Video Art: Replay is a yearlong, three-part exhibition offering a snapshot of current video art. 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. This season, Part 2. Everyday Imaginary (January 15-March 21, 2010) consists of 10 projected single-channel video works that investigate and test modes of animation.

Animation may conjure fantasy and make-believe. Everyday Imaginary, however, takes a close look at recent work that explores everyday lived experience—reality—either through animation or in dialogue with its techniques and imagery. Underlying these works is the idea that the “social imaginary”—the way we conceive of ourselves through nationhood, cultural identity, or political affiliations—is constructed and therefore imaginary, although it has very real effects on our lived experience. Everyday Imaginary presents work that explores, both technically and thematically, the shifting boundaries between the real and the imagined.