E-flux Video Rental Austin: Keep circulating the tapes

For your viewing pleasure, at Arthouse (Photo By Bret Brookshire)

Austin fancies itself a city with some great video-rental stores, the kind where one could find just about anything ever committed to celluloid, no matter how obscure. But if you've got an itch to see, say, Clemens von Wedemeyer's 2001 short, "Occupation," or maybe "I Verdi Giorni," Diego Perrone's animated short about four mischievous kids, even Vulcan and I Luv Video might not be able to come to your rescue. Well, fear no more, aficionado of the art-world film, E-Flux Video Rental has come to Austin. This project by New York artists Anton Vidokle and Julieta Aranda is basically a lending library of films by and about artists all over the world. Initially, the pair invited 46 curators to send them copies of works they could "rent" for free and accumulated some 400 short and feature-length videos that they offered through a storefront in Brooklyn. Then they created multiple editions of their collection that they would take to other cities for a limited time. In each new location, local curators have been asked to add to the collection, which has grown to more than 600 works. In bringing E-Flux to Austin, Arthouse has transformed the Jones Center for Contemporary Art into a video store with a screening room. You can watch videos on site or sign up for a membership card – at no charge, like the service – and take them home. Plus, there are special screenings during E-Flux's eight-week stay here: picks by artists Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler, Thursday, Nov. 30, 7pm; mystery picks by UT-Austin grad students, Saturday, Dec. 2, 3pm; picks by Risa Puleao, the Donkey Show/Fluent~Collaborative, Thursday, Dec. 7, 7pm; Arthouse staff picks, Thursday, Dec. 14, all day; and picks by Chale Nafus, director of programming at Austin Film Society, Thursday, Jan. 4, 7pm.