Marisa Olson
Since the beginning
Works in Brooklyn, New York United States of America

ARTBASE (7)
PORTFOLIO (3)
BIO
Marisa Olson is an artist, writer, and media theorist. Her interdisciplinary work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Centre Pompidou, Tate(s) Modern + Liverpool, the Nam June Paik Art Center, British Film Institute, Sundance Film Festival, PERFORMA Biennial; commissioned and collected by the Whitney Museum, Museum of Modern Art, Houston Center for Photography, Experimental Television Center, and PS122; and reviewed in Artforum, Art21, the NY Times, Liberation, Folha de Sao Paolo, the Village Voice, and elsewhere.

Olson has served as Editor & Curator at Rhizome, the inaugural curator at Zero1, and Associate Director at SF Camerawork. She's contributed to many major journals & books and this year Cocom Press published Arte Postinternet, a Spanish translation of her texts on Postinternet Art, a movement she framed in 2006. In 2015 LINK Editions will publish a retrospective anthology of over a decade of her writings on contemporary art which have helped establish a vocabulary for the criticism of new media. Meanwhile, she has also curated programs at the Guggenheim, New Museum, SFMOMA, White Columns, Artists Space, and Bitforms Gallery. She has served on Advisory Boards for Ars Electronica, Transmediale, ISEA, the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, Creative Capital, the Getty Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Kennedy Center, and the Tribeca Film Festival.

Olson studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths, History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz, and Rhetoric & Film Studies at UC Berkeley. She has recently been a visiting artist at Yale, SAIC, Oberlin, and VCU; a Visiting Critic at Brown; and Visiting Faculty at Bard College's Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts and Ox-Bow. She previously taught at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts' new media graduate program (ITP) and was Assistant Professor of New Media at SUNY-Purchase's School of Film & Media Studies. She was recently an Artist-in-Residence at Eyebeam & is currently Visiting Critic at RISD.

Collectible After All: Christiane Paul on net art at the Whitney Museum


The Whitney Museum artport has been an important institutional presence in net art and new media since its launch in 2002. Created and curated by Christiane Paul, artport features online commissions as well as documentation of new media artworks from the museum's exhibitions and collections. This year, artport as a whole was made an official part of the Whitney Museum collection; to mark this occasion, participating artist Marisa Olson interviewed Paul about the program's history and evolution over thirteen years.

 Douglas Davis, image from The World's First Collaborative Sentence (1994).

Collections like artport are a rare and valuable window onto a field of practice that, in some senses, was borne out of not being taken seriously. From mid-80s Eastern European game crackers to late-90s net artists, the first people working online were often isolated, by default or design, and were certainly marginalized by the art world, where few curators knew of their existence and fewer took them seriously, advocated for them, or worked to theorize and articulate the art historical precedents and currents flowing through the work. Help me fast-forward to the beginning of this century at one of the most important international art museums. Many of the US museums that funded new media projects did so with dot-com infusions that dried-up after 2000. Artport officially launched in 2001; the same year, you curated a section devoted to net art in the Whitney Biennial. What was the behind-the-scenes sequence of events that led to artport's founding?

I think artport's inception was emblematic of a wave of interest in net art in the US around the turn of the century and in the early 2000s. This more committed involvement with the art form interestingly coincided with or came shortly after the dot com bubble, which inflated from 1997–2000, had its climax on March 10, 2000 when NASDAQ peaked, and burst pretty much the next day. Net art, however, remained a very active practice and started appearing on the radar of more US art institutions. To some extent, their interest may have been sparked by European exhibitions that had begun to respond to the effects of the web on artistic practice earlier on. In 1997, Documenta X had already included web projects (that year the Documenta website was also famously "stolen"—that is, copied and archived—by Vuk Cosic in the project Documenta: done) and Net Condition, which took place at ZKM in 1999/2000, further acknowledged the importance of art on the web.

