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Art Show Down is a frontier-themed art game show shot in front of a live studio audience. This wacky DVD includes all seven zany episodes culminating in the Ultimate Artist Challenge in which one contestant remains standing after defeating the herd of talented challengers! Producers Roland Smart and Jeff Warmouth explore highbrow vs. lowbrow interpretations of contemporary culture in this unique game show, which exploits the best (and the worst!) of the game show genre through the lens of the arts.
Contests include The Auction Price is Right, in which contestants must guess the final selling price of a famous artwork at action, the Hang 'em High rock climbing gallery wall challenge, a paintball contest in The Action Art Shooting Gallery, Schmooze & Booze in which contestants must eat, drink, and schmooze to curry the favor of a guest curator, and A Brush with Danger, in which contestants must brand each other with paint through an action painting, head-thrusting, paintbrush helmeted, and hands-hog-tied challenge!
| Catalog Number: MC-731 |
Type: Feature |
Genre: Comedy / Satire |
| Copyright: 2006 |
Length: 210 minutes |
Format:
DVD Region: 0 (All) |
| TV System: NTSC |
ISBN: |
UPC: 837101304962 |
| Label: |
Notes: Produced by: Roland Smart & Jeff Warmouth
Directed by: Jeff Warmouth & Paul Concemi
This title is available in Europe for Wholesale - List Prices: £13.99 / 20.00€
This is a Microcinema Exclusive title.
Wholesale Purchasing:
Program MC-731 is available for wholesale from Microcinema DVD. Contact info[at]microcinema.com or call at +1-415-447-9750
Exhibition:
Microcinema is not authorized to represent this title for exhibition. Write us for this contact information.
Films In Compilation
Art Show down directed by
Roland
Smart
USA,
Comedy / Satire,
2006,
Color,
Magnetic Stereo,
03:30:00
Art Show Down aims to critique and exploit the game show genre through the lens of the arts. Conceptually, it explores how game shows offer a unique index of contemporary culture. Going back to the earliest examples of the genre, our show addresses the nature of televised competition, how such challenges interface with commercial interests, how the genre has been transformed over time, and how it influences the production of contemporary arts and culture today.
Art Show Down began with the identification of game shows as fertile territory for artistic exploration; the genre offers a rich history that reflects the evolution of televised broadcasting as well as that of popular culture. Yet, game shows have received relatively little attention from artists. Our team of curators, artists, researchers and writers began its inquiry into game show culture with the precursor of game shows, known as quiz shows. We began in the 1950s, at the end of the quiz show era, when several scandals revealed that networks were working to affect the outcomes of competitions and their ratings. A series of investigations by the Federal Communications Commission led to a general distrust of commercial networks. Through the process of re-branding “quiz shows” as “game shows”, along with new FCC regulations, game shows regained the trust of their audiences and soared in popularity.
The Art Show Down team initiated a series of brainstorming sessions to identify potential artistic opportunities with game shows as our muse. We wanted to work with the existing apparatus while defining new territory within the field. This new territory, or “frontier,” led us to begin drawing connections between the re-branding of game shows and the branding of livestock as a means of signifying ownership. As we began deconstructing our favorite shows, we adopted a frontier theme to reinforce our intention to push the boundaries of the genre.
We looked to the tropes and clichés in the art world for material and started gravitating towards a comic tone. As we integrated our theme into the set design, game rules, characters, and structure, we found ways to connect our lowbrow frontier theme with a highbrow comic sensibility. We began working with mock-commercial spots to explore the relationship between commercial interests and game shows, and began looking for prizes that supported our arts positioning. Our brand of game show erodes the boundary between performance art, installation, and commercially broadcast game shows.
Of course, our show is not just a game show, it’s also a gallery exhibition featuring a display of artwork created during the live performances and a behind-the-scenes look at the studio set, props, costumes, and taped episodes that gallery visitors watch between performances. In this way, we expose the internal apparatus of game shows and let the audience explore whether or not the show is fair or fixed, art or entertainment, exploitation or critique, show down or all of the above.
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2008-02-22 VideoLibrarian.com
By M. Johanson
Here’s a curious new approach to TV on DVD: pile on some episodes of a proposed TV series, release it into the wild, and see who bites. Here we have seven pilot episodes of an Old West art-themed game show—a project of the Cambridge, MA-based experimental gallery Art Interactive—in which contestants try to guess the prices that actual works of art sold for at auction, attempt to schmooze a “gallery owner” while quaffing wine and cheese, battle other contestants with helmet-mounted paintbrushes, or climb a gallery wall (the “Hang ‘em High” challenge). While the sheer goofiness behind the concept is momentarily diverting, the implied satire on both the contemporary art market and artist subculture is one-dimensional, at best. DVD extras include fake commercials (like one for “tofu” made from meat, for the carnivorous companions of sensitive vegetarians), a gallery of the show’s original music, and more. Optional. |
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"The Art Guys: Home On The Range" is a DVD anthology of The Art Guys’ performance and video works spanning their 25 years of collaboration from 1983-2008. Included in this 2-DVD box set are selections from the The Art Guys’ live stage performances,... more >
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Art Show Down
MC-731, 2006
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Art Show Down is a frontier-themed art game show shot in front of a live studio audience. This wacky DVD includes all seven zany episodes culminating in the Ultimate Artist Challenge in which one contestant remains standing after defeating the herd... more >
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The Collector explores the 46-year career of Allan Stone, the famed New York City gallery owner and art collector. Producer and director Olympia Stone reveals her father’s compulsive collecting genius while telling the parallel story of his lifelong... more >
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