Spotlight: Anthony Discenza

In 1991 CCA alum Anthony Discenza moved from New Jersey to California, where his friend and fellow video artist, Torsten Burns, was studying at the San Francisco Art Institute. The two formed a collaborative, the HalfLifers—an ongoing collaboration to create art that has been recognized and exhibited internationally.

Already a professional artist, Discenza was making video works that explore information as landscape and medium, when he decided to complete his art education by taking advantage of CCA’s MFA program.

“I'm interested in revealing the world of images around us as a very real space—one which shapes our world view in all sorts of potent but invisible way. … My goal is to destabilize the act of viewing itself, in the hopes of revitalizing the ways we engage with this both ubiquitous and unseen world of images.”

Taken from the artist’s statement regarding mass media images that bombard us daily: “The result is a profound level of alienation, a gradual poisoning of our own experiences as the logic of the spectacle colonizes our own internal narratives.”

Discenza’s solo and collaborative artwork has been shown at numerous national and international venues. Film titles include: December 3rd, 1998—12:03–1:17 A.M., Object 8242600, Phosphorescence, and The Vision Engine.

Noteworthy screenings and exhibitions include Distributed Memory at the J. Paul Getty Museum (New York); Artists of Invention: A Century of CCA (Oakland Museum of California); Reprocessing Information (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art); Remembrance at the Australian Center for the Moving Image (Melbourne); the New York Video Festival; and the 2000 Whitney Biennial.

Additionally, Discenza has exhibited at The Museum of Modern Art (New York); New Langton Arts (San Francisco); The Sara Meltzer Gallery; Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, CA); Temporary Contemporary (London); the Belkin Gallery (Vancouver); and Hosfelt Gallery (San Francisco); the New York Video Festival; CinemaTexas (Austin); the Anne Arbor Film Festival; THAW Festival of Film, Video and Digital Media (Iowa City); Stuttgart Filmwinter; and the Impakt Festival (Utrecht, the Netherlands).

Today Discenza is a senior lecturer at CCA. He is represented by the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco and the Video Databank of Chicago. In regard to the impressive exposure his artwork has attracted Discenza comments that it’s all been “a great honor, but I have to take it with a grain of salt; I don't want to build up my expectations about what it’s going to mean.”

Discenza recently completed a project with local media artist and CCA lecturer Rebeca Bollinger. Currently he’s in a group show at Catharine Clark Gallery and another show is being planned at the same gallery with longtime collaborator Torsten Burns.

Featured in Glance, 2003

Born in 1967 in New Jersey

CCA degree:
MFA 2000, Film/Video

Additional education:
BA 1990, Studio Art, Wesleyan University

Residence:
Oakland, California

Current occupation:
Senior lecturer, CCA; Artist

Influences at CCA:
JBarney Haynes, Larry Sultan, Maria Porges, Ted Purves

Website:
www.anthonydiscenza.com