Lucy Raven explores the nexus of old and new technologies, in projects ranging from sculptural installations and animated films to performative lectures, and live television. Her work unmasks the often invisible processes, analogue and digital, that have come to define modern life. Raven often narrates episodes from the history of the standardization of filmic images, connecting forms of production initiated half a century ago by the American military and today’s efforts to regulate the appearance of movies cobbled together by technicians around the world. For example, for her performative lecture Standard Evaluation Material (2012), Raven shared a series of rarely seen test films—snippets of narrative assembled only for the technical information they contain, dating from the 1940s to today. These sights and sounds—seldom seen or heard outside of a film projection booth—tell alternate stories about the moving pictures and how we view them.

Raven has had solo exhibitions at Centre Vox de l’image contemporaine in Montréal, Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, Portikus in Frankfurt, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Interaccess Gallery in Toronto, Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and Nevada Museum of Art in Reno. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at Witte de With in Rotterdam, Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, PS1 MoMA in New York, Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, SculptureCenter in New York, Mumok in Vienna, Princeton University Museum of Art, and Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, among other institutions.

Courtesy of the Whitney Museum of American Art