Herman Asselberghs, Futur Antérieur, image copyright Jonathan Gröger

The Washington Project for the Arts’ fourth annual Experimental Media Series begins tonight with an opening reception at the WPA’s Massachusetts Avenue space from 7 to 9 p.m. This year’s exhibit, When Absence Becomes Presence, explores time based media in the forms of sound art, music, literary readings, video art, and sound recording, and is presented in partnership with the Phillips Collection.

Nine works were selected for the exhibition by curators Sonja Simonyi and Niels Van Tomme. Simonyi previously organized film events for the National Gallery of Art, and is currently working towards her PhD in Cinema Studies at NYU. Niels Van Tomme is the Curator and Director of Arts and Media at D.C.’s Provisions Library, and focuses his work on “the sociopolitical aspects of contemporary audio-visual culture.”

All of the works appear to deal with a sense of absence and ambiguity, or as artist Martin Creed puts it, “the presence of nothing, to the unlimited possibilities of nothing.” While some of the video works have more definite plotlines, such as The Sister, an audio short story reading by Miranda July (of Me and You and Everyone We Know) which is about a girl who “is always just out of sight, misses dates, becomes the stuff of mythology through her absence,” others seem to be vague and meaningless almost to a point of silliness. For example, The Conet Project’s Counting Control is described as “a mysterious and seemingly nonsensical transmission of unknown origin, this shortwave number station recording is believed to having been used for secret government communication.” Similarly mysterious, Herman Asselberghs’ video is stated to be “15 minutes of sheer blackness filled with nearly intolerable noise and an occasional twinkle of flickering light. Nothing points to anything, there are no signs of meaning in any way, until…”

If you miss the opening tonight, the best time to catch the exhibit is December 11 for a special screening and discussion with the curators. Visitors will be invited to view the works at the WPA at 5 p.m. Afterwards, at 6 p.m., the works will be screened at the Phillips Collection while the Kraft Prize for New Media and the WPA Experimental Art Prize are presented to the chosen artists.