This July, Denver’s Month of Video (.MOV) returned with its second citywide iteration, transforming nontraditional spaces into screens for experimental film and video art. Among the standout contributions was “Moving Still: Video Art Highlights from the Dikeou Collection,” a layered exhibition embedded within Devon Dikeou’s sprawling “Mid-Career Smear” retrospective. Curated with intention and wit, “Moving Still” explores how video inhabits—and disrupts—space, stillness, and perception. Featuring works by Momoyo Torimitsu, Serge Onnen, Dan Asher, and Dikeou herself, the exhibition examines themes of capitalist spectacle, ambient media noise, and ecological elegy, all while mining the slippery terrain between fiction and reality. Here, we talk with the Dikeou Collection director and curator of “Moving Still”, Hayley Richardson, about the selection process, the political charge of background visuals, and the surprising archival discoveries that deepen the show’s resonance within both the Dikeou Collection and the broader .MOV program.

Hayley Richardson as interviewed by Rachel Dalamangas

Serge Onnen, Break, Cell Animation DVD with Sound, 2:11 minutes, edition 1/5; Serge Onnen, Silence Fence, Wallpaper Designed by Artist
Devon Dikeou, Entertaining is Fun—Dorothy Draper, 156 Scott Toilet Paper Rolls, Unrolled to a Diameter and Stacked to Attain the Height of the Artist

How did you decide on which video works to include from the Dikeou Collection’s roster, particularly those by Devon Dikeou, Momoyo Torimitsu, Dan Asher, and Serge Onnen?

 “Moving Still: Video Art Highlights from the Dikeou Collection” exists as an exhibition within an exhibition, as it comingles with Devon Dikeou’s “Mid-Career Smear” (MCS) retrospective. When asked to participate in Denver Month of Video (.MOV) by organizers Jenna Maurice and Adán de la Garza, the plan was to highlight as much video art represented in Dikeou Collection as possible while maintaining a flow and cohesiveness within MCS.

Most of the video artworks in the Dikeou Collection are part of multifaceted installations with various media, and it was crucial to have these installations exhibited in their entirety. This was not viable for certain artworks, but I was able to achieve it successfully for Serge and Momoyo. Serge’s video Break is accompanied by wallpaper of his own design, which is permanently installed in the Women’s bathroom, so it was easy to incorporate his video within its preexisting context. Momoyo’s Miya Jiro combines video, sculpture, and photography, and is installed in the same room as Devon’s We’d Like to Get to Know You where the entire room is covered wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling in business cards. Considering Miyata Jiro is about business and has a businessman crawling on the floor, it was a perfect match and one that will likely remain permanent. Dan Asher’s Creature and Devon’s The News Too are standalone pieces, so their inclusion and placements were more straightforward within the context of MCS.

Dan Asher, Creature, Stills Showing Jellyfish, Octopus, Shark, and Sardines, DVD Projection, Variable Dimensions

With works spanning from the mid 1990s to recent pieces, are there overarching themes or threads—such as stillness, media critique, or sensory perception—that unify the works in this exhibition?

Serge’s video is about animation’s power to make the most impossible situations become real, and the ubiquitous yet ephemeral nature of drawing. Momoyo’s work explores the tension of reality and authenticity in a capitalist society, and her videos are documents of an unsuspecting audience experiencing that tension in real time. Devon’s video removes the bias and the blabbering of cable TV news and allows the repetitive stillness of the background to create harmony in a fractured, media-obsessed nation. And Dan’s projection of sharks, fish, octopus, and jellyfish floating in water transports the viewer to a peaceful, meditative underwater world . . . but the reality is these animals are in captivity at the London Aquarium as their natural habitats grow more dire and scarce by the day.

So, a unifying thread is suspension of reality. Our fixed perceptions become malleable when experiencing these works—fiction becomes fact and vice versa.

Devon Dikeou, The News, Series of Fully Operational New York City Newspaper Dispensers, Available for Viewers to Use for the Duration of the Exhibition, Papers Updated on Daily/Weekly Basis by Appropriate News Agencies
Devon Dikeou, The News Too, Background Graphics of 9 Popular American Cable News Broadcasts, Looped After 5-Minute Duration, Variable Dimensions

Could you speak to Devon Dikeou’s piece The News Too—how it distills network news into ambient visual noise—and its significance within the show?

In order to talk about The News Too (2019 Ongoing), I need to talk about its sibling, The News (1992 Ongoing). Nearly all of Devon’s artwork is dated Ongoing due to each piece’s nature to grow, expand, and take on new meaning within every new context and interaction, but this is one of the few works in her practice in which an “updated” version is born from a pre-existing artwork.

