E-flux Video Rental Catalogue

Conceived by Anton Vidokle and Julieta Aranda in 2004 as a video rental shop that operates for free, e-flux video rental was a project proposing an alternative means of distributing and circulating video art. In spite of the fact that many artists of the 1960s and 70s were drawn to working with video because it was relatively inexpensive and easy to reproduce and distribute, the subsequent assimilation of video art into the precious-object economy of the art market has significantly limited access to video works.

EVR began as a functional reflection and inversion of this process. Comprising a public screening room, a film and video archive that grew with each installation of EVR, and a free video rental shop, VHS tapes could be watched in the space or checked out and taken home once a viewer has completed a membership form.

Since its original presentation at a storefront at 53 Ludlow Street in New York in 2004, EVR traveled to venues in Amsterdam, Berlin, Frankfurt, Seoul, Paris, Istanbul, Canary Islands, Austin, Cali, Budapest, Boston, Antwerp, Miami, Lisbon, Lyon, and Rome. Each time EVR was presented in a new city, local artists, curators, writers, and art historians were invited to select works to be added to the collection. Over the years, this resulted in a collection of nearly 1000 works of film and video art by more than 600 artists and artists’ collectives from all parts of the world, until it finally found a permanent home in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Ljubljana in 2011.