Have the last few post-election months left you depressed, scared, anxious, and unstable? Of course they have. It’s hard to really say what the best course of action is when dealing with all of this, but maybe you could make a video? New York’s Petzel gallery is currently accepting open submissions for video to be included in its upcoming exhibition “We need to talk… Artists and the public respond to the present conditions in America,” which opens January 7 at Petzel’s West 18th Street location and takes a focus on our new reality.
Submitted videos will be added to a loop and shown as part of the exhibition in the gallery and on its website. According to a release, work can be up to five minutes with a max file size of 2GB. One video per sender, so make it count. Submissions close January 31 and according to a statement, the gallery “reserves the right to omit videos with offensive content.”
The larger exhibition is divided into two parts: a traditional show with a stacked list of artists including Jenny Holzer, Robert Longo, and Peter Saul, as well as a more participatory element that features a public symposium series and those aforementioned video submissions. When gallery goers enter the space, they will be invited to jot down their thoughts on a giant billboard on the wall, no doubt an homage to the “subway therapy” Post-It notes that adorned the Union Square station post-election.
A percentage of sales from the show will go to, according to the release, “any organization that seems appropriate to artist and collector,” an agreement that could potentially lead to its own complexities.