MINNEAPOLIS—For some 12 millennia, humans have sought the company of domesticated cats. We feed them, shelter them, and love them. In return, they jump headfirst into empty grocery bags.
This ancient bargain lay at the heart of the Walker Art Center's first-ever Internet Cat Video Festival. Yes, the renowned modern art museum dedicated an entire evening to the public display of cats doing stupid stuff. Demand was evidently strong: After soliciting crowdsourced nominations, the museum received 10,000 submissions. Festival mastermind Katie Hill watched every single one, eventually boiling them down into 65 minutes of concentrated kitty shenanigans.
Asked what sort of aesthetic principles guided her in this process, Hill replied, "It's like any other curation. You examine how form and content interact. You look for what's new and unique in the genre. If you watch enough shaky camera phone videos of cats, you start to see the distinctions."
As dusk descended on a lovely late-summer evening, Minnesotans settled onto the museum's lawn, awaiting the outdoor screening. Hill's former art history professor, Heather Shirey, was among the first on the scene. I asked if she felt that cat videos were a worthy topic for a prestigious museum. "Yes," she said unequivocally. "This is a way to get people talking about material culture. That's what art historians do."
...
This ancient bargain lay at the heart of the Walker Art Center's first-ever Internet Cat Video Festival. Yes, the renowned modern art museum dedicated an entire evening to the public display of cats doing stupid stuff. Demand was evidently strong: After soliciting crowdsourced nominations, the museum received 10,000 submissions. Festival mastermind Katie Hill watched every single one, eventually boiling them down into 65 minutes of concentrated kitty shenanigans.
Asked what sort of aesthetic principles guided her in this process, Hill replied, "It's like any other curation. You examine how form and content interact. You look for what's new and unique in the genre. If you watch enough shaky camera phone videos of cats, you start to see the distinctions."
As dusk descended on a lovely late-summer evening, Minnesotans settled onto the museum's lawn, awaiting the outdoor screening. Hill's former art history professor, Heather Shirey, was among the first on the scene. I asked if she felt that cat videos were a worthy topic for a prestigious museum. "Yes," she said unequivocally. "This is a way to get people talking about material culture. That's what art historians do."
...