot’s work investigates the history of tools and technology, language and narrative.

An early video-art pioneer and an internationally exhibited artist, Beryl Korot’s multiple-channel (and multiple-monitor) video installation works explored the relationship between programming tools as diverse as the technology of the loom and multiple-channel video. For most of the 1980s, Korot concentrated on a series of paintings that were based on a language she created that was an analogue to the Latin alphabet. Drawing on her earlier interest in weaving and video as related technologies, she made most of these paintings on hand-woven and traditional linen canvas. More recently, she has collaborated with her husband, the composer Steve Reich, on Three Tales, a documentary digital video opera in three acts that explores the way technology creates and frames our experience.

The exhibition Beryl Korot: Text/Weave/Line—Video, 1977-2010 is on view at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum through January 2, 2011 The exhibition presents her latest body of work as well as the 5 channel weaving/video installation Text and Commentary which premiered at the Leo Castelli Gallery in 1977.

Beryl Korot created the opening segment, featuring actress S. Epatha Merkerson, in the Season 1 (2001) episode Spirituality of the Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS. Watch the full episode online at PBS Video and Hulu, or purchase it for download from iTunes.

VIDEO | Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Wesley Miller. Camera & Sound: Nick Ravich. Editor: Mary Ann Toman. Artwork Courtesy: Beryl Korot.