US museums increasingly began to take notice. Steve Dietz, who had started the Walker Art Center's New Media Initiatives early on, in 1996, was curating the online art Gallery 9 and digital art study collection. Jon Ippolito, in his role as Associate Curator of Media Arts at the Guggenheim, was commissioning net art in the early 2000s and in 2002, Benjamin Weil, with Joseph Rosa, unveiled a new version of SFMOMA's E-space, which had been created in 2000. This was the institutional netscape in which I created artport in 2001, since I felt that the Whitney, which had for the first time included net art in its 2000 Biennial, also needed a portal to online art. The original artport was much more of a satellite site and less integrated into whitney.org than it is now. Artist Yael Kanarek redesigned the site not too long after its initial launch and created version 1.1. Artport in its early days was sponsored by a backend storage company in New Jersey, which was then bought by HP, so HP appeared as the official sponsor. I think it is notable that sponsorship at that point did not come from a new tech company but a brand name that presumably wanted to appear more cutting edge.


booomerrranganggboobooomerranrang: Nancy Holt's networked video


Nancy Holt, Boomerang (1974), still from video.

In her time on this planet, Nancy Holt came to be known as a great American Land Artist, and certainly her brilliant installations, like Utah's Sun Tunnels and collaborations with her partner Robert Smithson and their peers, are profoundly significant, but it was her work in film & video that has had the greatest personal impact on me.

I somehow didn't see Boomerang, her 1974 video performance usually credited to her collaborator Richard Serra, until I was a Ph.D. student in Linda Williams's Phenomenology of Film seminar at UC Berkeley's Rhetoric program, but the time delay was more than made up for by the work's formative resonance. In the video, made during Serra's residency at a Texas television station, a young Holt is seen sitting in an anchor's chair before a staid blue background. Despite brief station ID graphic overlays and one minute of silence in the midst of the ten-minute piece (announced as audio trouble and reminding viewers of the work's live TV origin), the work is in many ways sound-centric.


Sound and Image in Electronic Harmony


semiconductor_nanowebbers.jpg
Image: Semiconductor: Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt, 200 Nanowebbers, 2005

On Saturday, April 11th, New York's School of Visual Arts will co-present the 2009 Visual Music Marathon with the New York Digital Salon and Northeastern University. Promising genre-bending work from fifteen countries, the lineup crams 120 works by new media artists and digital composers into 12 hours. If it's true, as is often said, that MTV killed the attention spans of Generations X and Y, this six-minute-per-piece average ought to suit most festivalgoers' minds, and the resultant shuffling on and off stage will surely be a spectacle in its own rite. In all seriousness, this annual event is a highlight of New York's already thriving electronic music scene and promises many a treat for your eyes and ears. The illustrious organizers behind the marathon know their visual music history and want to remind readers that, "The roots of the genre date back more than two hundred years to the ocular harpsichords and color-music scales of the 18th century," and "the current art form came to fruition following the emergence of film and video in the 20th century." The remarkable ten dozen artists participating in this one-day event will bring us work incorporating such diverse materials as hand-processed film, algorithmically-generated video, visual interpretations of music, and some good old fashioned music-music. From luminaries like Oskar Fischinger, Hans Richter, and Steina Vasulka to emerging artists Joe Tekippe and Chiaki Watanabe, the program will be another star on the map that claims NYC as fertile territory for sonic exploration. - Marisa Olson

READ ON »


Tagalicious


Picture-1.jpg

The National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST) in Athens, Greece, has committed itself to curating a number of recent exhibitions of internet art. Their current show, "Tag Ties and Affective Spies," features contributions from both net vets and emerging surfers, including Christophe Bruno, Gregory Chatonsky, Paolo Cirio, JODI, Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar, Les Liens Invisibles, Personal Cinema and The Erasers, Ramsay Stirling, and Wayne Clements. The online exhibition takes an antagonistic approach to Web 2.0, citing a constant balance "between order and chaos, democracy and adhocracy." Curator Daphne Dragona raises the question of whether the social web is a preexisting platform on which people connect, or whether it is indeed constructed in the act of uploading, tagging, and disclosing previously private information about ourselves on sites like Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook. Dragona asks whether we are truly connecting and interacting, or merely broadcasting. While her curatorial statement doesn't address the issue directly, the show's title hints at the level of self-surveillance in play on these sites. Accordingly, many of the selected works take a critical, if not DIY, approach to the internet. The collective Les Liens Invisibles tends to create works that make an ironic mash-up of the often divergent mantras of tactical media, culture jamming, surrealism, and situationism. In their Subvertr, they encourage Flickr users to "subverTag" their posted images, creating an intentional disassociation between an image's content and its interpretion, with the aim of "breaking the strict rules of significance that characterize the mainstream collective imaginary..." JODI's work, Del.icio.us/ winning information (2008) exploits the limited stylistic parameters of the social bookmarking site. Using ASCII and Unicode page titles to form visual marks, a cryptic tag vocabulary, and a recursive taxonomy, their fun-to-follow site critiques the broader content of the web ...

