Shortlist Announced Today for YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video

125 shortlisted videos, selected from 23,000 submissions, made public on youtube.com/play

Final jury-selected videos to be presented at the Guggenheim on October 21, 2010

Download a PDF of this press release.

Download a PDF of the complete list of shortlisted videos.

(NEW YORK, NY and SAN BRUNO, CA – September 20, 2010) — The Guggenheim and YouTube, in collaboration with HP and Intel, announced today the shortlist for YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video. Selected from more than 23,000 submissions from 91 countries, the 125 shortlisted videos can now be seen on the YouTube Play channel at youtube.com/play and at kiosks in the Guggenheim museums in New York City, Berlin, Bilbao, and Venice.

The YouTube Play shortlist videos include submissions from students, video artists, photographers, filmmakers, composers, video game programmers, an American Women’s Chess Champion, a comedy improv group, a Swedish rock band, a South African hip-hop group, and an Australian electronic music producer.

Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Guggenheim Foundation, notes, “The shortlist presents a rich sampling of the best creative video found on YouTube and is representative of the various stylistic and conceptual genres specific to this broad, ever-expanding platform. The selection is diverse in technique, subject matter, geography, and professional status, which reflects the increasing accessibility of new media technologies around the world. We believe the shortlist reveals the abundance of creative energy this project evoked.”

The 125 shortlisted videos were chosen by the Guggenheim curatorial team and have been presented to the YouTube Play jury for consideration. The jury of eleven luminaries includes: musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson; musical artists Animal Collective; visual artists Douglas Gordon, Ryan McGinley, Marilyn Minter, and Takashi Murakami; artists and filmmakers Darren Aronofsky, Shirin Neshat, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul; and graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister, with the Guggenheim’s Nancy Spector serving as jury chairperson.

YouTube Play juror and visual artist Takashi Murakami states, “In both the global art world and beyond, the speed at which information technology is developing is accelerating at an astounding rate. These innovations have brought with them drastic changes in both the form and dissemination of artistic expression. In the past several years, not a day passes without me watching something on YouTube. YouTube is a medium to communicate with the world at large and we artists can no longer call ourselves artists merely by discovering something special and presenting it to the public alone. In that way, YouTube has incited a revolution.”

The jury will now select up to 20 of their top choices to be revealed and presented at a special YouTube Play event at the Guggenheim Museum on October 21. The final videos selected by the jury will be on view to the public from October 22 through 24 in the Tower 2 gallery of the museum, and available to a worldwide audience on the YouTube Play channel at youtube.com/play.

YouTube Play is one of several collaborative efforts by the video-sharing Web site to push the boundaries of music, film, and now art. YouTube Symphony Orchestra and the film project Life in a Day are examples of the convergence of online video with more traditional art forms. To find out more, please visit youtube.com/play.

About the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
Founded in 1937, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation is dedicated to promoting the understanding and appreciation of art, primarily of the modern and contemporary periods, through exhibitions, education programs, research initiatives, and publications. Currently the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation owns and operates the Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue in New York and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection on the Grand Canal in Venice, and provides programming and management for the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. The Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin is the result of a collaboration, begun in 1997, between the Guggenheim Foundation and Deutsche Bank. In 2013, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, a 452,000-square-foot museum of modern and contemporary art designed by Frank Gehry, will open on Saadiyat Island, adjacent to the main island of Abu Dhabi city, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.

About YouTube
YouTube is the world’s largest online video community, allowing millions of people to discover, watch, and share original videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original-content creators and advertisers large and small. YouTube, LLC is based in San Bruno, California, and is a subsidiary of Google Inc.

About HP
HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments, and society. The world’s largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services, and IT infrastructure to solve customer problems.

About Intel Corporation
Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) is a world leader in computing innovation. The company designs and builds the essential technologies that serve as the foundation for the world’s computing devices. Additional information about Intel is available at http://www.intel.com/pressroom and blogs.intel.com.

#1170
September 20, 2010

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION CONTACT

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Betsy Ennis
212 423 3840
youtubeplayPR@guggenheim.org

Google
Anna Richardson
press@youtube.com

HP
Steve Biondolillo
650 520 4289
steve.biondolillo@ar-edelman.com

For more information on YouTube Play go to youtube.com/play

For publicity images and videos go to guggenheim.org/new-york/press-room/press-images
User ID = photoservice
Password = presspass