The News is comprised of eight NYC newspaper machines. When originally shown in an exhibition called “Certain Uncertainty” curated by Kenny Schachter at Deutsche Bank, each machine received its regular daily or weekly delivery of newspapers. The exhibition title was apt for this installation, as the news is a type of certain uncertainty.

The News Too exists as a video installation where the backgrounds of nine American cable news shows are arranged in a grid à la The Brady Bunch. Some backgrounds are animated with waving flags or swirling stars; some are still graphics of grids and panels. Some display the name of the show and/or host, some are anonymous. The backgrounds play for 5 minutes before the final frame appears displaying the name of each show and then loops and plays again. This presents an interesting contrast with The News, in that it does not share any news at all. There is no certain uncertainty. No Left vs Right. The diabolical squawk box that is cable news is now patriotic ambience, swathed in stars and stripes, and red, white, and blue.

As for its significance in the show, it is worth noting that The News Too has been on view at Dikeou Pop-Up: Colfax since 2020 as part of MCS. Devon’s art practice has always been embedded within the curation of the Dikeou Collection, and since “Moving Still” exists in tandem with her retrospective, it made sense to include this particular video in the show.

How do you see “Moving Still” fitting into the broader scope of the Month of Video festival programming across non-traditional spaces and public screens?

 .MOV is a true DIY endeavor. It was founded by artists with the goal to boost the visibility of video art through public art activations and artist-run gallery / programming spaces, all of which are free and open to the public. “Moving Still” is exhibited in Dikeou Collection, which is an artist-founded, free & publicly accessible non-traditional space. What sets this exhibition apart from other .MOV programs is that it highlights video artwork that is part of a private collection. While video has certainly gained traction among art collectors over the last 20 years or so, it still represents uncharted territory when compared to highly collected mediums like painting, photography, and sculpture.

Christian Schumann, Evel Machine, Painted Wood Kiosk Displaying a Still of “No. 2” by Sweden from zingmagazine Curatorial Video Crossing, vol. 2;
Devon Dikeou, City Gates, Room Installation of Security/Insecure, Security Secure, and Security/Kisosk, Variable Dimensions

The exhibition features compilations from zingmagazine’s Curatorial Video Crossing and early Zapp Magazine. What role do these curatorial projects play in dialogue with the individual artists’ pieces?

Like The News Too, the zingmagazine Curatorial Video Crossing videos were installed at Dikeou-Pop: Colfax as part of MCS. The videos are presented within a kiosk painted by Christian Schumann, which was part of another collaborative art project called Evel Machines Devon helped organize in collaboration with Mike Brown in NYC in the 90s. Artists Rachel Harrison, Ricci Albenda, Kenny Schachter, Lee Stoetzel, Rainer Ganahl, and Schumann were commissioned to customize these kiosks and have them placed in NYC businesses like Naked Lunch, SoHo Grand, Family of God, and The Void where they served as informational booths with local recommendations for bars, restaurants, hotels, galleries, museums, clubs, and other cool spots in the neighborhood. For “Moving Still” I decided to place the kiosk in proximity to Devon’s City Gates to give it that New York on-the-street feel as part of its original conception.

Considering the potent overlap between Devon’s art practice, art collecting & curating, and editing & publishing zingmagazine, it was impossible to ignore the relevance of the zing Curatorial Video Crossing project she initiated in the early 2000s for this exhibition. There’s a total of 42 videos across all three compilation volumes, and several of the participating artists are represented in Dikeou Collection, such as Dan Asher, Marcel Dzama, Sebastiaan Bremer, Lisa Kereszi, and Rainer Ganahl. The zing videos allow for more Dikeou Collection artist representation in the exhibition which was important for me.

Zapp Magazine, Issue #01, March 1994
Devon Dikeou, “Out, Out, Damn Spot” – Macbeth, Shakespeare, Happening Professional Waiter Serving 300 Warm Towels to Viewers, Who Enjoyed, Used, and Discarded the Towels, Variable Dimensions

Zapp Magazine was a surprise discovery when digging through the collection’s archives in search of more video treasures. I spent about a week watching all the artist tapes and DVDs I could find. I saw a lot of weird, wonderful stuff, but the decision to include Zapp Magazine was immediate because it shows Devon’s Out, Out, Damn Spot – Macbeth, Shakespeare performance installation when it was exhibited in “Bodyguard” at Hohenthal und Bergen Cologne in 1994. Out, Out, Damn Spot is currently on view in MCS, and the video is placed within that installation. For context, Zapp Magazine was an international videozine distributed on VHS from 1993-1999 that presented “exciting developments in contemporary art through registrations of shows, performances, artists’ video’s, interviews etc.” While the presence of Devon’s artwork on this particular tape was the main reason I decided to include it in the exhibition, Zapp Magazine really was on the cutting edge of collecting and compiling video art, interviews, and exhibition documentation in a cohesive and serialized format. These tapes are rarely shown in public and are not digitized, so I am grateful to share this work.