READ ON »


Reappearance of the Undead


agatha_appears_lialina.gif

In 1997, internet art hall-of-famer Olia Lialina made a "net drama" called Agatha Appears that was written for Netscape 3 and 4 in HTML 3.2. One of the main features of the interactive narrative was the travel of the eponymous avatar across the internet. Let's just say the girl got around. But the magical illusion of the piece was that she appeared to stay still, even when links in the narrative were clicked and the viewer's address bar indicated movement to another server. But in time, both the browser and code in which the story was written became defunct and the piece unraveled as the sites previously hosting the links and files upon which Agatha was dependent disappeared or cleaned house. Such a scenario is common to early internet art (and will no doubt continue to plague the field), as ours is an upgrade culture constantly driving towards new tools, platforms, and codes. Many have debated whether to let older works whither or how it might be possible to update these works, making them compatible with new systems. For those who are interested, some of the best research on the subject has been performed by the folks affiliated with the Variable Media Initiative. Meanwhile, luddites and neophiles alike are now in luck because Agatha Appears has just undergone rejuvenation. Ela Wysocka, a restorer working at Budapest's Center for Culture & Communication Foundation has worked to overcome the sound problems, code incompatibilities, and file corruption and disappearance issues, and she's written a fascinating report about the process, here. And new collaborating hosts have jumped in line to bring the piece back to life, so that like a black and white boyfriend coming home from war, Agatha now offers us a shiny new webring as a token of ...

READ ON »



Discussions (281) Opportunities (10) Events (4) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Re: Metadata


Hi, Rick. Thanks or your response.

> As a digital or net.artist, I often feel I want to
> defend/promote/identify what is unique about digital practice in
> contrast to the larger art or cultural worlds.

Yep, this is exactly what I was getting at with the suggestion that we
build a shared vocabulary together, but then allow individuals to..
individualize it.

> As to Type/Genre/Keywords specifically; I still feel that type and
> genre are distinct ideas: one is more general and conceptual
> (Genre=Impressionism), whereas the other is more about the format of
> the work (Type=painting).

Yes, I agree that this is true in the world at large, but I think that
there is redundancy in our case. Some words appear on both the Type &
Genre list (at least for the TextBase), while others are obviously
missing. There also continues to be debate, in our field, about how to
classify & categorize works of new media art. (This is, perhaps, most
often manifest in the distinction between whether one uses a
technology as a tool or as an object, in their work. To say nothing of
using it as a subject!)

One issue (or at least this is how I interpret it) is that these lists
are a holdover from the listserv nature of Rhizome's origin. I always
look at the 'Type' terms as terms that describe the type of listserv
posting being archived... But then these terms, on these lists, cross
over between specific works (ie ArtBase index pages) and list posts
(ie TextBase 'pages').

> If we wanted to simplify things (not a bad
> idea) it would be important to define what we mean by Category if
> it's to be a useful metadata element.

Category may or may not be a great word. Perhaps we could even use
something like 'search terms.' In the end, that does seem to be the
whole point--or a major point.

Actually, I just peeked at the area in which MySpace users can upload
videos and they distinguish between 'categories' and 'tags' this way:

<< >>
Categories:
Select 1-3.

