William E. Jones Midcentury

Created in the Wexner Center’s Film/Video Studio and initially commissioned for the 2009 Venice Biennale, Midcentury is a compilation of short works mimicking a network’s broadcast day if it were condensed to a half-hour. Though Midcentury contains no first-person narration, it’s an autobiography of sorts: The work of a hyperactive child who grew up on a diet of television in the industrial wasteland of Massillon, Ohio, during the Cold War. (30 mins., video)

Jones’s work is also featured in the exhibition More American Photographs and during a screening of Selected Short Films in the Film/Video Theater on January 31. In addition, the Wexner Center Store is releasing a limited-edition box set DVD of Massillon, Jones’s breakthrough 1991 film, to coincide with the January 31 screening.