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Existential Virtuality Header

Sat., 2014-02-28

Download a programme for this date here.


I
n the MAC's Black Box Theater, the Medianale Finale:

Existential Virtuality, curated by Carolyn Sortor

Except as otherwise noted, all works are in HD video. For additional info, download the press kit (recently updated with additional materials). Parental advisory: some portions of this program might be considered inappropriate for children.

5:45PM (Compilation Screening:) Death, Desire, + Commerce in 5-D

Still from Random Darknet Shopper

!MedienGruppe Bitnik, video capture from Random Darknet Shopper (2014), 2:30 min. For an exhibition at Kunst Halle St. Gallen, the artists installed an online shopping bot programmed to make random purchases on the deepweb, giving the bot a budget of $100 in bitcoin per week.

Installation view, courtesy of the artists

 

Laure Prouvost, Wantee (2013), 14:22 min. Presenting as a naively charming, pretend-documentary about a conceptual artist grandfather gone missing, this video operates on multiple levels, weaving together memorably odd impressions relating to mortality and aesthetic influence, subjectivity and desire, knowledge and representation, the utility, or not, of art, and general mucking about. The artist received the Turner Prize for this piece in 2013.

Still from HD video, courtesy of the artist and MOTINTERNATIONAL

Still from Wantee

 

Still from Loudly, Death Unties

Sheila & Nicholas Pye, Loudly, Death Unties (2007), 11 min. Part of a trilogy featured at the 2014 Moving Image Fair NY, this piece typifies the intensely evocative imagery and audio, exquisitely composed videography, and darkly sensuous aesthetic for which the Pyes are known.

Still from HD video, courtesy of the artists

 

Harm van den Dorpel, Strategies (2011), 5:05 min. Images and materials collected by screencapture software developed by the artist were re-worked and collaged with advice from business experts, martial arts gurus, software developers, and Jacques Derrida. The artist’s work has been shown internationally including at the New Museum and MoMA PS.1.

Still from HD video, courtesy of the artist

Still from Strategies

 

Still from Hyperlinks or it didn't happen

Cécile B. Evans, Hyperlinks or it didn’t happen (2014), 22:37 min. In an intensification of so-called “hyperlink cinema,” this piece presents various digital iterations of humanity – the CGI persona of a deceased actor, an invisible woman, a spam bot, et al. – as they function across various settings, genres, and modes of representation. Storylines build, converge, and collapse around overarching ideas of existence without anatomy: the ways in which we work and live within the machine. Evans recently completed Agnes, a bot who lives on the Serpentine Galleries’ website (you can meet Agnes at www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/agnes ). Supported by the Arts Council of England.

Still from HD video, courtesy of the artist

 

Addie Wagenknecht & Pablo Garcia, Webcam Venus (2013), 2:41 min. The artists asked sexcam workers to assume poses from iconic works of art. Wagenknecht is an Eyebeam alum, member of F.A.T. Lab, and Warhol Foundation grantee; Garcia is an Asst. Professor at SAIC.

Still from HD video, courtesy of the artists
and bitforms gallery

Still from Webcam Venus

 

7:15PM (Single screening)

My Barbarian-Still from Universal Declaration

My Barbarian, Universal Declaration of Infantile Anxiety Situations Reflected in the Creative Impulse (2013), 30 min. This sui generis musical collage draws from influential texts by psychoanalyst Melanie Klein and former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, casting the artists and their mothers in a variety of roles from Impressionist Mary Cassatt to the White Trash Ladies Club. Exhibited in the 2014 Whitney Biennial.

Still from HD video, courtesy of the artists
and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects


8:15PM (Compilation Screening:) Death, Desire, + Commerce in 5-D
(See description above at 5:45PM.)

10pm After-party at the Magnolia Bar, upstairs in the Landmark Magnolia Theatre, 3699 McKinney Ave. in West Village, with video (behind the bar):

Jeff Gibbons, Humming Music / Grinding Teeth (2012), SD video, 31:56 min.  Part 1 of an ongoing video diary. His work is currently also on view at the Goss-Michael Foundation and Conduit Gallery.

 

 


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