60 Monitors, One Video: Le Fresnoy's Leveling Exhibition

The exhibition 'C'est pas du cinéma !' at Le Fresnoy, Studio national des arts contemporains in Tourcoing, France, from January 26 to March 24, 2002, presents 61 video works on 60 identical monitors arranged in a 10x6 grid on the floor, plus a separate large video projection by Ange Leccia. The installation forces a comparison between cinematic projection and television viewing. Works range from Nam June Paik's 'Global Groove' (1973) to Anri Sala's 'Nocturnes' (1999), Fischli & Weiss's 'Der Lauf der Dinge' (1987), Muriel Toulemonde's 'Fabeltier' (2000), and many Asian productions. The uniform display format erases differences in format, sound, and duration, equating silent works (John Baldessari's 'A 20', 1975) with sound pieces (Gary Hill, Pipilotti Rist), short loops (Liu An-chi's 'Va-et-vient', 2001) with long documentaries (Du Haibin's 'Le Long de la voie ferrée', 2000), and cinematic installations (Graham Gussin's 'Spill', 1999) with monitor-based works (Gillian Wearing's 'Confess all on video…', 1994). The critic Françoise Parfait argues the exhibition serves itself as an installation piece rather than the artists, reducing video's diversity to normative alignment.