The shortlist for Youtube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video was announced today. We received a wide range of videos, from experimental or abstract work and mashups, to animations, music videos, and narrative short films. The shortlisted videos include submissions from students, video artists, photographers, filmmakers, composers, video game programmers, a comedy improv group, an American Women’s Chess Champion, a Swedish rock band, a South African hip-hop group, and an Australian electronic music producer, among many others.

As a media platform, some of YouTube’s best qualities are its anarchic, associative character, its inherent eclecticism, and its easy accessibility. A user may flit from a fan-subbed anime clip to a homemade mashup of evangelical churchgoers (seemingly) headbanging to heavy metal band Slayer, from POV snowboarding footage to a clip from a Buster Keaton movie. As MoMA’s Kathy Halbreich pointed out in a recent issue of Artforum, a lot of people who do not identify themselves as artists are doing wonderfully creative things on YouTube.

The Take is a blog created by the Guggenheim and inspired by YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video. On it, you’ll find writing by experts, scholars, and artists from the worlds of film, video, and Internet culture. The Take will feature discussions on digital content, the history of video art, and online video and its effects on art and life.

With YouTube Play, the Guggenheim is celebrating online video in an unprecedented global biennial. So far we have received more than 4000 videos from participants in Norway to Vietnam, but that’s not enough—we’re still waiting for your video. Submit your work from now until July 31 for a chance for it to be one of up to 20 videos selected to be shown at the Guggenheim museums in New York, Berlin, Bilbao, and Venice for three days in October. This is your chance to have your video exhibited simultaneously in not one but four major art museums worldwide.