On View at the Café: Petra Cortright

Now on view at the Hammer's café, Petra Cortright’s (b. 1986, Santa Barbara, California; lives in Los Angeles) short videos of the seemingly frivolous activities of a Millennial generation woman perfectly capture the motivations behind the innumerable homemade videos that are available online on popular sites like YouTube and Vimeo. For this generation, the Internet is a fertile ground of inspiration, the “go-to” site for research, and a readily available and active place for the dissemination of ideas and images. Using commonly available video tools on her computer, Cortright enacts the bored youth fiddling with her settings, constantly experimenting with new possibilities and examining her own representation. A prolific maker, she floods YouTube with these videos, mixing her artwork with the site’s multitude of offerings and erasing the line between high and low culture.

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