It has been my pleasure to present "Straight to Video: the First 10 Years of Vital 5" which opened June 8th and runs through July 20th. "Straight to Video: the First 10 Years of Vital 5", is a collection of video and xerox artifacts from 1996 to 2006, representing a decade of arts production and exhibits presented by Vital 5 Productions. The orchestrator behind Vital 5 Productions, Greg Lundgren, assembled the mountains of digital documentation into a retrospective with a new media twist. Vital 5 came at a time when the costs of documenting work plummeted due to the rise of inexpensive digital still and video cameras. These volumes of photographs, videos and printed works hold the fingerprints of hundreds of participating artists and thousands of viewers who works collectively and professionally to challenge and test the boundaries of contemporary art. Straight to Video stands as a document of this collaboration, the health of our arts community and the collective creative potential this city harbors. It stands as not an epilogue, but as the first chapter in the works of Vital 5 and the community that propels it.

The idea for the exhibition came when I was interviewing Greg Lundgren for an article about his on going art project "The Hideout" for The Capitol Hill Times. In the dim light of that popular bar on First Hill, Lundgren mentioned all the digital files he had. This casual aside prompted me to invite Vital 5 to 911 Media to formally present the documentation as a retrospective exhibition. There are literally 100's of people that have collaborated with Vital 5. The exhibit features the work of the photographers and videographers who captured Vital 5: Dave Benham, Wynn Burke, Ted Grudowski, Tomiko Jones, Jennifer Lundgren, Mitch Mattraw, Carter Nelsen, Jeff Scott, Steven Stone, Adam Weintraub, and Robert Zverina.

Vital 5 has been a significant force in the Seattle creative community, I felt after 10 years it was important to take stock and recognize all the people who made it happen. The production facilities of 911 Media Arts center were used to transfer many tapes from the analog Hi 8 format to dvc tape. These and other tapes were captured onto the nine new Apple i-macs in the Media Classroom and put onto data dvds. The side effect of doing this exhibit was to stabilize the media archive of Vital 5 and to make a copy to be stored in the archives of 911 Media Arts Center.

The installation in the gallery presented a technical challenge. Greg Lundgren wanted the viewer to be able to switch videos with the push of a big red button located in the center of an old school desk. An old one click mouse was hacked by Gabe Herbertson to run a USB connection to the Apple G4 tower where all the video is located. The tower is connected to a video projector and a small audio system which fills the gallery with light and sound. The overall effect is to give the visitor an interactive element to the digital mountain of material.

View a video fragment by clicking here!

By using the capability of new technologies, the story of Vital 5 productions could be told with breadth and context. Greg Lundgren created a catalog of the artifacts in the hallway which appears in its entire scope below. Many thanks to Carole Fuller and the Board of 911 Media Arts Center for allowing me the unique opportunity to curate this exhibition Executive Director Misha Neininger and the staff at 911 Media were there with critical support and the larger Seattle creative community gave great encouragement for this project to be completed.
Steven Michael Vroom
Affiliate Curator
911 media Arts Center

Vital 5 Productions
Gallery Catalog
by
Greg Lundgren
Straight to Video: 10 Years of Vital 5
When Steven Vroom asked me to present a decade's worth of video and photography documenting the past ten years of Vital 5 activities, I squirmed in my chair. Retrospectives should be for the old, the dead or the really really famous. I don't consider myself terribly old nor do I speak of Vital 5 in the past tense. And whatever notoriety we may have achieved hasn't really left the city limits. But I made the mistake of mentioning to him that I had over 8,000 images and 40 hours of raw footage Who has time to organize such a mess? It was all over the place.

Straight to Video is more reunion than retrospective. It is a chance ti see Derek Horton yell through a bullhorn, Nicole Grant whisper through a hidden microphone, Dylan Neuwirth spit rhymes in a back alley. It is a salute ti the two hundred plus artists that took a chance, stepped up to the plate and created art for all the right reasons.
I look forward to 2016, and looking back over another decade of projects, collaborations and trouble making.

