EAI (electronic art intermix) managed an outdoor program of alternative music videos and music-based video by artists. The screening will include works by Cory Arcangel, Charles Atlas, Michael Bell-Smith, Johanna Billing, Dara Birnbaum, Meredith Danluck, Devin Flynn, Shana Moulton, Tony Oursler with Sonic Youth, Ara Peterson, Seth Price , and William Wegman.
The videos will be screened on the tented stage at Pier 63 Maritime, the public access pier on the Hudson River. Food and drinks will be available for purchase at the pier.
The artist-made music videos in the program include Charles Atlas’ new music video for Antony and the Johnsons, Ara Peterson’s pulsing abstract video for Black Dice, Devin Fynn’s animated epic for Erase Errata, William Wegman and Robert Breer’s classic video for New Order’s Blue Monday, and Tony Oursler and Sonic Youth’s 1990 tribute to ’70s pop star Karen Carpenter.
Other artists manipulate or re-conceive footage from appropriated music videos or live music performances. Cory Arcangel tries to take Simon out of Simon and Garfunkel’s 1984 Central Park performance, while Michael Bell-Smith makes an entire R. Kelly DVD happen all at once. Dara Birnbaum integrates the audience and even the weather in her rendition of performances by Radio Fire Fight at the legendary Mudd Club and Glenn Branca.
Other works playfully subvert the music video format, reworking and reinterpreting its rules and strategies. Seth Price uses analogue video graphics to map out a pop history of the music genre New Jack Swing. Meredith Danluck experiments with James Brown and the power of context, Johanna Billing blurs the lines between documentary, performance and music video, and Shana Moulton uses an electronic rave as a hallucinogenic escape route from the everyday.