Program
Notes for Ladies and boys and touching:
Selections from recent shows
curated and introduced by Astria
Suparak
for Video
Mundi at The
Chicago Cultural Center
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Ladies
and boys and touching: Selections from recent
shows
These video and audio works are brazenly aware of their own
representation, those fake gestures symbolizing love, and the self-proclaimed
identity of Art. On the other hand, this is a Science Fair. We're interested
in breeding and practicing our (dance) moves until perfection is reached, and
by golly you're either with us or against us.
Selections from three programs curated by Astria Suparak in the last year: "Looking
is better than feeling you" (created for non-academic and non-artworld young
girls at Ladyfest in San Francisco and Washington, D.C.), "Adolescent
boys, and Living rooms" (for the Yale School of Architecture and
for non-English speaking audiences at Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo
in Mexico City) and "Keep
In Touch!" (for The 9th New York Underground Film Festival).
1. Jennifer
Sullivan. (Brooklyn,
NY). DANCING GIRLS. Super-8 film
to video, as intro installation. 8:50 min. 2002. Premiere.
"A document of girls (including myself) performing
in the mid-1980s, expressing themselves instinctually, exuberantly, self-consciously,
hysterically. Their dancing is both authentic and completely theatrical at the
same time." -J.S.
2. Zakery Weiss.
(Brooklyn, NY). Untitled. Video.
4:30. 2001.
The artifice of artsy Arte: "The cool blue invites and chides,
wanting of itself, wanting of you. Are you audience enough for its lies and
truths? Is its maker artist enough to be worthy of the attention he demands
from you? Is the screen deep enough to contain you and the artist and all the
colossal egos and expectations and unfed hungers everybody brings with them?"
-Cinematexas
3. Seth Price.
(Long Island City, NY). Triumf. Video.
15:00 excerpt of 60 minute work. 2000.
"In the style of a political infomercial, an educational video,
and an appeal to the average people of America, a robust woodsman recaps some
of the facts about Ronald Wilson Reagan, a figure who looms large in twentieth-century
mythology." -Impakt
4.
Miranda July. (Portland, OR). THEA.
Audio. 1:05. 2002.
From The Drifters, an audio installation commissioned by the
Whitney Museum for the elevators at the 2002 Whitney Biennial.
5.
Kathy High. (Brooklyn,
NY). DOMESTIC VIGILANCIA. Video.
6:50 min. 2000-2.
High, thinking that she might die in the year 2000, decided to "perform her
death," creating a tape around the topic each month. Her own pets, Oscar (cat),
Ernie (cat), Push (cat) and Lily (dog) also play a major role in the events
as she projects her own fears and anxieties onto them. The animals humorously
embody and thwart her attempts to die.
6. Alex
Villar. (New
York, NY). UPWARD MOBILITY. (2002).
Video, 7:42 min.
"Like the in-between activities it seeks to investigate, my
work lives between various fields: part nomadic architecture, part intangible
sculpture and part performance without spectacle." - A.V.
or "In contrast to the invisible horizontal line drawn by everyday movements
in the city, this video shows a person in search of vertical deviations from
this norm. This project is part of a long-term investigation and articulation
of potential spaces of dissent in the urban landscape." -AV
7. Harrell
Fletcher and Jon Rubin with Anthony Powers.
(San Francisco, CA and Portland, OR).
ANTHONY. (1997-2002), 5 min.
From an exhibition that revolved around the interests of a San Francisco art
student. "In general Anthony was always banging on tables and when we asked
him what he was doing he said that he was drumming to all of the heavy metal
songs that were constantly flowing through his head." -HF
8. Messieurs
Delmotte. (Belgium). CE
QUI EST FAIT LE MAL EST FAIT. (1998), 4 min.
"This is not a performance and even less a good idea." -M.D. Mystery artist
"Messieurs Delmotte" performs silent-movie hijinks with disregard for dignity
and limb.
9.
Ann Weathersby.
(New York, NY). HUMANE RESTRAINT.
Video. 8:05. 2002. Premiere.
A man with a video camera
encounters a woman's head on the beach and engages it in dialogue. "The body
is fully buried for long periods of time, so there is a complete relinquishing
of control. Tensions concerning vulnerability versus security, repression versus
outcry, intellect versus emotion and private versus public space are explored."
-A.W.
10.
Karen Yasinsky. (New York, NY). FEAR.
Film to video. 5:26 min. 2001
"In the lovely outdoors a man rolls around with a girl on one screen while
on the other he cries. Is he distressed over a horrid memory or is it an unwanted
forbidden desire? Is that a little girl that he's fondling? It's just a doll,
isn't it? The girls are all in school. Airplanes, tears and a loving flight
attendant doing her best to make it all better." -KY
11. Colleen Hennessey.
(Los Angeles, CA). FOR HOME PROJECT. Video.
:30 sec. 2002. Premiere.
Thirty seconds of objects in a relationship made in conjunction
with the Home Video Project: artists contributing 30 seconds on the concept
of home.
12.
Jacqueline Goss. (Tivoli, NY). SLAPSTICKERS
or DIGIT + DIAN. Video. 6:10 min. 1999.
"What if Dian Fossy and her favorite mountain gorilla Digit
had survived and moved to Generica, USA? Slapstickers takes their story to new
terrain in order to look for what's at the heart of the Anthropomorphizing human.
Here, one finds language, deceit, and humor are front and center." -JG
13. Miranda July. (Portland,
OR). BRUCE LEE. Audio. 1:35 min. 2002.
From an ongoing series of dialogues and stories commissioned by and for The
Next Big Thing, a radio show produced by New York NPR member station WNYC.
TRT: approx. 76 min.
for more information contact
a@astriasuparak.com
or see www.astriasuparak.com
PO Box 1813 / New York, NY 10009