Animals
Animation/CGI
Automotive
Comedy and Humor
Entertainment
Extreme Videos
Instructional
Music
News and Politics
Schools and Education
Science and Technology
Video Blogging
Sports
Travel and Vacations
Video Games
Weird Stuff

Tags:

Tags are keywords associated with your video. Separate tags with spaces.
For example: Tom snowboard face plant

<< >>

The point is that people who come to search can now compare what two
different people called 'Weird Stuff;' they could see what personal
words the artist used to describe the work; they could get a
suggestion of what to look for if they don't know what they are
looking for; or they could search for random tags; etc....

But what we'd need, in order to do something like this, is an agreed
upon list of [search terms]. I think the old ones should stay there,
even if no one uses them now, to acknowledge that people once used
'collider' and there are works indexed under that heading. In fact,
none of these terms are so bad, it's just that they desperately need
to be augmented. So many things are missing. And who decides (and how
much does it matter) whether we use the word(s) audio, sound,
phonography, radio, music, podcast, mp3, wav, etc...?

I would say, though, going back to people's tag cloud suggestions,
that it would be nice to offer these, too. Del.icio.us does this, if
you're bookmarking something that's been bookmarked before. It
suggests tags that others have used. You can take them, leave them,
edit them, etc. And I think that a cloud in which more popular tags
are bigger (common among tag clouds--see the one at the bottom of the
blog We Make Money Not Art:
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/#more_cat) could give a nice
sense of the popularity or folksonomic effects of a tag.

We could even look into visualizing not only the frequency but also
the duration of a tag. (ie Many people starting using the term 'meme'
around this time, but then it lost popularity in early 2008.) And
there are many ways to track the connectedness of terms--so one could
easily see that, say, 17 people who selected the "shared vocabulary"
term "broadcast" also used the tag "reality_tv," and then navigate to
those 17 database objects.

I think that these are the kinds of things that many people appreciate
about taxonomies/ taxonomic interfaces that happen to be 100%
folksonomic, but I think that they can still be done (if not done
better--building a stronger archive, delivering better search results,
providing deeper documentation & contextualization) by combining the
shared vocabulary and the opportunity for folksonomy.

> we're talking about creating the historic record here and this
> can't be the purview of just a few people (well, shouldn't anyway!)

Yes! Absolutely! So please send [search term/category] suggestions, everyone!

Thanks so much,
Marisa

DISCUSSION

ArtBase Submissions


Hello,

As Patrick May has mentioned in his last few Director of Technology
reports, we had a few problems with the ArtBase, beginning immediately
after the launch of the redesigned website, and continuing through the
server crash and our recovery from it.

Patrick's been focused on remedying the situation, and it looks like we're
on track. However, I'm now trying to play catch-up on submissions that
were blocked at various stages.

If you've submitted a piece in the last few months, and have not had a
response, or if your piece was approved and you're waiting for it to be
"turned on," please email me. Getting back up to speed may take a bit, but
I want to work with you on this and I thank you for your patience and
understanding.

If you don't mind keeping this subject line intact and cc'ing
<artbase@rhizome.org>, I would greatly appreciate it. In addition,
including the title of your piece and the ArtBase object number (if you
have it) will also be quite helpful.

Thanks so much and all the best,
Marisa

+ + +
Marisa Olson
Editor & Curator at Large
Rhizome.org at the
New Museum of Contemporary Art

DISCUSSION

Metadata


Dear Rhizomers,

I've really appreciated your comments, in this thread. I wanted to take
some time to observe and absorb before jumping into the conversation. Of
course, I bump up against Metadata issues every day, as Editor & Curator,
because these tags are used to describe not only ArtBase entries but also
TextBase pieces--i.e. posts to Raw that get filtered into Rare. I'll be
the first to point out the datedness or frustrating aspects of the current
language, but I would also err on the side of caution before totally
discarding the system.

It seems obvious to me that we can't throw out all of the old terms, because:

* They are attached to so many works;
* Whether or not they were excited by the terms, artists have previously
used them to describe their work, so we're in the domain of artistic
intention; and
* The terms are a historical reflection upon the evolving discourse of new
media, and as such they index not only texts and artworks, but other
historically important things like trends, vernaculars, etc.