As far as the dialogue between the compilations and the individual artist videos, I’d say it’s about camaraderie, variety, and providing a different viewing experience for the audience. As previously mentioned, there are Dikeou Collection artists represented in the zing compilations, and, additionally, there are several artists in the Zapp videos who have affiliations with zingmagazine like Vito Acconci, Janine Antoni, Karen Kilimnik, Richard Agerbeek, Simon Bill (also a Dikeou artist), Sarah Morris, and Raymond Pettibon, among others. The overlap between all the artists among different projects and platforms is boundless. I love discovering these connections and I hope that resonates with audience as well.

Momoyo Torimitsu, Miyata Jiro, Mixed Media Robotic Man, Six Performance DVD Videos, Variable Dimensions
Devon Dikeou, We’d Like to Get to Know You, Business Cards, Variable Dimensions

Dikeou Collection is right at home in this neighborhood of cross-pollination between media, platform, content, etc. Can you share some of the cross-conversational elements of the video art exhibited at Dikeou Collection and corresponding zing projects and archival items?

Yes! The videos by Serge Onnen and Momoyo Torimitsu are part of expansive installations that represent other aspects of their artistic output. This is a central tenet to Dikeou Collection’s approach to collecting—to collect an artist’s work in breadth and in depth so we can exhibit the full range of their practice. Momoyo’s Miyata Jiro is, in my opinion, one of the strongest examples of this approach in the collection. The nexus of the artwork is a performance in which Momoyo took the Miyata Jiro robot to six major tourist and financial districts around the world and had him crawl through the streets while she, dressed as a nurse, tended to him along the way. The six videos in the installation serve as performance documentation, as does the photograph from the New York performance. Then, of course, there is the robot itself on the floor . . . all of which is now set in relation to Devon’s We’d Like to Get to Know You. So much cross-pollination happening in just that one room!

Various Artists, VHS Tape Submissions for zingmagazine Curatorial Video Crossing and final master tapes on Betamax
Select Postcard Requests for Submission for zingmagazine Curatorial Video Crossing

Another unique feature of the “Moving Still” exhibition is the inclusion of archival elements of the zingmagazine Curatorial Video Crossing videos. The extensive archives at Dikeou Collection open the doors to a deeper understanding of the magic that happens behind the scenes in the studio, at the collection, and at zing HQ. During my archival deep-dives I found the original VHS tapes submitted by the artists for inclusion in Curatorial Video Crossing. These individual tapes were compiled into master tapes on Betamax, which are displayed in the exhibition. One of my favorite discoveries in the archives was a batch of self-addressed & stamped postcards sent from zing HQ to dozens of artists requesting their participation in the Video Crossing project, with two handwritten checkboxes for “Will Participate” or “Will not Participate.” The cards reveal the DIY-ness of it all, and the intimate relationships between artists. Each one is personal and delightful.

zingmagazine Curatorial Video Crossing archival display with VHS and Betamax tapes, postcards, and zingmagazines; Dan Asher, Creature, DVD Projection

The zingmagazine Curatorial Video Crossing videos emphasize the magazine’s ability to extend beyond the printed publication, but the magazine itself has featured numerous projects that pertain to video, film, cinema, moving images, or images viewed on a screen or some kind of projection. I went through every zing project, bookmarked the ones that fell into those categories, and included them in the archival display. Some of the strongest examples of these projects include Susan Robinson in issue 1, Tamas Banovich and Brendan Quick in issue 2, Jonathan Horowitz in issue 3, Rachel Harrison in issue 4, Neil Goldberg in issue 6, Jane Hart in issue 15, Drazen Bosnjak in issue 18, Alix Lambert’s project in issue 24 as well as mine on Harry Smith, and Maria Antleman’s project in issue 25.

Researching and incorporating archival ephemera and artwork that addresses video in a printed format was my favorite part in organizing this exhibition, and, I think, a distinguishing characteristic of “Moving Still” within the .MOV landscape.

Rachel Dalamangas
New York, New York
August 2025