nkfic;ing vid90 inaallatiow: The Polished .Shield -ithema„' part
St..a.dint,. 199g..
the permanent (.3)14-1:tiim at the Goeteborg Konctor.w.mref.,
•

Eo

Jewish Canadian artist Vera Frenkel is part of a first-of-its-kind collaboration that
presents video art and its impact on contemporary culture.

SUZANNE CHESSLER

Special to the Jewish News

V era Frenkel dispels tradition-
al notions about the way
artists work.
It's not simply that her
ideas are expressed through the merg-
ing of disciplines and the use of today's
technology. It's that her projects often
entail collaborations in a sphere where
people generally labor alone.
Most accessible to audiences is her
Web site, Body Missing

(www.Yorku.ca/BodyMissing), which
places artists in a European bar
addressing the nature of memory
and loss. Besides establishing the
concept and visual framework for the
site, she composed some of the back-
ground music.
Body Missing also is the title of a
video installation that Frenkel is
bringing to the Elaine L. Jacob
Gallery in Detroit. On display Sept.
8-Oct. 22, the piece addresses the
issue of artworks stolen and cata-
logued by the Nazis, yet missing

when the Allies came to retrieve
them.
Frenkel's exhibition is one seg-
ment of a series of exhibitions and
programs sponsored by area art cen-
ters. Titled "VideoCulture: Three
Decades of Video Art," it includes
projects designed by artists from sev-
eral countries. The initiative also fea-
tures Frenkel in a symposium,
"Video Relations: The Social Impact
of Video Art," scheduled Oct. 7 at
Wayne State University.
"My installation addresses the

question of art collection fever and art
as trophy, particularly as characterized
by the Third Reich, and it's also a way
of looking at the madness of World
War II," says Frenkel. The artist, who
is based in Canada, will be showing a
version of this work at the Sigmund
Freud Museum in Vienna.
"Six video stations, each with a
six-minute tape of both current and
archival material, will be set up at the
gallery. Associated with each of those
stations will be a large photo mural,
40 x 60 inches, which is a distillation