Video Artists To Host ‘Ten Years At The Zoo’ Art Exhibit Inspired By YouTube

The first video ever posted to YouTube was co-founder Jared Kawim’s “Me at the zoo” clip from April 2005. Now, more than ten years after YouTube’s inception, a group of video artists will explore the impact Google’s online video site has had on the world of new media, communication, and contemporary video art through an exhibit called Ten Years at the Zoo.

From December 13, 2015, through January 16, 2016, Ten Years at the Zoo will be on display in a hexagonal-shaped quartz room at Las Naves in Valencia, Spain. The curated show will host audiovisual displays from artists Andrés Galeano, Claudia Maté, Emilio Gomariz, Lorna Mills, Katie Torn, and Vince McKelvie. These creators’ works will study how YouTube has changed over the last ten years, how the site has impacted information sharing through its audiovisual format, and especially how YouTube has changed society’s ways of communication and behavior.

Probably the most interesting aspect of Ten Years at the Zoo

is how the selected artists will all incorporate a video in at least a few of their works, which will be displayed on screens attached to the walls. New media artist and exhibit co-commissioner Carlos Sáez told Vice’s The Creators Project blog the artists would use the videos “as image resources, as objects of study or broadcast mediums.” Sáez also noted none of the works on display at Ten Years at the Zoo would be complete without the videos.

“Our intention was to study how the changes in communication driven by the different video social media affect video art,” Sáez said. “We were particularly interested in how [the] most popular platforms and their properties shape the artworks, creating completely new narrative styles.”

You can get more information on Ten Years at the Zoo by visiting the exhibit’s official Las Naves page (you’ll have to translate the text if you’re a non-native Spanish speaker).