In my opinion, they should be augmented with additional terms and then the
architecture of these options could be improved. There is currently some
redundancy--perhaps even some contradiction, between the tags offered in
the type, genre, and keyword categories, which I believe can be easily
smoothed out. David Chien pointed this out, here, when he suggested that
these all be collapsed under the heading "category."

But, backing up, we would really like to hear from *you* what terms you'd
like to see added. Perhaps we can think of this as a preliminary form of
folksonomy, as it will clearly be generated by you folks! And then I think
that the tagging system can be opened up to additional, simultaneous
self-tagging.

The concerns many have expressed over the practice of choosing from an
existing menu of tags, or a "controlled vocabulary," I think relate to
larger concerns that many of us have about the insider vs. outsider nature
of the field. When I look back over some of the more memorable Raw threads
related to the criticism and historiography of new media art, I see a
tension between those who want to rebel against existing aesthetic models
(and all that they imply, from art stardom to the military industrial
complex), and those who see a need to situate work in relationship to
these models. I also know that the notions of hierarchy and control often
get pitted against those of collaboration and sharing, but I think that
there is a need for both--and that they need not be mutually exclusive.

I personally think that a dual-model in which ArtBase contributors and
Site Editors can engage with the controlled vocabulary while also
augmenting it with their own expressions is the best way to reach a happy
medium.

This really gets to Rick's question as to the audience of the ArtBase and
TextBase. I tend to imagine a future-tense audience looking back on works
and texts and trying to take them not only for face value, but also to
understand them in relationship to other works and texts of that time
period and/or of that self-identified genre. This is a scenario in which
an existing, shared vocabulary is extremely helpful. It would also
enrichen the study of a work's context, as Rick pointed out when he said:

"Although, if one did use a hybrid model, then that would itself create
the mapping (each work would have both standardized terms and folksonomic
terms applied, so averaging among many works, you'd be able to tell what
terms mapped to each other."

I would like to conclude with one more plea for you to contribute
constructive suggestions for "category" tags to include among our
Metadata. I would also say that our collectively-authored "shared
vocabulary" has potential not only to impact the preservation and
interpretation of works and texts in our own archives, but that it can
also be shared with the field at large. This is an incredible opportunity
for us to share our insights with the field.

I thank you for continuing to share your thoughts.

Marisa

+ + +
Marisa Olson
Editor & Curator at Large
Rhizome.org at the
New Museum of Contemporary Art

DISCUSSION

Fwd: Stop Motion


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Edith-Russ-Haus <info@edith-russ-haus.de>
Date: May 15, 2006 8:10 AM
Subject: [spectre] Stop Motion, Freitag, 19. Mai, 20 Uhr
To: Edith-Russ-Haus <info@edith-russ-haus.de>

(Scroll down for English)

Jennifer und Kevin McCoy
STOP MOTION
20. Mai bis 16. Juli 2006

Das Edith-Russ-Haus fur Medienkunst zeigt vom 20. Mai bis 16. Juli unter
dem Titel "STOP MOTION" Arbeiten von Jennifer und Kevin McCoy. Die
Prasentation in Oldenburg ist die erste Einzelausstellung der beiden
Kunstler in Deutschland. Die Eroffnung findet am Freitag, 19. Mai, 20 Uhr
im Edith-Russ-Haus fur Medienkunst, Katharinenstrasse 23, statt.

