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Dream Job: For Artists, By Artists

Oct 1, 2006 12:32 PM, By Kristinha M. Anding

Michael Masucci feels an acute sense of responsibility to his fellow artists. It's this social consciousness that propelled the former New Yorker, high-end photographer, and musician to the West Coast and the budding video arts world of EZTV. Now, as the artistic director of the 27-year-old Santa Monica, Calif. — based media center, Masucci continues to ask, “What more can we do?”

“For a variety of reasons right now, the U.S. isn't the friendliest place for the arts, compared to, say, Europe and a variety of societies that put much more of their GNP into funding the arts,” Masucci says. “Rather than cry, ‘Woe is me,’ we ask: ‘What can we do about it?’”

Masucci, EZTV President Kate Johnson, and the rest of EZTV's core staff regularly lend their considerable equipment, talents, and viewing space to artists whose works don't quite fit the fashions sought by Hollywood, the National Endowment of the Arts, or other mainstream funders. EZTV keeps its process of “artist-run philanthropy” low-key and self-sufficient, financing its nonprofit work through its production and postproduction business, which also tends toward the avant-garde.

Throughout the years, such reputable networks and venues as PBS, BBC, and the Museum of Modern Art have picked up EZTV's works, and the organization has garnered a following for both its productions and its cutting-edge methodology. Masucci says that EZTV's nonprofit and budgeted pieces are “often looking to prove the unproven in terms of story ideas or ways of doing work.” Recent collaborations have included a 6ft. video totem pole installation for dancer Loren Denker, a video arts documentary for ballerina Mia Slavenska, and a film aggregating the picture phone transmissions sent between performance artist Barbara T. Smith and a Biosphere participant. Among the projects on the horizon are a hybrid live dance/motion graphics production for next year's Siggraph and an experimental media web portal collaboration with IT company Live Digital.

No matter what flights of fancy EZTV's projects take, Masucci says the organization stays grounded in grassroots advocacy.

“We feel very community- and civic-minded,” he says. “Like we all have a responsibility to help where we can.”

For more information about EZTV, visit www.eztvmedia.com.

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