Intimacy is a hot topic these days. The study and research of "intimacy" dates back to more than 2,300 years ago, when Aristotle, who was engaged in the study of human relationships, wrote: "If a man can be friendly to another and the other is friendly to him in turn, then he is his friend to the other ". Aristotle's analysis of intimate relationships was influential for a long time. It was not until the 1880s with the emergence of modern psychology and sociology, some new theories were formed, and the French sociologist Turgot's research on social isolation (Social isolation) and social alienation (Social alienation) appeared in this period. In the 1950s and 1960s, when experimental methods and research became the dominant approach in social psychology, the exploration of intimacy flourished, and the establishment of the International Institute for Relationship Studies in 2004 signaled the internationalization of intimacy research as a multidisciplinary subject.

There is a similar thread of time, as intimacy gradually became a professional discipline, the third technological revolution took place, and the digital revolution has influenced our understanding and definition of intimacy over the last half century. "The Internet has become one of the most important catalysts of this era, and Wynton Cerf, the father of the Internet, once said, "The Internet has become the most powerful megaphone of human invention. It has given the small, unheeded man a microphone to speak to the world. It uses it to encourage and promote multiple points of view and dialogue in ways that traditional one-way mass media could never do." As of March 31, 2021, there are 5.169 billion Internet users worldwide, and four out of five of them use various social networks to share updates about themselves, share photos, post comments or participate in discussions on topics. The private parts of our thoughts, feelings, and bodies that were originally shared only in intimate relationships are being viewed, amplified, and consumed on a larger scale, and some knowable areas are being created. In this context, it seems that the definition of intimacy should be redefined and we should explore this issue in a broader dimension.

The changes in society can always be traced in the creation of art, both in terms of creative medium and content meaning, providing a piece of nourishment for art to grow freely. "Video Art" (Video Art) was born out of the constant impact of rapid consumption, immediacy and mobile image, and after the occurrence and evolution of video, video and multimedia art, we see that the changes are not only in the means of expression, but also in the essential content: individual and immediate expressions are increasingly transformed into intersectional and interactive multifaceted collaboration. Intimacy, as one of the contents expressed in this form of creation, reflects the progressive interpretation of intimacy at different stages of development in the digital age. The video work responds to the audience's demand for an ever-escalating visual experience, and is definitely the best form of creation to understand the times. The Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, a pioneering art institution on a par with the Pompidou Center, has a pioneering quality. The museum set up a special department in the 1960s when video art emerged as an artistic discipline, and today has a collection of over 200 videos. The 16-video works presented in the exhibition "Free Images - Intimacy" at the Red Brick Museum come from a selection of the collection of the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris.

Interestingly, the logic of intimacy explored in the exhibition is highly suggestive of the mutation of intimacy in the digital age. From personal memory to collective memory, from identity inquiry to boundary guarding, from chasing virtual technology to questioning the connected world, intimacy is pushed from a hidden zone to a more diverse and deeper reflection.
Entering the gallery is Ange Lecha's Sabatina, a huge image that strikes the unsuspecting viewer directly, with the artist's daughter floating in the water like "Ophelia", her eyes looking into the viewer's heart, raising an air of ambiguity. This is an intimate scene that exists only in a private domestic setting, and the same intimacy is evident in the work "Cats," which is a mundane and moving domestic scene, yet when it was shown in New York's Times Square, it created a pair of tense dismay: an intimate and ordinary scene in a grand form in an important public space. Does this raise for us the question of intimate relationship boundary guarding?

Adjacent to the first two works are Mariam Bennani's Gradual Kingdom and Bertille Barker's Migration of the Back. The former presents a typical Internet aesthetic, shot on an iPhone and then recreated to create a video game or Snapchat-like aesthetic. The film is shot mainly with women, family, friends or passersby around the artist, and is full of personal and emotional infusion, with its simple and vivid content presented in a humorous and playful way. The latter, based on the community where the artist lives, is a semi-documentary image that poetically creates a narrative between reality and fiction. The bottle cork installation opposite the video screen effectively echoes the visual elements of the image. Trauma", created by Gillian Wearing in 2000, tells the story of ordinary people's traumatic experiences during their childhood, showing the audience the intimate world, the reality show unveiling of the inner world, the trauma caused by being exposed to everyone's eyes. The words spoken in the images seem to be confessions, and they are shown in a specially built "confessional room", which is especially easy to bring the audience into the situation. Here, the discussion of intimacy from individual memory to collective memory is completed.

Zidane: Portrait of the 21st Century" is presented in a separate space as a period of the exhibition, and concludes the exhibition by jumping off independently. What the audience is shown are 17 synchronized cameras capturing images of Zidane from all angles, but what is actually explored is the relationship between the virtual and the real, the virtual and the real, the unreal and the real, the false and the true, mapped to the questioning of the future direction of physical art museums. Moving away from the exploration of simple intimacy, the exhibition is instead a deep reflection on the connected world.

With the dimly lit exhibition hall and subdued tones, there seems to be a constant murmur in your ears guiding you on your way. The curatorial approach to the exhibition shows that the curators have considered the advantages of video art in mobilizing the audience's senses in the exhibition. More importantly, the exhibition does not seem to answer questions, but in contrast throws us a series of questions that seem to end back in a discussion of the nature of museums.

Article Source:艺术与设计

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