Though video’s acceptance has become more widespread with the advent of digital and high definition formats, there remains a prejudice against works originating on video, particularly if those works “fail” to be transferred to film for screenings. In light of this, the work of Sadie Benning seems even more bold and daring, for not only has she spent the past fifteen years documenting lesbian-identity issues on video, she has, for the most part, chosen to work solely in the incredibly low-definition Pixelvision format.

In addition to employing a rather esoteric format – the Fisher Price Pixelvision 2000’s valued status, recognized by video artists, has yet to be appreciated by mass audiences, a sad truth compounded by the fact that the camera was only manufactured for a few years at the end of the 1980s – Benning’s stylistic approach, with a penchant for close-ups , extreme or otherwise, works counter to mainstream critical theory, which posits that such fragmenting techniques serve primarily to objectify that which the shots depict. 

Rather, Benning argues that people are inherently fragmentary, the fragments in turn making up a whole that is far more complex than mainstream media tends to deal with effectively. 

Of course, the critical attention Benning’s work has garnered over the past decade and a half took time to develop, and Benning is the first to admit that when she first began making her videos, she was self-conscious and embarrassed by what she regarded as a sort of experimental diary format, reflecting that, “It is a toy camera,” and its potential as a medium that could find an audience was as yet undiscovered.

In the political climate of the late ’80s and early ’90s, though, with its heightened emphasis on AIDS consciousness and the simultaneous boom in queer film festivals and other venues for GLBT media, Benning was quick to find outlets for her videos once she decided to start showing them, first to friends and then to a film class taught by her father (the experimental filmmaker James Benning) at CalArts. As Benning has attested, a great desire existed to hear an authentic, gay teenage voice, and rather than a removed look back on her adolescence, Benning made her videos as she was experiencing all of the emotions her work expresses.

Tomorrow evening begins the Wexner Center for the Arts’ retrospective of the work of Sadie Benning, who is working on a number of new projects (including a feature-length movie and various shorts) in residency in the Wexner Center’s Art and Technology program. By Benning’s count, the current collaboration marks her fifth time working in the Art and Tech facility, and she credits her experiences there with giving her the motivation to see a number of projects through to completion.

The retrospective will continue on Friday, Feb. 20 and will conclude on Saturday the 28th with a visit from Benning herself. All shows start at 7 p.m. in the Wexner Center Film-Video Theater. Tickets cost $6 for the general public and $4 for students, Wexner Center members, and senior citizens.