The website of Diligent Board Portals – a provider of paperless boardroom presentation software – is positioned as a present-day equivalent, fulfilling a similar function in constructing corporate self-image during lean economic periods. The “paperless” business’s online presence is re-materialized in Corporate Video Decisions: www.diligent.com is printed and organized into a room-sized matrix of plexiglass-encased section headers, video monitors, and A4 sheets of written information packaged in plastic bags. Dually headquartered in Christchurch, New Zealand, and New York, USA, Diligent Board Portals’ corporate office locations parallel the geographic setting of the original 2011 gallery exhibitions of Corporate Video Decisions at Michael Lett in Auckland and Petzel in New York.
Corporate Video Decisions pairs two snapshots of video technology, drawn from two periods of global economic recession, to examine its commercial use. “Corporate Video Decisions” was the name of a trade magazine distributed to companies’ internal video production departments between 1988 and 1990, as video content made and circulated in-house sought to boost morale and manage investor confidence during an economic downturn. Covers from the magazine’s archive are the starting point for a number of works in Corporate Video Decisions, and are displayed in the exhibition as pairs of canvases on spacer-bar rigs.