Bharat Sikka documents the changes, influences, and confusion experienced by contemporary India in a series of muted studio portraits. Bharat Sikka is part of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' exhibition "The Matter Within: New Contemporary Art of India". • Video by Kai Hsing (proto-kai.com) • Music via Free Music Archive: http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tortue_Super_Sonic • More about the exhibition Bharat is part of at ybca.org/matter-within

What are the bare essentials an artist needs to live in New York? In this film, artist Tommy Hartung ventures out from his home and studio in Ridgewood, Queens to meet up with two friends—fellow artists Ronnie Bass and Georgia Sagri—in nearby Bushwick, Brooklyn. Along the way, Hartung chronicles his own path to becoming an artist: working as a cook out of high school, deciding to attend college to study art, and finding cost-effective places to live and make his work.

How does design shape society? In this film, artist Mika Tajima traces the legacy of the influential Action Office furniture line—developed by Herman Miller—and how it serves as the inspiration for her own work. Introduced in 1964 and still in production today, the Action Office is a modular and customizable system of semi-enclosed cubicles. Intended to spur efficiency and productivity in the workplace, Tajima views the widespread adoption of the cubicle in the 1970s and 80s as profoundly dehumanizing, with each worker isolated in a sea of confined spaces.

Revisiting The Quiet Man: Ireland on Film
The Museum of Modern Art, May 20–June 3, 2011

Filmed by Professor Bright Films. Directed by Ben Coccio. Cinematography by Cal Robertson. Edited by David Shuff. Produced by MoMA
Images courtesy of Photofest
© 2011 The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Abstract Expressionist New York
The Museum of Modern Art, October 3, 2010–April 11, 2011
MoMA.org/abexny

Filmed by Plowshares Media
Images courtesy of Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko; The Willem de Kooning Foundation; Pollock-Krasner Foundation; Estate of Arshile Gorky; Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York; Grace Hartigan; Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; James Burke; Time & Life Pictures; Getty Images; and The Museum of Modern Art and The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York

New York-based artist Mary Miss shares her latest city-wide project, commissioned by the IMA: FLOW (Can You See the River)? FLOW is Miss’ precedent project for City as Living Laboratory: Sustainability Made Tangible through the Arts (CaLL), a framework developed by Miss and Marda Kirn, Executive Director of EcoArts Connections. CaLL offers a vision for linking the arts with science, urban planning, and education to help us imagine and create cities that redefine how we live our lives, use our resources, communicate, educate, and work.

Weston Teruya creates miniature worlds in paper sculpture to expose hidden histories.

What is the responsibility of an artist to her community? In this film, artist and activist LaToya Ruby Frazier discusses the economic and environmental decline of her hometown—Braddock, Pennsylvania—the city that the clothing company Levi’s used as inspiration and backdrop for a major advertising campaign in 2010.