Die beiden renommierten New Yorker Kunstler Jennifer und Kevin McCoy, die
seit 1996 zusammen arbeiten, beziehen sich in ihren Arbeiten auf
filmisches Material aus der Popularkultur, das sie neu inszenieren und
mittels eigens dafur geschriebener Software durch den Computer in neue
Ordnungszusammenhange uberfuhren. Neben diesen Referenzen an die
Filmkultur breiten sie in aktuellen Arbeiten ihr eigenes Leben, ihre
Traume und Fantasien als Filmkulissen aus, in denen sich Fiktion und
Realitat uberschneiden. Mit Hilfe der digitalen Technologie untersuchen
sie die narrativen Strukturen von Film und Fernsehen und reinszenieren
deren Produktionsbedingungen in Filmsets en miniature.
In fruhen Arbeiten stellen die beiden Kunstler das Prinzip der
Datenbankstruktur und ihres Ordnungsprinzips im Gegensatz zur filmischen
Narration in den Vordergrund. Es bleibt hier dem Betrachter uberlassen
auszuwahlen, was er sehen will, im Unterschied zu den Werken, in denen der
Computer die Entscheidung uber Schnitt und Handlungsverlauf trifft.
Ihre multimedialen Installationen verbinden massenmediale Klischees des
Mainstream-Kinos und popularer Fernsehserien mit personlichen Erlebnissen
und Erinnerungen. Neben der Aneignung und dem Remake bestehender
Filmausschnitte in aufwendigen skulpturalen Re-Inszenierungen wird auch
das eigene Leben als Film in Szene gesetzt.

Jennifer und Kevin McCoys Arbeiten wurden international auf zahlreichen
Ausstellungen gezeigt, u.a. "Future Cinema", Zentrum fur Kunst und
Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe; "Our Grotesque" SITE Santa Fe Fifth
Biennial, Santa Fe; "Zones de Confluence", Villette Numerique, Paris;
"CUT. Film as Art Object in Contemporary Video", Museum of Contemporary
Art in Miami und Milwaukee Art Museum; "Night Sites", Kunstverein Hannover
oder dem Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Im Herbst 2006 werden
sie eine weitere Einzelausstellung in den neu eroffneten Raumen des
National Film Theatre (British Film Institute) in London haben.

Das Edith-Russ-Haus fur Medienkunst bedankt sich bei der Bremer Landesbank
fur die grosszugige finanzielle Unterstutzung und das damit verbundene
kulturelle Engagement.

Zur Ausstellung erscheint ein Katalog.

Offnungszeiten: Di-Fr 14-17 Uhr, Sa-So 11-17 Uhr
Sonderoffnungszeiten: Himmelfahrt 11-17 Uhr
Pfingstsonntag, Pfingstmontag 11-17 Uhr

Eintritt: 2,50 / 1,50 E

Fuhrungen: Jeden Sonntag, 15 Uhr
Am 11. Juni und 2. Juli Fuhrung von Sabine Himmelsbach, Leiterin des
Edith-Russ-Hauses fur Medienkunst
Gruppenfuhrungen nach Absprache

Edith-Russ-Haus fur Medienkunst
Katharinenstrasse 23, D-26121 Oldenburg
t. +49 (0)441 235 31 94, www.edith-russ-haus.de

*********

Jennifer und Kevin McCoy
STOP MOTION
20 May through 16 July, 2006

The Edith Russ Site for Media Art show works by the artists Jennifer and
Kevin McCoy from May 20 - July 16, a show titled "STOP MOTION". The
presentation in Oldenburg is the artists' first solo show to be mounted in
Germany. The opening takes place on Friday, May 19th at 8 p.m. at the
Edith Russ Site for Media Art, Katharinenstrasse 23.

The well known New York artists Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, who work
together since 1996, refer in their work to film material drawn from
popular culture, which they restage and transpose to new arrangement
contexts by means of software developed for the purpose. Apart from these
references to film culture, in their current works they stage their own
lives, their dreams and fantasies as film settings, in which reality and
fiction overlap. Using digital technology, they examine the narrative
structures of film and TV and re-enact conditions of production in film
settings en miniature.
In early works, the two artists focus on the ordering principle of a
database structure as an opponent to filmic narration. In some of their
works the viewer decides, what he wants to see; in others, the computer
makes the decision on editing and course of action.
Their multi media computer installations combine mass media cliches of
mainstream cinema and popular TV series with personal experiences and
memories. Apart from the appropriation and the remake of existing film
sequences into complex sculptural re-enactments, their own private life is
staged as a filmic experience.

