MEDIA REMIX: Pastor Jim Bakker Helps You Stay Alive During the Apocalypse

VIDEO ART CHANEL

VIDEO ART CHANEL from apasolini on Vimeo.

Taking up the videoart tradition of subverting pop cultural products, VIDEO ART CHANEL plays on French cliches and the kitsch grandeur of film trailers with a re-edit of the trailer of Coco Chanel's biopic.

TV sculpture

Dario Tironi. things: cane, (2010)

Tell Lie Vision

TV series Friends and its homophobia

"The show Friends was a mainstay of popular American television for a decade and like most sitcoms it relied heavily on heteronormative or homophobic comedy situations and throwaway gags. During its ten years on the air, between 1994 and 2004, the show racked up an enormous number of gay jokes. Here Tijana Mamula has meticulously collected these clips to create an ambitious 45 minute montage in the style of the original series to sheds light on the homophobic attitudes both on Friends and in the large contemporary TV culture."

Homophobic Friends from WayDownEast on Vimeo.

1980s video art

I stumbled upon these video collage pieces on YouTube and they have a lot of the stuff I love, mainly, TV material processed into visual essays. I couldn’t figure out who posted it, though ...

1984 series

Dara Birnbaum - Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978)

Dara Birnbaum - Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978)

Dara Birnbaum

General Idea, Shut the Fuck Up, 1984 (Part I and II)

"...Using ironic and iconic excerpts from television and film from the 1960s, such as The Joker character from Batman and part of the historic footage of artist Yves Klein's painting and performance from Mondo Cane, General Idea examine the relationship between the mass media and the artist. Recalling Klein's use of 'IKB' — International Klein Blue or chroma-key blue — they revisit their own performance of XXX blue, 1984, at Centre d'art Contemporain in Geneva, where the artists painted large Xs using stuffed poodles dipped in blue paint. The video reveals the meaning of language and iconography in their work, and provides some background for their choice of poodles as mascot and metaphor. As Felix Partz comments: 'Those who live to please, must please to live.'

In Shut the Fuck Up, General Idea underline the media's insistence that only gossip and spectacle make art and artists interesting to the public. On the contrary, General Idea point out, artists are no fools, nor do they operate within "a passive yet cleverly deceitful, alienated cult of the imbecile.' Jorge Zontal has the last word: 'When there is nothing to say, shut the fuck up.'"

Via ArtForum

"the peace tape"

by Jacob Ciocci

Piece in ArtForum

Cheryl Donegan's Head (1993)

One of videoart's finest moments ...

Television Delivers People

Television Delivers People (Richard Serra, 1973)


I don't normally use this blog to report about video art exhibitions, but I decided to make an exception for the Television Delivers People show currently playing at the Whitney Museum in New York until 17 February.

"Television Delivers People brings together single-channel video works from the 1970s to the present that examine how an individual viewer is shaped by television's structure and content. These videos also suggest the possibility of an active approach to viewing which remains relevant even as the physical experience of viewing changes. The exhibition takes its title from Richard Serra's video Television Delivers People (1973, playing above), which pairs a Muzak soundtrack with a scrolling list of statements describing the manipulative strategies and motivations of corporate advertisers imbedded in television. Works from the late 1970s and early '80s by Dara Birnbaum and Joan Braderman extend Serra's media critique by using strategies of appropriation to deconstruct specific television genres and programs. Videos by Michael Smith and Alex Bag adopt a performative approach in responding to television, acting out characters whose lives are shaped by cable and its endless programming choices. The exhibition also includes videos by a number of young artists who have created experimental narratives reflective of a dense internet culture, where diverse content from television, film, and music is immediately accessible and available for manipulation and response. Curator: Gary Carrion-Murayari."

New York Times review of the show