Secrets From the Street: No Disclosure

Martha Rosler

1980, 12:27 min, color, sound

Secrets From the Street examines the intersection of cultures and classes as exemplified by the street life of San Francisco's Mission District. This videotape, produced for an exhibition held jointly at San Francisco's City Hall and its Museum of Modern Art, argues — against the show's theme and...

Self Divination

Ulysses Jenkins

1989, 11:58 min, color, sound

Self Divination speaks poetically about origins and the realities of the African diaspora.

Semiya

Cecilia Vicuña

2015, 7:43 min, color, sound, HD video

In this "video poem," Vicuña gathers endangered native seeds in the Colchagua region, in the foothills of the Andes mountains in Chile, on May 28, 2015. This work recreates and continues her work on behalf of seeds, which began in 1971, in Santiago de Chile.

Shape of a Right Statement

Wu Tsang

2008, 5:15 min, color, sound, HD video

Filmed at the Silver Platter, the bar that previously housed Wu Tsang’s club party Wildness, Shape of a Right Statement is a short work featuring Tsang’s recitation of one section of “In My Language,” a text by autism rights activist Mel Baggs.

Sharp Positions

LoVid 

2022, 1:15 min, color, sound, HD video

She Puppet

Peggy Ahwesh 

2001, 15 min, color, sound

Re-editing footage collected from months of playing Tomb Raider, Ahwesh transforms the video game into a reflection on identity and mortality. Trading the rules of gaming for art making, she brings Tomb Raider's cinematic aesthetics to the foreground, and shirks the pre-programmed "mission" of its heroine, Lara Croft. Moving beyond her implicit feminist critique, she enlarges the dilemma of Croft's entrapment to that of the individual in an increasingly artificial world.

Shirley Temple and Me

Barbara Hammer

1993, 3 min, color, sound

Shoot

Vito Acconci 

1974, 10:18 min, color, sound

Shoot is a bold, theatrical work that merges the autobiographical with the cultural. Acconci's performance is an assault, a barrage of aggressive action, visuals and language. Vulgar and outrageous, Acconci plays out the nightmare of the American Dream.

Shut the Fuck Up

General Idea

1984, 14 min, color, sound

"In Shut the Fuck Up, General Idea underline the media's insistence that only gossip and spectacle make art and artists interesting to the public. On the contrary, General Idea point out, artists are no fools, nor do they operate within "a passive yet cleverly deceitful, alienated cult of the imbecile.' Jorge Zontal has the last word: 'When there is nothing to say, shut the fuck up.'" — "Video Art in Canada" - V-Tape

Sibling Topics (section a)

Ryan Trecartin

2009, 50 min, color, sound, HD video

Sibling Topics (section a) is one of seven works in Trecartin's 2009-10 Rotation. Kevin McGarry writes, "Sibling Topics adopts a narrative and style that is more cinematic than any of Trecartin's other or previous videos....Family is the central theme of Sibling Topics—post-family, to be precise. Trecartin returns to his conception of family-as-business-enterprise (I-Be Area), casting parent figures as managers and executives on one end of the spectrum, estranged children as freelancers on the other."