Moving images dominate ARTnews list of influential works of the 21st century

ARTnews recently published its list of The 100 Best Artworks of the 21st Century. The list, selected by the editors of ARTnews and Art in America, is marked by the inclusion of six moving image pieces among the top ten. The number one spot went to Arthur Jafa's defining masterpiece Love is the Message, the Message is Death (2016). The other moving image artists in the top ten are Harun Farocki, Camille Henrot, Christian Marclay, Hito Steyerl and Adrian Piper.

Farocki, the late German artist known for his work in the essay film genre, explores the dissonance that exists between reality discerned by the human eye and as viewed through surveillance footage of American missiles in Eye/Machine I (2001), accentuating the uncertain and manipulable nature of images. Henrot's pioneering Grosse Fatigue (2013) is an encyclopaedic collage of images rendered in a desktop aesthetic. The seeming randomness of the image selection belies the author's message: she equates the expansive wealth of information we browse daily to the vastness of the universe.

Consisting of over 10,000 shots of watches and clocks appropriated from movies and television shows, Marclay's The Clock (2010) assembles the fictional moments registered by these cinematic timepieces. Lasting a full 24 hours, each minute is meticulously recorded on screen by these timepieces, overturning the illusion of temporality that was originally intended by having the observer experience these fictional moments in real time. Steyerl examines the politics of visibility and how to avoid being monitored in her whimsically-titled video essay How Not to Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational .MOV File (2013). Presented in the form of a “how-to” video that is divided into five lessons, Steyerl offers a series of tips – some practical, others bordering on the absurd – to escape from the confines of the digital prison to which we have been consigned.

In the video Adrian Piper Moves to Berlin (2007), Piper dances to one hour of early 2000s German house music on the famous Alexanderplatz, her improvisatory moves beckoning viewers to scrutinize commonly-held beliefs about gender, origin and social roles. Jafa's iconic Love is the Message, the Message is Death leads viewers through a harrowing seven-minute journey of memes and memorable shots that encompass the full spectrum of the Black experience in the United States, set to the hypnotic beat of Kanye West's Ultralight Beam.

Taken together with the inclusion of four moving images artists and collectives in the top ten of the recent ArtReview Power 100 list, this perhaps indicates a trend. There is a new level of prestige afforded moving image art in recent years. While lists and awards are not guarantors of quality, they do signal a general interest and attention that we expect to increase exponentially.