‘Attempting a history of Video art is a complicated venture,” wrote Michael Rush in his landmark volume Video Art, published in 2000. “The origins of the form were too multifaceted to be indentified with one or two individuals, no matter how influential they may have been,” he went on to explain. Rush, curator, critic, and most recently director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, passed away in March 2015, several months before the exhibition “Moving Time: Video Art at 50, 1965–2015” opened. While his spirit and insights could be felt throughout the show, which was initially conceived by Rush and organized by Caitlín Doherty, curator and deputy director of curatorial affairs, the exhibition felt peculiarly caught in the moment of his book’s publication.
Biggs as well often engages scientists and specialists when creating her lavishly filmed videos, which examine subjects ranging from memory loss and the onset of Alzheimer’s to human endurance in the face of extreme climate conditions. In her new work Written on Wax (2015), she literally put herself in the hot seat by undergoing shock treatments to instill negative associations with one of her favorite activities, horseback riding. We watch as Biggs submits herself to shocks while watching a stream of various videos from her oeuvre, intermittently interrupted by the disturbing image of a horse’s hooves galloping on a treadmill. (It’s clear that when this image appears she is experiencing the most pain.) The work resolves itself with the liberating scene of Biggs standing on top of a horse in motion, an athletic feat performed only by highly skilled riders. Titled for Plato’s description of memory as “written on wax,” the video was created in collaboration with a neurobiology lab, yet it is strangely poetic.
