Video Art: Replay is a yearlong, three-part exhibition offering a snapshot of current video art on view. Video Art: Replay reprises ICA’s early commitment to new art forms shared in its prescient 1975 Video Art exhibition. The exhibition’s concentration on three themes prevalent in video art—documentary (Part 1. Asking Not Telling, September 11-December 6, 2009), animation (Part 2. Everyday Imaginary, January 15-March 21, 2010), and comedy (Part 3. Ludicrous!, March 24-June 6, 2010)—will further focus the wide-ranging field of single-channel, projected video.

Part 1. Asking Not Telling presents videos by artists who use the tropes of documentary filmmaking to capture, record, re-record, and re-present cultural memory. Voice-over narration, found footage, and re-enactments only confuse a sense of history. What really happened? These works ask rather than tell. They both assume and play with viewers’ knowledge of topics ranging from film and television to politics, art history, and sci-fi fantasy. Throughout, the documentary’s hold on authoritative truth comes evocatively untethered.