YouTube hits to become contemporary art?

Although seemingly desperate attempt to get the ‘youth of today’ involved in contemporary art, the Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art are welcoming entries via YouTube to be selected by a panel of renowned arty folk to be exhibited in the gallery this October. This will then mark the start of the ‘YouTube Play Biennial’. A cheesy American voiceover for the ‘How To…YouTube Play’ video greets me online, of similar esque to Apple’s infamous hip videos. Exciting graphics, bright colours and yes at 24 seconds a young, stylish looking man in a black t shirt (below) and dark background pops up to chat to me. Amazing stuff.


I’m not ridiculing this event in fact I feel that it marks the beginning of the art world accepting how people interact in this current day. Video is becoming a huge part of our lives and of art, but I don’t necessarily think YouTube in galleries is the way forward. If I have a problem, I type in ‘How To….’ in YouTube and immediately I’m inundated with videos from odd looking teenagers in their rooms or fit muscle bearing women in their home gym ready to motivate me and inspire to loose my muffin tops. YouTube has also become essential to the 21st century marking the power of virals. Millions of viewers, myself included, were part of the worldwide hoax of cell phones being able to pop kernels of corn. With millions of viewers globally it was a clever marketing campaign by Cardo Systems the makers of Bluetooth headsets. Other infamous YouTube videos are ‘Charlie bit my finger’ – a painfully overplayed video of a two children just being ‘cute’ with 202,404,269 viewers and of course Britain’s Got Talent dowdy woman turned superstar Susan Boyle with 94,711,979 viewers.

But how can I possibly rate Susan Boyle against works of modern art? Does a Howard Hodgkin or work of Sophie Calle sit comfortably against angry people videotaping their unheard feelings or men dressing up singing Abba? I don’t believe it does. I appreciate what the Guggenheim is doing and fully welcome and new approach to the traditional, and often elitist way of submitting work, but I feel the real artists will possibly be overlooked for the more comedic value and bizarre videos.

But I’m not writing it off, I promise – I am interested in what will come of this digital age of communication and art.

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