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A video art exhibition at Art Vault explores the meaning of free will today
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SANTA FE — “Ephemeral Acts,” a video art exhibition at the Thoma Foundation’s Art Vault, is more about acts than ephemerality. The work is time-based, so it’s ephemeral by definition, but at the heart of each piece is a human actor or actors. To act is to choose, to exercise one’s free will, even in the face of imposed constraints.
In Brazilian artist Analivia Cordeiro’s “computer dance” performances from the mid-1970s, the free movement of the human body is delimited by algorithms. Cordeiro used Fortran IV, an early computer language, to generate severely angular and repetitive choreographic sequences, which she then performed herself in bold silhouette against a black-and-white background of binary dashes. Viewed in 2025, a time when human life is increasingly defined by algorithms, Cordeiro’s work feels prescient. What is the meaning of free will in the age of Big Data?
R. Luke DuBois’ “(Pop) Icon: Britney” presents a constantly morphing portrait of Britney Spears, created by feeding thousands of images of the superstar singer into a facial recognition program designed for use in government surveillance. DuBois highlights the inherent conflict between individual self-expression and mechanized systems of control, much as Cordeiro does in her algorithmic choreography.
Made in 2010, two years after Spears was placed under a controversial conservatorship, which legally placed the adult singer’s financial affairs and daily life under the control of her father, James Spears and attorney Andrew M. Wallet, “(Pop) Icon: Britney” is a searing indictment of a dehumanizing system that treats artists as commodities. The “ephemeral acts,” in this case, are Spears’ countless performances and acts of self-presentation. To what extent were those acts authentic? To what extent was she being puppeted by others? As Spears’ hairstyles and costumes change, and the background dissolves into an indeterminate blur, Spears’ eyes are the only part of her that remains fixed. Her steady, unblinking gaze implicates us — viewers or voyeurs — in enabling the conditions of her oppression.
“Scenes from Western Culture” (2015), a seven-channel video installation by the Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, depicts posh Europeans in pleasant, slice-of-life scenes. In one video, children play near a gazebo. In another, a couple in formal attire sip wine at a white-tablecloth restaurant. Nothing of consequence happens; these are less like movies than tableau vivants, to be viewed and studied like paintings. But one video is not like the others. In “Burning House” a cabin in the woods is entirely consumed by flames. Is this a metaphor? Are the figures in the other videos so out of touch with reality that they would fail to notice, or perhaps even choose to ignore, a true emergency? Like Ed Ruscha’s 1968 fantasy drawing of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art burning to the ground, the burning house in “Scenes from Western Culture” is an unsettling reminder of just how quickly illusions of safety can be punctured, and how no amount of wealth or privilege can offer full protection from threats such as terrorism or global warming. We want to shout at the lackadaisical figures in the other videos, “Watch out! Your whole comfortable world’s about to go up in flames!” Yet they take no action.
The theme of safety violated reappears in Laurie Anderson’s “From the Air.” In this installation, tiny clay figurines of the artist and her dog, seated in adjacent armchairs, are animated by a video projection — a technique first perfected by Tony Oursler. The miniature Anderson tells a story that begins with her dog’s encounter with vultures, then segues into the planes crashing into the Twin Towers on 9/11. Her deadpan delivery reminded me of “Wars I Have Seen” by Gertrude Stein, an account of the modernist author’s experiences living in Nazi-occupied France. Stein, who also had a little dog, spends most of that book describing pleasant countryside walks, only occasionally mentioning the sounds of bombs. In “From the Air,” Anderson’s miniature size reflects how small and insignificant she feels. What action can the artist take in the face of destructive forces beyond her control, other than simply to record her experience?
Nick Cave designed his first Soundsuit in the wake of the 1991 beating of Rodney King by the Los Angeles Police Department. A theoretical armor envisioned to protect Black men against police brutality, Cave’s Soundsuits, when performed, become expressions of liberatory joy and celebration. “Ephemeral Acts” includes two works by Cave: a 2014 Soundsuit and “Gestalt” (2012), a video of a Soundsuit performance. While many other works in the show focus on how free choice is circumscribed by external systems of control, Cave’s Soundsuits present a more optimistic vision of embodied performance as a way to reclaim agency over one’s life.
“Ephemeral Acts” includes other significant works of video and performance art, from that of Dara Birnbaum and Steina Vasulka — pioneering video artists — to a recent AI-assisted animation by John Gerrard. But the most significant, at least in terms of the exhibition’s theme, is “The Raft” (2004), a 14-foot-wide video installation by Bill Viola.
A contemporary reinterpretation of French Romantic painter Théodore Géricault’s 1819 “The Raft of the Medusa,” Viola’s video depicts a random group of strangers struck by water cannons, similar to the ones police departments in the South used to quell Civil Rights protesters in the 1960s. Viola recruited volunteers for this performance event, which took about a minute, then slowed down the footage to 10-and-a-half minutes, allowing us to see every fleeting expression and micro-gesture of the individuals over the course of the deluge. Some plead for help. Others, knocked to the ground, attempt to crawl away. As the streams of water intensify, so do the expressions of fear, agony and desperation. Although the murder and cannibalism that happened aboard the original raft don’t happen here, a similar state of lawlessness is invoked, and several of the individuals’ poses end up closely resembling those in Géricault’s painting. When ordinary life is invaded by chaos, how does one respond? Everyone responds differently. But what is most moving about Viola’s piece is witnessing the small acts of heroism in those individuals who chose to respond selflessly, offering comfort or protection to those around them.
“Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes,” the novelist Henry Miller wrote. I recently discovered that quote in a fortune cookie after eating at Fan Tang in Nob Hill, and I thought back to the works in “Ephemeral Acts,” particularly those of Viola and Cave. No matter how helpless we may feel at times, when our lives are interrupted by unforeseen disasters or constrained by external pressures, small acts of courage are always possible. Such “ephemeral acts” are worth celebrating.