There is really so much more left to do.
Sincerely,
Greg Lundgren
May 30, 2007

01). ARTISTS FOR A WORK FREE AMERICA (AFWFA)- 1996
In the spring of 1996, Vital 5 Productions organized its first performance art piece. Taking a cue from Dada and Theatre of the Absurd, we decided to protest the modern conventions of work. AFWFA was born under the premise that all humans are artists; that work is an unhealthy and unnatural function, and that a robotic workforce was a humane and perfectly reasonable solution.
A manifesto was drafted, a logo designed, posters and tee shirts and protest signs sprouted from living room floors. On April 29th, fifty artists took to the stage of Seattle's Federal Building and protested against the evils of work. Somewhere in that line of absurdity was revealed. Ten years and thousands of pieces of propaganda later AFWFA is still around waiting for the day when people realize that technological displacement is the key to a cultural renaissance.

02.) LETTER TO COCA - 1997
Opening a gallery for non-commercial and experimental works became a necessity only after realizing how few spaces existed on the Seattle visual arts landscape that explored such works. As an experiment, and sincere effort to produce shows at other venues, Vital 5 wrote one proposal a month for a year to the Center on Contemporary Art, never to receive a response or formal reply. Sure, it was a disappointment, but the frustration was channeled into a desire to run our own space, to program the exhibitions and performances that we found relevant and to divorce ourselves from the dependency on other arts organizations.
It was time to get keys of our own and time to stop asking for permission. Within a year we were renovating an old Chinese restaurant on Second and Lenora, preparing our first contemporary art space.

03.) CRITICS (* Means We Recommend It) - 2002
Critics. What a job! To impart a definitive opinion about art and see it turn up in the paper week after week, making people cry, wielding the magic wand of art world approval, getting your facts wrong. The pressure! It can't be easy being an art critic. Especially in a city like Seattle.
What we found interesting was that most art critics think they are casual observers, like astrologers watching stars through a telescope. How silly is that? Of course they are a part of the food chain, of course they have the power to steer - without them we are rudderless, under promoted, unchallenged, forever small time.
So what happens when you curate an exhibition of art critic portraiture? Who does an artist pick, what is their approach and what are the consequences? Certainly there are politics. And how does a critic approach a show that they are inherently part of? Could they even review it without revealing a personal bias? Would it stop them?
before the exhibition opened we mailed each critic a tee shirt that red " I (heart) Art Critics." It was more than a promotion. It evoked a nervous smile. The observed were holding mirrors.

04.) AFWFA ROBOTIC ART DISPENSER - 2000
Artist for a Work Free America philosophy states that humans should not be employed for any task that a robot can perform, including the scale of artwork. This robot served up original works from 12 local artists, delivered in cylindrical tubes. The Robotic Art Dispenser may have been a modified Coke machine, but it stands as an excellent example of technology working for us, while reminding us that we have lived among robots for years.
The Robotic Art Dispenser operated in the lobby of our Westlake gallery for two years, and later at Consolidated Works. With 50 cent artwork from Robert Zverina, Tomiko Jones, Flatchestedmama, Dylan Neuwirth and Jed Dunkerly, every tube had a great surprise.

05.) SELF CENSORED - 2001 Vital 5 has a history of creating fictitious artists, of creating a name, a history and a body of work that is provocative, challenging and almost, possibly, implausible. Maria Cordova is just another example if this Vital 5 mirage.
Born on December 21, 1951, in Cartagena, Columbia, Maria Cordova witnessed decades of violence, poverty, corruption and personal tragedy. In the fall of 1998, her husband disappeared, only to be found ten days later stacked in parts on the doorstep of her home. For the next three years Maria photographed the corruption, greed and brutal truths of Columbian life. Her photographs turned her into a living legend and dangerous woman, so much so that when an American freelance photographer came to take her images back to the United States, Maria was gone and her photographs were covered in what appeared to be india ink.
Self Censored featured both the works of Maria Cordova and mid-western painter Erik Strickland, who glued his canvases face to face with carpet adhesive for entirely different reasons.

