One Minute Film Festival 2003-2012

Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art North Adams, Massachusetts March 23,2013-January 20, 2014 The One Minute Film Festival exhibition consists of several rooms of video projections comingled with a panoply of lovingly lit movie posters. Both the compiled minute-long videos and the posters were created by the participants of a decade-long annual event, the One Minute Film Festival, held in a barn in upstate New York. Additionally, MASS MoCA has published an accompanying catalog containing film stills from every video ever made for the festival, along with short essays by its participants and a DVD. Thus, the premise of this show is largely pluralistic. Yet, since the exhibit was organized by the instigator of the festival, artist Jason Simon, the first question that arises is that of curatorial authorship. Throughout the festival's life span and into its current museum iteration, Simon has exercised a rigorous aesthetic of conceptual documentation. With his partner, photographer Moyra Davey, Simon nurtured a spectacular event. Each summer's festival was singular and unrepeatable, premised on minimal investment, frugality, and the wisdom that one cannot spend one's way to a good event. That doesn't mean there wasn't a structure. The structure was the social contract of an annual gathering, complete with delicious food, drink, and a dance party. One thorny problem arises for this writer: the festival's predication on privilege and real estate. I have no wish to disparage the generosity of the event. particularly because I am implicated--both as a participant in, and beneficiary of--the social contract that formed its underpinnings. But it is worth knowing the history of the One Minute Film Festival. It started with an eviction. As with so many artists in the 1990s, gentrification forced Simon and Davey out of their loft space in Hoboken, New Jersey. Their response was to buy property in the more affordable Delaware River Valley, using the money from the eviction settlement to buy a large piece of land upon which Simon ereeted a barn. Not many artists have the means to make such a move. It is also important to acknowledge the well-connected art community that formed the core of this festival. The transition from barn to museum is an extension of the festival's function as an art gesture. But in terms of privilege within the art world, it seems quite logical. Having said that, the One Minute Film Festival's artistry lies in its many inversions, many of which function as a critique of the privilege just described. Inversion number one: Simon created the One Minute Film Festival for pieces of ephemerality--little film parasites to land on. …