The use of video documentation has often been a strategy relied upon by performance artists to present their work in a secondary setting beyond that of the original context. Many contemporary social practice artists are also adopting the use of video, not just as a tool for documentation but as a catalyst to bring members of the public into participation with each other and the lens itself. This exhibition focuses on several socially engaged art initiatives that are performed publicly with the explicit intent to exist as video in their final iteration. The artists present the video as a strategy to create artworks that place equal value on the public process and the filmed result.

This exhibition is curated by artist Jon Rubin, who appears as the Keynote speaker at the MACAA Conference, October 26–28, at the University of Cincinnati, DAAP.

Jon Rubin creates interventions into public life that re-imagine individual, group and institutional behavior. His projects include starting a radio station in an abandoned neighborhood that only plays the sound of an extinct bird, running a barter-based nomadic art school, operating a restaurant that produces a live video talk show with its customers, and co-directing another restaurant that only serves cuisine from countries with which the United States is in conflict. Rubin is Associate Professor in the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon University and Head of the Contextual Practice area.