Light Work’s Urban Video Project is pleased to present the exhibition In Conversation from June to August 30 at their architectural projection venue on the Everson Museum facade.

In Conversation is new work created by Courtney Rile. This work explores the moving image and our human relationship to technology through the language of the canon of video art.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Rile will premiere her documentary film Video Ocean, followed by a conversation between Rile and curators DJ Hellerman and Tara Merenda Nelson discussing the history and preservation of experimental media on Friday, July 25th at 7 PM in Watson Theater across from Light Work’s galleries as part of Source Material: An Evening of Archival Explorations at Light Work.

About the Work

In Conversation

2025 

In the early 1970s, Syracuse was a center of innovation — the Everson Museum hired one of the first curators of video art and hosted seminal media artists from around the world. At the same time, Synapse, an experimental media collective at Syracuse University, provided fertile ground for explorations of this new technology as both art form and revolutionary tool of communication.

In Conversation is a dialogue with the work of Bill Viola, Nam June Paik, Peter Campus, and Shigeko Kubota, all of whom exhibited at the Everson Museum in the early 70s. Structured in a series of modules that function like musical movements or songs on an album, motifs recur throughout In Conversation: reflections, the distortion of time, video as an extension of self, and video as an observational tool, exploring the individual, intimate experience of video as a way to see ourselves from another perspective or in another time, a step beyond the present tense of the mirror. These explorations, which trace their lineage to the earliest days of video art, are more relevant than ever in today’s world, a world in which audiovisual technologies have become integral to nearly every facet of our lives.

About the Artist

Courtney Rile is a lens-based artist and Co-Founder of Daylight Blue Media, a video production company in Syracuse, New York. Rile is a 2025 recipient of The Everson Museum of Art Central New York Artist Initiative and Urban Video Project Regional Commission. In recent years she has received a NYSCA Individual Artist Regrant for a project about the history of video art in Syracuse. She has also been commissioned as a video artist by the Society for New Music. She holds a BFA in Art Video from Syracuse University. 

Rile’s photographs, documentary films, and experimental videos have been shown widely regionally and internationally. Rile previously served in communications and curatorial roles at Delavan Art Gallery, CNY Arts, Salt Market, and many other initiatives, alongside work as a writer, adjunct professor, and guest speaker.

Artist’s website: courtneyrile.com

Sponsors

This exhibition is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

The UVP program is made possible with a Tier Two Support grant from the County of Onondaga, with the support of County Executive Ryan McMahon and the Onondaga County Legislature, administered by CNY Arts.