Street Roots • March 13-19, 2015
CA TS, fro m page 10
News
for a rhinoplasty surgeon. “Were the
Betacam videos for fun or for art? They are
the same to me. It wasn’t for sharing. It was
just for me.”
When the technology became available to
digitize his disintegrating Beta tapes, he
decided to keep Keyboard Cat for posterity
and to amuse his daughter. YouTube had
just launched; a friend suggested he post
the clip there.
“I didn’t really know what YouTube was. It
was like the Internet was ready; the cat was
already way ahead of
the times,” Schmidt
reflects. “The fact that
ssot going arem si saving
there’s some success
l i b Is Ila® a r t Fm saying l i e
and income based on
festival Is an interesting
just doing something
eiperfeae® that 1 th in k does
that I wanted to do,
fa ll lu te the art realm el
I’m really glad about
experiences. A rt should delight that.
“It reinforces me
and dialleage« I t shonld make
making a r t It makes
yew mad sometimes, and most me want to make
of a ll It should make yew think». more. It’s been just a
Oood art does a ll those things/ totally all-round great
experience. I’ve
and a lo t of these videos are
learned so much,
llfce th a t/*
something exciting and
~~ SCOTT STOLEN new every day. I live in
F O U N D E R O F T H E IN T E R N E T Nowheresville
' C A T V ID E O F E S T IV A L
(Spokane, Wash.), and
the Internet helps
distribute my stuff
globally from my dining room table. That’s
fantastic.”
thousands” of cat videos. “There are more
people trying to make a cat video that goes
viral than ever before. But I’m. convinced
there is no magic formula. You can’t
manufacture it,” he says.
Like Schmidt, Stulen comes from a fine-
art background. He had worked in museums
for 10 years as a curator and educator when
he and Katie Hill, an intern who worked
alongside him at Minneapolis’ Walker Art
Center, dreamed up the Internet Cat Video
Festival in 2012 as “a fun way to close the
summer,” getting folks together in an open
space beside the gallery to watch much
loved funny cats and, like Cannes or
Sundance, award prizes for the best.
“We had no expectation of it becoming as
large as it did,” Stulen says. “We thought
maybe a couple of hundred people would
show up.” They circulated a press release
drawing attention to their cute juxtaposition
of high art versus low (museum versus
cats), and within three hours, they were
being interviewed by the L.A. Times. The
estimate of 500 visitors upped to 1,500,
then 5,000.
“In the end, 10,000 showed up, and we
had all this residual traffic of people buying
from the shop, buying tickets to other
events; they went to see our exhibitions,”
Stulen says, “It cracked that thing that
everybody in the museum context is after —
how do you get people to care, how do you
change your audience?”
Almost immediately, Walker Arts Center
received requests to tour CatVidFest. This
was a triumph for Stulen.
“There was a lot of snobbery, internally at
’■ Unlike more conyentional artists, Schmidt
has 8O,0OO unread m e^ ag es at thie ’
the Walkef a ^ j^ ^ ^ ^ n y c rO n ro B n ^ p la c e B .
Katie^anH^^nuckTIusTlur^Yiirough. It
would not have happened if it wasn’t for us
moment.
being able to navigate the museum a little
Sociologists, psychologists and scientists
bit politically and also a little slyly. A lot of
have produced reams of research in a bid to
curators didn’t want this to happen. If they’d
explain why these memes — or fads, like a |
known the level it would grow to, it probably
video or funny picture, that go viral on the
wouldn’t have happened either.”
Internet and are shared millions of times —
Stulen, who was subsequently
are so popular. Why are cats funnier than
headhunted and is no longer directly
dogs? Why do cats like to squeeze inside
involved with CatVidFest but consults for
boxes? Why are people compelled to watch
Cat-Con, approached the curation of the
them over and over and over again and
festival from a meticulous, art-critical
share them with everyone they know? How
perspective. It wasn’t just stuff we fritter
can marketing companies hijack these fads
hours on at home; clips were carefully
and turn their products into a universally
edited, a program pieced together, proper
loved global phenomenon?
filmmakers invited. The most celebrated
People who know cat videos best say -
was Will Braden, whose moody Henri, Le
with no small amount of glee - the simple
Chat Noir black-and-white shorts are
fact is we can’t really ever answer these
beautiful and darkly funny. Braden, who is
questions, and marketing types can never
now curator of CatVidFest and will also be
cook up a surefire hit. in a consumer-testing
at Cat-Con, is another “proper artist.” But
lab.
can cat videos really be called art?
“We’ve had clients who’ve said, ‘We’ll just
“I’m not going around saying this is fine
pay for the rights’ or ‘Get the cat here and
art,” Stulen insists. “I’m saying the festival
we’ll just shoot it ourselves,’” muses
is an interesting experience that I think
Schmidt. “I don’t know if you want to try
does fall into the art realm of experiences.
th a t.... It takes a certain temperament of
Art
should delight and challenge. It should
cat, for sure. You can’t just take a cat and
think that it’s going to work. Once in a while make you mad sometimes, and most of all it
should make you think. Good art does all
they make it look good, but it doesn t look
those things, and a lot of these videos are
the same.”
like that.
Scott Stulen, founder of the Internet Cat
“Fun doesn’t have to be frivolous, and
Video Festival, has watched “tens of
Page 11
IA M L IL B U B /W IK IG O M M O N S
LU Bub
smart doesn’t have to be
boring,” he adds. It’s a
sentiment echoed by
Schmidt (his website
states: “I don’t know
regular life from art. But
I do know that if
something is boring and
then you call it art, it is
Still boring”).
This year, the Walker
Center’s CatVidFest
moves from the museum
. to the St. Paul Saints’ ,
new sports ground.
“This is not a lucrativi
operation for the
Walker,” says Ryan
French, director of
marketing, when asked ii
it’s cashing in on cats.
“However, the success is clearly due to the
popularity of cat videos. Other festivals
based on other video genres have popped
up, but none have had this success. This is a
weird phenomenon no one predicted would
be so popular.”
He argues that the art world has been
“overwhelmingly supportive of the concept,”
and most venues that have booked the tour
are art museums or art house cinemas.
Audiences comprise “mostly people who
enjoy a cat video, whether they know it or
not,” plus a few “fanatics who dress up like
cats or try to bring their cats” - but mainly
it’s people sharing a cheerful experience.
And as for sniffy types who think cat videos
are beneath them, he says: “Coolness is in
the eye of the beholder. The festival has no
pretence, it is an incredibly earliest and
open experience.”
Courtesy o f IN SP News Service www.street-
papers.org
G A G E S K ID M O R E /
W IK IC O M M O N S
Grumpy Cat
speaking at the
2014 VidCon on
June 28, 2014.