06.) ARBITRARY ART GRANT -2000
The AFWFA manifesto states that all people are artists and that as a society we should work toward an automated culture where robots do all the work and humans assume their natural roles as creators, thinkers, and explorers of the natural world. We desperately need to play more and work less. The Arbitrary Art Grant was one way to emphasize many of these points. Since art is subjective and ever changing, it is impossible for humans to objectively determine who should and should not receive money to make art. The act of endowing art grants was already arbitrary and trapped within personal opinions and biases. AFWFA wanted all people to be eligible for art grants regardless of education, talent or social status. Furthermore, art grants could become an object of inspiration and social discourse all on their own, inciting people to participate in performance and art by removing the traditional hurdles and committee reviews that deflect the great majority of man.
To date, Vital 5 has sponsored art grants for music, creative writing, film and digital graffiti.

07.) THE DYSFUNCTIONAL CHAIR SHOW - 2001
Vital 5 relishes in large group shows, especially when concept driven and full of opportunity. The Dysfunctional Chair Show exhibited over 50 works, employing smoke, sound, springs, popcorn, fire and barbed wire to make their chairs useless. There were the dangerous, the fragile and the impossible to mount. No two artists approached the question alike.
Great acts of labor were sacrificed, all in the name of making something that could not serve its fundamental purpose. And the question arose "Is it a broken chair or is it a sculpture?" When the function of an object has deceased, what is left but an aesthetic? Were they chairs at all, or did the transcend into the realm of sculpture? Is an earthquake-damaged building a sculpture? A bicycle ran over by a car? A dried-up ball point pen? The dead carcass of an animal?
The Dysfunctional Chair Show followed that common theme of Vital 5 inquiry, addressing the nature and purpose of sculpture, the role of utility and form, and the $64,000 question - "Is that art?"

08.) THE IMMORTALITY CLINIC - 2002
In 2001, artist and Vital 5 coconspirator, Jason Puccinelli, approached us with an idea for a exhibition. He was toiling with a new idea and was excited by its potential and implications. Jason was fascinated by the polarities yet similarities between religion and science while recognizing the importance of faith in both disciplines. Trained as a classical painter and set designer, Jason proposed The Immortality Clinic - an elaborate performance installation that turned the gallery at 2200 Westlake into a medical clinic, with the promise of immortality through portraiture. Employing actors and fellow artists to play the roles of technicians, receptionists and other medical staff, the clinic approached its audience as patients, selling them the opportunity for life ever after through oil portraiture. Rarely before had art, religion, and modern medicine partnered in such a provocative manner. This protest sign was one of many waved outside the gallery on opening night. A troupe of protesters, against the radical work of the clinic and "Dr. Puccinelli" picketed outside, holding signs that read, "Really old people scare me," "Millions are living who should be dead," and "Mortals 4 Mortals"

09.) -OVERDRAWN, 2002
Have you ever painted a painting, run a gallery or curated an exhibit and hit that brick wall realization that art is a commodity of the rich and realized that you couldn't afford your own work? That your success hinged on your ability to court the rich? And thought just for a second - this is not how the art world should function. Have you ever had the distinct feeling that the art world was just a hair off course?
What do you do?
Vital 5 made a bet that there were a lot of paintings, photographs, prints, and sculpture that were sitting in storage units, under beds, collecting dust in someone's closet - a lot of art work out of circulation. The goal of Overdrawn was to get this work out into the world, introduce it to an appreciate eye. Activate it.
Overdrawn was also about getting original works in the hands of people who could not afford them. Give the first one out for free - see if we couldn't start an epidemic. We had collected over three hundred works from Seattle based artists. Anyone that walked in with a bounced check or proof of overdraft was handed a ticket with a number printed on it, like this one.

10.) I AM AN ARTIST - 2003
Presented in the Microsoft Theater at Consolidated Works, I Am An Artist followed the life and death of a young conceptual artist named Judy Piper, played by Nicole Grant. Graduating from art school and driving alone through the California desert looking for a cheap studio. Judy met a host of interesting artists and violence - obsessed locals. When an accidental death leads to a sensationalized news story, Judy leaves a bloody trail of installations incorporating the body and work of her victims.
Max Parker was a ficitional character and friend of Judy's, trained as a realist painter before changing to text-based works. Instead of spending weeks on a single painting, Max found it more effective to just write the emotional response he tried to elicit from the viewer. "You are an idiot if you don't understand this" was a set piece on the stage of I AM An Artist, poking fun at all of the art we look at but don't have a clues what it means. Other pieces included, "This would look great above your couch", "I could have mad this", and "Someday this will be worth a lot of money"

