Spotlight: Joan Logue

A Gloucester fisherman stands on his boat out at sea and talks straight into the camera, and thirty seconds later it's the next man's turn. Some of the stories are comic and some are sad, and each is over before you've settled which.

Joan Logue has made hundreds of these short video portraits since the 1970s, of choreographers, activists and fishermen, cut to thirty seconds for audiences raised on television. This one, Video Portraits: New England Fishermen, was filmed in 1985 with the Contemporary Art Television Fund, a partnership between the ICA and WGBH. In 1985, thirty seconds already counted as a short attention span.

It's a single video of just under 15 minutes on the First Floor. More CAT Fund videos are in 90 YEARS, from 15 October. Included with $20 admission, free for 18 and under, and free for all on Thursdays 5 to 9 pm.