Saturday, March 21, 2026

Video Ocean, by Courtney Rile
Pivot Festival of Contemporary Arts

Coyne Center for the Performing Arts
LeMoyne College, Syracuse

Video Ocean is an experimental documentary by Courtney Rile about the origin story of a cultural microclimate of video art in Syracuse in the 1970s. Through interviews with contemporary artists, curators, and journalists, along with archival documentation and excerpts of works of video art, Video Ocean explores the inception of video art as a medium, the creation of Synapse at Syracuse University, the establishment of a degree program dedicated to art video at Syracuse University, and the hiring of the first Curator of Video Art at a museum in the world at the Everson Museum of Art. Video Ocean establishes Syracuse as a center for innovation and explores the question of where video art stands today in a moment where video is ubiquitous and AI is propelling us into the next iteration of the moving image.

Tickets