Platforms: Collection and Commissions

Exhibition Website

Nov 15 2018 - Aug 25 2019

Walker Art Center

Minneapolis, MN

Platforms: Collection and Commissions looks at key artists from the Walker’s Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection together with newly commissioned film and video works by nine international contemporary artists. Commissioned by the Walker between 2014 and 2017, the artists responded to the influence, inquiry, and inspiration of leading artists and filmmakers in the collection to create new works that premiered first as an online series. The Moving Image Commissions initiative weaves together production, scholarship, distribution, and archival work to highlight and grow the collection.

The first installment of the exhibition, Leslie Thornton’s commission They Were Just People (2016), was produced in direct response to the influence and inquiry of Bruce Conner. The piece is a chilling exploration of the purpose and repurposing of memory during wartime, combining Thornton’s manipulated footage of the La Brea Tar Pits in California with an oral account describing moments in the immediate aftermath of the 1945 US atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. They Were Just People is a dark, personal response to Crossroads (1976), Conner’s iconic film of the 1946 Bikini Atoll nuclear test

Future installations in Platforms will include James Richards and Moyra Davey’s piece inspired by British filmmaker Derek Jarman; Shahryar Nashat and Uri Aran’s work based on the work of Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers; and Yto Barrada, Renée Green, Marwa Arsanios, and the duo of Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz’s commissions influenced by German filmmaker Harun Farocki.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website 

  • Multi-media / Digital / Video
  • International
  • Contemporary
  • Various artists

Exhibition Venues & Dates