I’m currently part of a curated screening that is being broadcast on both French and German television. If you’re in either country you can catch it on Tuesdays starting at 6 pm. The press release is listed below.
Performance Anxiety
Curated by Alicia Eler & Jefferson Godard
November 10-December 22, 2009
Broadcasting Tuesdays at 6pm on French channel freebox 129 and German Unitymedia/Kabel BW
JAMES MURRAY – Electrical Performances: Push It, 2007
DVD video, 4 minutes
Courtesy of the artist
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – November 10, 2009 – Art critic Alicia Eler and video art collector Jefferson Godard present Performance Anxiety, a program of short video works dealing with “performances” of cultural identities. Whether navigating complicated understandings of gender, race, class, sexuality, or existence in on- or off-line spaces, individuals either accept and internalize cultural rules or ideologies and “pass,” or reject them, identifying such performances as a form of cultural oppression. Performance Anxiety runs approximately 50 minutes, and features the work of American artists Rochelle Feinstein, Kate Gilmore, James Murray, Carlos Rigau, Greg Stimac and Stacia Yeapanis.
Unlike most video art shows, Performance Anxiety will not live in a gallery or museum space. Souvenirs from the Earth TV, a Paris-based organization that operates under Nam June Paik’s idea that video art should be available on television, will broadcast the show on French channel freebox 129 and German channel Unitymedia/Kabel BW at 6pm beginning Tuesday, November 10th, and running through December 22nd. The program will also stream once online during the show run; details to come.
In KATE GILMORE’s My Love is an Anchor (2006), the artist anchors her foot in a bucket of cement, and for six minutes she pounds, hammers, and twists back and forth, attempting to break free of this self-imposed situation. Wearing a short black dress, Gilmore seems like she should be at a cocktail party, not struggling on the floor of an empty room. Her work builds on 1970s feminist, endurance-based performance work, and suggests the monotonous, difficult act as a metaphor for change–it takes a huge effort to make even a slight chip in the foundation. Gilmore’s work has been show internationally; recent exhibitions include “100 Years” at PS1/MoMA, Queens, New York; “Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video” at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York; “By Any Means” at Locust Projects, Miami, Florida; and at Franco Soffiantino Arte Contemporanea, Turin, Italy.
JAMES MURRAY’s Electrical Performances: Push It (2006) is a fixed video portrait of the artist. Viewers see Murray’s face and shoulders only. The lyrics from Salt and Peppa’s “Push It” appear at the bottom of the screen, but one cannot hear the actual song. Murray sweats heavily, enduring increasing amounts of pain until the song finally ends. The viewer can’t help wondering if he enjoys it, if he’s suffering, or both. Murray says his work is invested in “the ideologies that are prevalent in both queer BDSM and club music regarding the potential for emancipation and freedom through physicality and endurance.” If this holds true, what does his video mean for the politicized homosexual male body post-AIDS crisis that exists in a period of gay culture mainstreaming? Is there such a thing anymore as the queer body politic? Recent exhibitions include Our Great Show at Nice & Fit Gallery, Berlin, and Body Collective at Alogon Gallery, Chicago.
ROCHELLE FEINSTEIN’s Ball and Chain (2007-8) calls to mind lyrics from Janis Joplin’s “Ball and Chain”: “Something grabbed a hold of me, honey, / Felt to me honey like, lord, a ball and chain.” In Feinstein’s take on the phrase, a small disco ball swings around a square black base. The iconic disco ball suggests political connotations of 70s disco and the cocaine wars, and the 80s AIDS epidemic that later devastated carefree, sex-thirsty men who danced all night at clubs. With the renewed love of shiny disco balls in America, Feinstein asks viewers about their own, subjective ball and chain, suggesting the ways that this timeless image has become subjective and, perhaps, de-politicized. Recent exhibitions include “I Made a Terrible Mistake” at LAB Space/Art Production Fund, New York; The Studio Show at David Reed Studio, New York; “Talk Dirty To Me” at Larissa Goldston Gallery, New York; and Desire at Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas (2010).
Chicago-based artist GREG STIMAC’s video Peeling Out (2006) deals with the performance of masculinity in American culture. Stimac travels through rural areas of the Midwest and California, and asks men with trucks to “peel out.” The guys rev up their engines and slam on the pedals, leaving thick black tire tracks on the road and smoke streaming from their exhausts. The truck drivers perform masculinity as they would weight-lifting or heavy drinking games–whoever can do it hardest and longest proves that he’s the “manliest” of them all. Stimac’s work probes these tests of masculinity. Exhibitions include a forthcoming solo show at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago, Illinois (2010); USA Today at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Preview Berlin, Video Art Program in Berlin, Germany.
In Black Face Beyonce (2006), artist CARLOS RIGAU dresses himself in blackface and a wig, and sings out-of-sync with Beyonce’s song, “Crazy in Love.” The artist intends for this riff on the music video to be viewed on an iPod; the viewer, in turn, feels both shame and pleasure in watching it. Rigau’s work suggests that we have not yet entered a post-racist age. Rigau’s recent exhibitions include Our Great Show at Nice and Fit Gallery, Berlin, Germany; Optic Nerve at MOCA North Miami; and Alogon Gallery, Chicago.
STACIA YEAPANIS’ Life Isn’t Bliss. It’s Just This. It’s Living (2007) explores existentialism in virtual culture. Her Sims character goes through her day, performing mundane tasks like cleaning the bathroom, experiencing emotional outbursts, and doing exercising. The game, as she suggests, parallels life–meaning must be created, and each individual must carve out a place for him or herself. Identities are subjective, malleable, and formed by individuals. If the Sims game mirrors “real life,” one must conclude that the adage is true: life is only what you make of it.
CURATOR BIOS
Alicia Eler is an art critic and new media curator. Her art criticism has been published in Artforum.com, Art Papers and Time Out Chicago magazine, among others. Alicia’s recent curatorial projects include Response: Art and the Art of Criticism, a collaboration between prominent Chicago critics and Chicago artists, and Video as Video: Rewind to Form, a show conceived with artist Peregrine Honig. Alicia is also the Arts & Culture Community Manager of ChicagoNow.com, a network of local blogs sponsored by the Chicago Tribune Media Company. She holds a BA in Art History from Oberlin College. You can find her on Facebook and Twitter.
Jefferson Godard is a video art collector and professor of architecture. He is deeply dedicated to understanding art by emerging talent. Based in Chicago, his true passion lies in video art, and he has curated several video themed exhibitions over the past two years. Chicago shows include Body Collective at Alogon Gallery, a video series at Shane Campbell Gallery and a screening at Living Room Gallery. Most recently, he presented Our Great Show, a curated exhibition of works from his personal collection, at Nice and Fit Gallery in Berlin. The works that he collects and exhibits focus on sexuality, narratives of struggle, and identity with themes of deeply rooted anecdotal story telling. He is a founding member of EMERGE, a collectors forum at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, and has been profiled on National Public Radio (NPR), and in the Christian Science Monitor, Newcity Newspaper and Chicago Gallery News. Find Jefferson on Facebook.
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Souvenirs from Earth TV is an international Cable TV station, currently broadcasting in France (freebox 129) and Germany (Unitymedia/Kabel BW), presenting a 24h program of film and video art. This channel is a platform where artists of different sensibilities can find a high-end environment to experience new forms of distribution and presentation of film and video art. Souvenirs from Earth’s production section also produces commissioned and free video art.