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SHALOM GOREWITZ

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I became interested in video in 1967 when Antioch College provided student access to several 1/2" reel-to-reel portapaks and a remote control television studio. Under Bob Devine's guidance, Peter Kirby and I, along with many others, began learning video technology and experimenting with its aesthetic and communication potential. We were particularly encouraged by philosophy professors Keith McGary and Jim Green. Peter and I continued this research and creative activity at California Institute of the Arts, where we witnessed Nam June Paik and Shuye Abe build their first processing tools. We worked with musicians, performers, and other visual artists on a series of experimental projects including narrative works, abstracts, and installations.

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Upon returning to NYC in 1971, I accessed video equipment from MERC and other public access centers. In 1972, I produced a multi-channel audio installation for the Jewish Museum in New York as part of a multimedia exhibition "Jerusalem Calling." In 1973, I collaborated with John Cage, John Giorno, and Richard Kostelanetz on poetry/video experiments funded by the Poets and Writers Foundation. In 1974, I received a grant from America the Beautiful Foundation to explore locations where Edward Hopper painted in Haverstraw, NY, and document the changes in a place that had become home to Caribbean immigrants. In 1976, I produced and starred in a yearlong cable television program, "Raster," featuring improvisational actors given challenges in a reality television format, street performers, interviews with unusual guests, and abstract video art. From 1975-79, I traveled extensively throughout the United States, Israel, Spain, and other locations recording images for "TRAVELS," a program of five short videos and "US Sweat." Two selections from "TRAVELS" were included in the 1981 Whitney Biennial, and "US Sweat" was featured in the 1983 Biennial, earning praise as a "tour de force" from Grace Glueck in the NY Times.

 

From 1975-91, I served as a visiting artist at the Experimental Television Center in Owego, NY, collaborating with engineers on new analog and digital imaging tools, which led to a prolific body of experimental work. My videos were distributed internationally for exhibitions in festivals, museums, and galleries. Some were shown on an epic scale, including during halftime at a football game in the Seattle Kingdome. In 1984, I visited Morocco twice to create a documentary about artist Mohammed Melehi and gather images for a personal project, "A Blind Beggar's Prayer." As artist-in-residence at the Bronx Museum of the Arts from 1983-85, I worked on the streets of the South Bronx with student artists, collecting images for "Run" (shown at the 1985 Whitney Biennial), "Blue Swee: Some Thoughts on the US Invasion of Grenada," and "Promised Land."

 

In 1987, I was commissioned to create an interactive installation at the Washington, DC Children's Museum based on recordings and historical accounts of Black Mesa in New Mexico, where Native Americans successfully resisted a Spanish invasion of their land—a story paralleling Masada, but with a positive outcome. In 1988, the US Information Service invited me to spend a month in Israel, consulting with the Beer Sheva Art Institute as it incorporated video and new media into its curriculum, leading workshops for high school teachers, and screening my work at various venues.

 

A 1989 Guggenheim Foundation grant supported a visit to Eastern Europe with my colleague Warner Wada to see my ancestral home in Sighet, Romania; make a somber pilgrimage to Poland; and witness the fall of the Iron Curtain in the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Austria. The following year, Warner and I each received individual grants from the Asian Cultural Council to visit and work in Hiroshima during the Peace Day Ceremonies and honor Warner's ancestral homeland. This experience led to "Damaged Visions," perhaps my most personally emotional video, and "Ten Thousand Things," an attempt to reconcile with faith.

 

While serving as dean of the School of Contemporary Arts at Ramapo College of New Jersey from 1991-98, I used limited art-making time to master PhotoShop, Avid, Final Cut Pro, and other emerging digital software for Apple Computers. My personal work became more abstract and structural with titles like "Eclipse," "Devotion," and "Dark Light." During this period, I stepped back from the art communities I had been part of to focus on fundraising for a new arts building and implementing a new technology plan as dean. Ramapo College houses the Seldon Rodman Collection of the Popular Arts of the Americas, which includes the largest collection of Haitian art in the United States. I traveled to Haiti with Seldon, his wife Carol, and my colleague Edouard Eloi to document locations associated with him. My video essay "The Last Tourist," broadcast on PBS's New Television program, reflects these experiences.