Jennifer and Kevin McCoy were included in numerous exhibitions including
"Future Cinema", ZKM - Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe; "Our
Grotesque" SITE Santa Fe Fifth Biennial, Santa Fe; "Zones de Confluence",
Villette Numerique, Paris; "CUT. Film as Art Object in Contemporary
Video", Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami and Milwaukee Art Museum;
"Night Sites", Kunstverein Hannover and at Sundance Film Festival in Park
City, Utah. Later in 2006 they will have a solo exhibition at newly opened
galleries of National Film Theatre (British Film Institute) in London.

The Edith Russ Site for Media Art thanks the Bremer Landesbank for their
generous financial sponsorship and their culturell engagement.

A catalogue will be published.

Opening Hours: Tues - Fri 2 p.m., Sat - Sun 11 a.m.- 5 p.m.
Special Opening Hours: Ascension Day 11 a.m - 5 p.m.
Whit Sunday, Whit Monday 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Admission: 2,50 / 1,50 E

Guided Tours: Every Sunday, 3 p.m.
11 June and 2 July, guided tour by Sabine Himmelsbach, Artistic Director
Edith Russ Site for Media Art
Group tours upon request

Edith-Russ-Haus fur Medienkunst
Katharinenstrasse 23, D-26121 Oldenburg
t. +49 (0)441 235 31 94, www.edith-russ-haus.de

______________________________________________
SPECTRE list for media culture in Deep Europe
Info, archive and help:
http://coredump.buug.de/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/spectre

DISCUSSION

Fwd: Stop Motion


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Edith-Russ-Haus <info@edith-russ-haus.de>
Date: May 15, 2006 8:10 AM
Subject: [spectre] Stop Motion, Freitag, 19. Mai, 20 Uhr
To: Edith-Russ-Haus <info@edith-russ-haus.de>

(Scroll down for English)

Jennifer und Kevin McCoy
STOP MOTION
20. Mai bis 16. Juli 2006

Das Edith-Russ-Haus fur Medienkunst zeigt vom 20. Mai bis 16. Juli unter
dem Titel "STOP MOTION" Arbeiten von Jennifer und Kevin McCoy. Die
Prasentation in Oldenburg ist die erste Einzelausstellung der beiden
Kunstler in Deutschland. Die Eroffnung findet am Freitag, 19. Mai, 20 Uhr
im Edith-Russ-Haus fur Medienkunst, Katharinenstrasse 23, statt.

Die beiden renommierten New Yorker Kunstler Jennifer und Kevin McCoy, die
seit 1996 zusammen arbeiten, beziehen sich in ihren Arbeiten auf
filmisches Material aus der Popularkultur, das sie neu inszenieren und
mittels eigens dafur geschriebener Software durch den Computer in neue
Ordnungszusammenhange uberfuhren. Neben diesen Referenzen an die
Filmkultur breiten sie in aktuellen Arbeiten ihr eigenes Leben, ihre
Traume und Fantasien als Filmkulissen aus, in denen sich Fiktion und
Realitat uberschneiden. Mit Hilfe der digitalen Technologie untersuchen
sie die narrativen Strukturen von Film und Fernsehen und reinszenieren
deren Produktionsbedingungen in Filmsets en miniature.
In fruhen Arbeiten stellen die beiden Kunstler das Prinzip der
Datenbankstruktur und ihres Ordnungsprinzips im Gegensatz zur filmischen
Narration in den Vordergrund. Es bleibt hier dem Betrachter uberlassen
auszuwahlen, was er sehen will, im Unterschied zu den Werken, in denen der
Computer die Entscheidung uber Schnitt und Handlungsverlauf trifft.
Ihre multimedialen Installationen verbinden massenmediale Klischees des
Mainstream-Kinos und popularer Fernsehserien mit personlichen Erlebnissen
und Erinnerungen. Neben der Aneignung und dem Remake bestehender
Filmausschnitte in aufwendigen skulpturalen Re-Inszenierungen wird auch
das eigene Leben als Film in Szene gesetzt.

