From: Thomas Beard (email suppressed)
Date: Sun Apr 05 2009 - 16:29:26 PDT
Light Industry
220 36th Street, 5th Floor
Brooklyn, New York
http://www.lightindustry.org
Time Batteries
Presented by David Joselit
Wednesday, April 8, 2009 at 7:30pm
Data storage is one of our fundamental economic, political and historical
challenges. Data is collected from us whenever we click, charge, or swipeit
helps politicians decide who ³we² are and what ³we² want. Wal-mart knows how
to use it to sell us things and Obama knows how to read it to take the
nationıs temperature. But is there an aesthetics of data storage? Now that
anybody can record almost anything, can this form of primitive image
accumulation be a kind of art?
³Time Batteries² handle duration differently from classic video works by
artists like Peter Campus, Bruce Nauman or Joan Jonas where the dilation of
time was tied to the expansion of perception. Duration is now linked to the
banal but fundamental ethos of storage. I will test this thesis by
presenting two works: Mary Ellen Carrollıs film ³Alas poor YORICK!² (2008)
in which the artistıs drawing made from her hand transcription of the entire
text of Laurence Sterneıs Tristram Shandy on a single sheet is burned on a
beach in Truro, and Rachel Harrisonıs ³Roman Holiday,² a found moment of
slapstick recorded from a restaurant table in Rome. Iıll discuss questions
of media transfer and consumption (in fire, in boredom, and even of
products) as manifest in these works, and Iıll draw a historical genealogy
for a possible aesthetics of data storage.
David Joselit worked as a curator at The Institute of Contemporary Art in
Boston from 1983-1989 where he co-organized several exhibitions including
"DISSENT: The Issue of Modern Art in Boston," (1985) "Endgame: Reference and
Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture" (1986) and "The British Edge"
(1987). After receiving his Ph.D. in Art History from Harvard in 1995, he
joined the Department of Art History and Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies at
the University of California, Irvine, where he taught until 2003. He is
currently Professor and Chair of the History of Art Department at Yale.
Joselit is author of Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910-1941 (MIT Press,
1998), American Art Since 1945 (Thames and Hudson, World of Art Series,
2003), and Feedback: Television Against Democracy (MIT Press, 2007). He
writes regularly on contemporary art and culture for such publications as
OCTOBER and Artforum.
Tickets - $7, available at door.
About Light Industry
Light Industry is a new venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New
York. Developed and overseen by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, the project has
begun as a series of events at Industry City in Sunset Park, each organized
by a different artist, critic, or curator. Conceptually, Light Industry
draws equal inspiration from the long history of alternative art spaces in
New York as well its storied tradition of cinematheques and other intrepid
film exhibitors. Through a regular program of screenings, performances, and
lectures, its goal is to explore new models for the presentation of
time-based media and foster an ongoing dialogue amongst a wide range of
artists and audiences within the city.
About Industry City
Industry City, an industrial complex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is home to a
cross-section of manufacturing, warehousing and light industry. As part of a
regeneration program intended to diversify the use of its 6 million square
feet of space to better reflect 21st century production, Industry City now
includes workspace for artists. In addition to offering studios at
competitive rates, Industry City also provides a limited number of low-cost
studios for artists in financial need. This program was conceived in
response to the lack of affordable workspace for artists in New York City
and aims to establish a new paradigm for industrial redevelopment--one that
does not displace artists, workers, local residents or industry but instead
builds a sustainable community in a context that integrates cultural and
industrial production.
For more information, please visit http://www.industrycityartproject.org
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.