 

From 2000-01, I collaborated with Brazilian choreographer Regina Miranda on "Ghazal," a dance/theater project that premiered in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and has been performed internationally. I created a 60-minute backdrop for the performance projected on a wide screen behind the dancers. "Levinas in Yorkville," a 2001 exploration of Manhattan's Upper East Side neighborhood while reading French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, was later shown at the Jewish Museum in NYC. Like many New Yorkers after 9/11, much of my work focused on the public and private damage caused by the attack on the city. I created a series of videos collected as "Before, During, and After" that share symbols of destruction and mourning. Many other videos during the Bush administration's years were "artivist" in nature: "Hot Stains" addresses the water crisis; "Soft Targets" explores the fear of another attack; and "Thrashing" examines the watershed known as the Meadowlands. Other videos reflect my increased focus on meditation and Jewish traditions: "iShiviti," "Meditations during Wartime," "The Shape of Emptiness," and "The Rabbi in Berlin" exemplify this direction.

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In recent years, I've worked in three areas: 1) as a video essayist exploring philosophical themes like space, time, and meaning; 2) pure color studies often generated without a camera; and 3) activist art during a time when art itself is under attack. For example, Edouard Eloi, Rachel Hadas, and I have worked for about four years to produce "An Elegy for Stivenson Magloire," about a brilliant Haitian painter who was assassinated in broad daylight on the streets of Port-au-Prince. After the 2016 US presidential election, I produced "DTTV," a series of short videos examining the causes, symptoms, and solutions for dystrumpia. Rachel and I continue to collaborate on poetry films that explore the connections between language and cinematic imagery.

 

Career Highlights  (1972-2024)

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Grants and Fellowship

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John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; Fulbright Foundation; Asian Cultural Council; Arts America; New York State Council on the Arts; National Endowment for the Arts; America the Beautiful Foundation; Poets and Writers Fund; New York Foundation for the Arts

 

Exhibitions: Museums and Galleries

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Museum of Modern Art, NYC; Whitney Museum of American Art; Hal Bromm Gallery; 112 Greene Street; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Cooperative Spaziozero, Rome; Semaphore Gallery, NYC; Asahi Shimbon Cultural Center, Tokyo; Jewish Museum, NYC; Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Cheekwood Museum, Nashville; Itau Cultural Center, Sao Paulo; Shepherd Gallery, Reno; Israel Museum, Tel Aviv; Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea, Rome; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn; Museum of Illinois State University, Normal; Long Beach Museum of Art, LA; Threadwaxing Space, NYC; Millennium Gallery, NYC; Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center; The Kitchen, NYC; The Hopper House, Nyack, NY

 

Festivals

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New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center, NYC; Oberhausen International Film Festival, Germany; Artivist Film Festival, Los Angeles; VideoZone Biennial of Video Art, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem; Dallas Video Festival, Texas; World Wide Video Festival, Netherlands; Biennale de Lyon, France; Mill Valley Film Festival, California; Recontre Internationales, Paris, Berlin; Athens Video Art Festival, Greece; International Video Festival Brazil; Bonn Film Festival, Germany; Festival of New Cinema and Video, Montreal; Viper Festival, Geneva; Berlin Film Festival; International Video Festival, Medellin

 

Broadcasts

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National Public Television; The Learning Channel; USA Cable Network; WNBC-TV

 

Public Collections


Museum of Modern Art, NYC; Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, Germany; Itau Cultural Center, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Kowasaki Museum, Tokyo, Japan; Library of California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA ; Getty Museum Video Art Archive, LA, CA

 

Presentations


Contemplative Heart of Higher Education, Amherst College; Kwame Nkrumah U of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana; Center for Jewish Studies, U of Wisconsin/Madison; College Art Association; Art in Liberal Art Colleges; Contemporary Art Museum, Rome; Symposium on Electronic Art, Sydney; Experimenta, Melbourne; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg; Museum of Modern Art, NYC; American Film Institute, LA; Harvard University Carpenter Center, Cambridge; City College of New York; SUNY Binghamton; New Orleans Institute of Contemporary Art; NYC Public Library

 

Education


Antioch College; California Institute of the Arts; Antioch International University

 

Related Experiences


Adjunct Professor of Media Art, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana; Professor of Video Art and New Media at Ramapo College, NJ; Curator, The Kitchen and Dance Theater Workshop, NYC; Artist in Residence, Bronx Museum of Art, Capital Children’ Museum, Washington, DC, Beersheva Institute of Arts, Israel, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY; Asilah Cultural Festival, Morocco, Meadowlands Environment Center, Lyndhurst, NJ, and the Samaya Foundation, NYC 

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