Jennifer und Kevin McCoys Arbeiten wurden international auf zahlreichen
Ausstellungen gezeigt, u.a. "Future Cinema", Zentrum fur Kunst und
Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe; "Our Grotesque" SITE Santa Fe Fifth
Biennial, Santa Fe; "Zones de Confluence", Villette Numerique, Paris;
"CUT. Film as Art Object in Contemporary Video", Museum of Contemporary
Art in Miami und Milwaukee Art Museum; "Night Sites", Kunstverein Hannover
oder dem Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Im Herbst 2006 werden
sie eine weitere Einzelausstellung in den neu eroffneten Raumen des
National Film Theatre (British Film Institute) in London haben.

Das Edith-Russ-Haus fur Medienkunst bedankt sich bei der Bremer Landesbank
fur die grosszugige finanzielle Unterstutzung und das damit verbundene
kulturelle Engagement.

Zur Ausstellung erscheint ein Katalog.

Offnungszeiten: Di-Fr 14-17 Uhr, Sa-So 11-17 Uhr
Sonderoffnungszeiten: Himmelfahrt 11-17 Uhr
Pfingstsonntag, Pfingstmontag 11-17 Uhr

Eintritt: 2,50 / 1,50 E

Fuhrungen: Jeden Sonntag, 15 Uhr
Am 11. Juni und 2. Juli Fuhrung von Sabine Himmelsbach, Leiterin des
Edith-Russ-Hauses fur Medienkunst
Gruppenfuhrungen nach Absprache

Edith-Russ-Haus fur Medienkunst
Katharinenstrasse 23, D-26121 Oldenburg
t. +49 (0)441 235 31 94, www.edith-russ-haus.de

*********

Jennifer und Kevin McCoy
STOP MOTION
20 May through 16 July, 2006

The Edith Russ Site for Media Art show works by the artists Jennifer and
Kevin McCoy from May 20 - July 16, a show titled "STOP MOTION". The
presentation in Oldenburg is the artists' first solo show to be mounted in
Germany. The opening takes place on Friday, May 19th at 8 p.m. at the
Edith Russ Site for Media Art, Katharinenstrasse 23.

The well known New York artists Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, who work
together since 1996, refer in their work to film material drawn from
popular culture, which they restage and transpose to new arrangement
contexts by means of software developed for the purpose. Apart from these
references to film culture, in their current works they stage their own
lives, their dreams and fantasies as film settings, in which reality and
fiction overlap. Using digital technology, they examine the narrative
structures of film and TV and re-enact conditions of production in film
settings en miniature.
In early works, the two artists focus on the ordering principle of a
database structure as an opponent to filmic narration. In some of their
works the viewer decides, what he wants to see; in others, the computer
makes the decision on editing and course of action.
Their multi media computer installations combine mass media cliches of
mainstream cinema and popular TV series with personal experiences and
memories. Apart from the appropriation and the remake of existing film
sequences into complex sculptural re-enactments, their own private life is
staged as a filmic experience.

Jennifer and Kevin McCoy were included in numerous exhibitions including
"Future Cinema", ZKM - Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe; "Our
Grotesque" SITE Santa Fe Fifth Biennial, Santa Fe; "Zones de Confluence",
Villette Numerique, Paris; "CUT. Film as Art Object in Contemporary
Video", Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami and Milwaukee Art Museum;
"Night Sites", Kunstverein Hannover and at Sundance Film Festival in Park
City, Utah. Later in 2006 they will have a solo exhibition at newly opened
galleries of National Film Theatre (British Film Institute) in London.

The Edith Russ Site for Media Art thanks the Bremer Landesbank for their
generous financial sponsorship and their culturell engagement.

A catalogue will be published.

Opening Hours: Tues - Fri 2 p.m., Sat - Sun 11 a.m.- 5 p.m.
Special Opening Hours: Ascension Day 11 a.m - 5 p.m.
Whit Sunday, Whit Monday 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Admission: 2,50 / 1,50 E

Guided Tours: Every Sunday, 3 p.m.
11 June and 2 July, guided tour by Sabine Himmelsbach, Artistic Director
Edith Russ Site for Media Art
Group tours upon request

Edith-Russ-Haus fur Medienkunst
Katharinenstrasse 23, D-26121 Oldenburg
t. +49 (0)441 235 31 94, www.edith-russ-haus.de

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