11.) GOD'S FIRST SOLO SHOW - 2005
Vital 5 never held a religious agenda or really had a firm opinion about the creator of the universe. But people sure do talk about God a lot, and a whole lot of blood is shed in his name, so we thought it would be interesting to explore just what kind of entity this God character might be. If God did create everything in the universe and was indeed omnipotent as people claimed, then what an interesting and important God is. While mere mortals were celebrated for putting paint on canvas, God hadn't even had a decent retrospective.
Going through God's portfolio was a daunting task, I mean, if he did create everything, then we really needed to trim down the selected works to a manageable and realistic scale. It was insightful to see what kind of artist could create something as delicate as an orchid and then turn around and invent anthrax, nuclear war, and the Ebola virus.
Out of all the creatures God invented, the concept of Big foot was one of our favorites. How cool is it that you can just invent the idea of a creature without ever doing the real work. What a prankster God is! Well, that is, if you believe in him.

12.) THE VITAL 5 REVIEW - 2005
What is it with alcohol and art anyways? Why is it that behind so many great works of writing and painting was a bottle of Absinthe or twelve-pack of beer? Some of my favorite writers were fall down flat on their face drunks, like Hemmingway and Bukowski, Fitzgerald and Faulkner. The list of artists and writers creating great works under the influence is astonishing, astronomical, twenty-eight feet long in small type. So when Vital 5 took a hand at opening a bar on First Hill, it was an experiment that could not be refused. We would start a magazine written by our bar patrons. We would tap and bottle this special brand of unfiltered expression and just see where it leads us. Five issues later, the verdict is in. Alcohol-fueled editorial and drawing is impressive. Even in the dark. We supplied the paper and pens and our smarter than usual clientele took off in hot pursuit. Certainly, it would be irresponsible of us to insinuate that drinking makes for a better artist, but then again, we do own a bar. Take a look for yourself because the Vital 5 Review is an interesting study of what happens when you have a cocktail in one hand and a ball point pen in the other.

13.) THE VITAL 5 COOKBOOK - 2006
After the demolition of Vital 5's Westlake space, Greg Lundgren found himself without a gallery or the opportunity to curate formal exhibitions. Looking through a very thick stack of ideas, proposals and experiments yet to be created or produced, he looked towards Marcel Duchamp for inspiration. Alas, it was he who defined the three ways in which an artist could create work: make it yourself, employ others to make it for you, or simply write the instructions on how it is made. A book of instructional art was soon underway, and employing his good friend, and brilliant illustrator Jed Dunkerley to illustrate the recipes added a wondeful addition to the 75 text-based instruction. With an introduction by Emily Hall and book design by Deborah Ro, The Vital 5 Cookbook came to life. Individually, the recipes outline and explore refreshing approaches to exhibition and self-expression. Collectively, The Vital 5 Cookbook stands as a manifesto, breaking down conventional modes of expression and exhibition and spanning a great diversity of mediums. Subtitled, "Recipes for the contemporary artist, curator and troublemaker," we hold great hope that it will inspire and change the ways in which we all perceive and engage with contemporary art.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Vital 5 Productions would like to than the photographers and videographers that helped capture the last decade of Vital 5 events and exhibitions. Without their interest, talent and dedication this show would not exist.
Thank you Carter Nelsen, Jeff Scott, Steven stone, Casey Kelbaugh, Tomiko Jones, Jennifer Lundgren, Wynn Burke, Adam Weintraub, Dave Benham, Kate Carter, Iris Stevenson, Stephan Martinez, Ted Grudowski, Jason Puccinelli and Rich Lehl.
Vital 5 would also like to extend a sincere thank you to 911 Media Arts Center, Steven Vroom, Gabe Herbertson, and Deborah Ro. Without their enthusiasm and technical support, these images and videos would still be in boxes.

For more information visitwww.vital5productions,com

Or e mail us at info@vital5productions.com