Automatic Update
The Yoshiko and Akiomorita Media Gallery
June 27-September 10 2007
Hiatus
1999. USA. Directed by Ericka Beckman
Courtesy of the artist
Madi plays an interactive online computer game in the privacy of her apartment. Wearing a computer corset that stores her programs in a "Garden Interface," she propels her go-go cowgirl construct WANDA through the game world, encountering an assortment of logged-on players and game identities that trick and confuse her. An aggressive male character, WANG, logs on, and inserts his cold architecture into her coordinates, draining the power in her corset. His expanding architecture threatens to overtake her Garden Reservoir. To confront this powerful take-over artist, she must rely on her organic memory and is forced to establish some psychological boundaries to protect her identity and preserve her freedom.
What You Mean We?
1986. USA. Directed by Laurie Anderson
Strapped for time due to her busy schedule of personal appearances, Anderson creates an awkward-looking clone to take over and keep up her artistic production. Anderson plays both parts, pitting the chain-smoking, productive male half against the laid-back female half. In the end, one highly successful clone begets another clone, a situation that spoofs the rise and fall of the 1980s art star.
Nest of Tens
1999. USA. Directed by Miranda July
Still image courtesy of the artist and the Video Data Bank, www.vdb.org
Four alternating stories unfold, revealing mundane yet personal methods of control. These systems are derived from intuitive sources. Children and a retarded adult operate control panels made out of paper, lists, monsters, and their own bodies. A young boy, home alone, performing a bizarre ritual with a baby; an uneasy, aborted sexual flirtation between a teenage babysitter and an older man; an airport lounge encounter between a businesswoman (played by July) and a young girl.
Interregna
1999–2000. USA. Directed by John Pilson
John Pilson explores how life rushes into the corporate environment. The title refers to Manhattan's gridded street plan as well as to modernist architecture and its legacy in Minimalism. In this controlled environment, men in business suits sing doo-wop songs in the corridors, elevators, and bathrooms of a corporate office tower.
Pickelporno
1992. Switzerland . Directed by Pipilotti Rist
Still image courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York
Rist blurs the boundaries between art and entertainment, creating an exuberant hybrid. A surveillance camera makes low-flying journeys across the bodies of a young man and woman, in an ode to sensuality and pleasure. Pickelporno is an ’anti-pornography’ that shows how to address the topic of eroticism with grace and style, and to present it in a way that is aesthetically challenging while ensuring that neither image nor imagination descend into the vulgar realm of virile obscenity.
Host
1997. USA. Directed by Kristin Lucas
Still image courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York
In this video, the artist participates in an online therapy session directed by the system operator of a sidewalk multimedia kiosk. As she indulges in a virtual conversation about a troublesome relationship, the session instantly becomes an amalgamation of daytime television and tabloid, wherein the surveillance camera becomes the eye of the media.
