Review of “Paradigm Shift”: Engaging Video Art That Will Make Your Mind Bend
Exhibitions showcased at 180 the Strand, a renowned underground video art venue, often defy the conventional standards of making sense. The establishment, known for its immersive art showcases in the past, notably set a benchmark with its debut of The Infinite Mix in 2016, a success that subsequent video art displays have struggled to replicate. Their latest exhibition throws together a myriad of video art pieces in the hopes that some will resonate with the audience, but unfortunately, very few do.
The journey through this vast concrete space begins with iconic works from the 1990s, including Mark Leckey’s Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, Pipilotti Rist’s Ever Is Over All, and Gillian Wearing’s Dancing in Peckham. Leckey’s film, celebrating rave culture and youth, still maintains its impact nearly three decades later. Wearing’s charmingly awkward dance performance in a Peckham mall stands out as a definitive piece of its era. Similarly, Rist’s video, featuring a smiling woman breaking car windows with a flower, made an impression and even inspired Beyoncé’s music video for Hold Up in 2016.
One might assume that the exhibition would focus on the 1990s and the surge in creativity due to the accessibility of camera equipment. However, the narrative quickly shifts with Ryan Trecartin’s delirious sitcom from the mid-2000s, followed by a riotous model audition filmed by fashion designer Telfar Clemens in 2025. Nan Goldin’s collage of found footage of Donyale Luna, the first black supermodel, further confuses the viewer. As you progress through the exhibition, encountering Dara Birnbaum’s interpretation of Wonder Woman as a disco superstar and Josèfa Ntjam’s CGI sea creatures “queering evolution,” the contrasting themes and ideas leave you perplexed.
Despite some narrative strands exploring themes of music videos as an artistic form, blackness, queerness, fashion, and more, the exhibition fails to weave these threads together into a cohesive experience. The inclusion of Derek Jarman’s Super 8 experimentations only adds to the overall confusion. The attempt to merge various video works into a disjointed historical continuum leaves the curatorial decisions feeling arbitrary.
Ultimately, the lack of a cohesive narrative does not detract from the high-quality work showcased at 180 the Strand. The visual spectacle presented in such a remarkable space is enough to captivate the audience. Pieces like Martine Syms’ work and Arthur Jafa’s hallucinatory displays, along with the brilliance of the 1990s films, still manage to impress. If the exhibition had simply been named “Some stuff we quite like,” perhaps the audience wouldn’t be preoccupied with deciphering the concept of a paradigm shift within the show.