Hirshhorn Museum's Black Box Space for New Media Celebrates Its ...

In the five years since, Black Box has presented a diverse program of established and emerging artists, including Francis Alÿs, Rivane Neuenschwander, Kimsooja, Mircea Cantor, Hiraki Sawa and Chris Chong Chan Fui. In the near future, Black Box will be relocated to a larger space to accommodate multichannel artworks and a wider range of media platforms. The last two exhibitions in the current space--"Black Box: Superflex," on view Aug. 9 to Nov. 28, and "Black Box: Hans Op de Beeck," opening Dec. 6--feature artists who probe ever more deeply into what makes new media "new." Their "actions" and provocations have ranged from an initiative that helped Thai pig farmers convert barnyard excrement into marketable biofuel to an urban project for which the artists conspired with convenience-store owners to disorient customers at the checkout by informing them their "purchases" would be free. The artists borrow the cinematic vocabulary of documentaries, ads and disaster movies to create this suspenseful, ambiguous drama.