Curated by Dara Greenwald
Sponsored by the Video Data Bank at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Program Notes: From traditional graffiti to radio controlled spy planes, the pieces in this program document artists projects that exist outside the studio and the art gallery. Public Discourse exposes us to the vibrant world of NY artists who install and exhibit their work in the street. Malcolm X Street, BIT Plane, and Suggested Photo Spots reveal what is forbidden or diverted from our sight: from toxic dumps to Silicon Valley to the agendas of city officials. TRT 66 Min

MALCOLM X STREET (excerpted from Undeniable Evidence)
?, anonymous culture jammers, USA, 5 min.
At a time when the city of Portland is considering stripping Martin Luther King Jr.'s name off a local street, a covert organization calling itself Group X changes the name of another downtown street to Malcolm X Street in a clandestine overnight action.

BIT PLANE,
1999, Bureau of Inverse Technology, USA, 13min.
BIT plane is a highly compact spy plane, wingspan 20 inches, radio-controlled, video-instrumented and deployed over areas of scenic interest. Due to its refined dimensions, BIT plane is able to enter territory inaccessible to other aircraft. Pioneering flight: in an aerial reconnaissance over the Silicon Valley, California 1997, BIT plane flew solo and undetected into the glittering heartland of the Information Age. Video generated in this exercise includes footage retrieved over no-camera zones Apple, Lockheed, Nasa Ames, Netscape, Xerox Parc, Interval Research, Atari, Hewlett Packard, Oracle, Yahoo, SGI, Sun Microsystems.

SUGGETED PHOTO STOPS
1997, Melinda Stone and Igor Vamos, USA, 10 min
Strap on your seat belts and get comfortable for a 7,000 mile drive. This documentary invites you to travel along with the Center for Land Use Interpretation as they find Suggested Photo Spots across North America. Journey from coast to coast, stopping long enough to take snap shots of unusual or exemplary land use sites across North America. You will even get to take a picture of Kodak's own waste water treatment plant in Rochester, New York.

PUBLIC DISCOURSE
2003, Brad Downey and Quenell Jones, USA, 38 min
Rather than an objective examination of illegal installation art, Public Discourse is an in depth study of this art form. The primary focus of the film is about paintings of street signs, advertising manipulation, metal welding, postering, and guerilla art. Artists include: Swoon, Shepard Fairey, Darius Jones, Ellen Harvey, Verbs, Desa, and many others.