No Convenient Subway Stops

The group exhibition, No Convenient Subway Stops includes recent video works by artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla (Puerto Rico); Sebastian Díaz Morales (Amsterdam); Mario García Torres (Los Angeles); Sabine Gruffat (NYC); MK 12 Studio (Kansas City); Randy Moore (NYC/San Francisco); and Lisi Raskin (NYC). From documentary style to science fiction, the videos in this exhibition depict or depart from activities in deserts, wastelands, or bleak suburban settings.

Returning a Sound is shot in the former U.S. Navy bomb–testing site of Vieques, Puerto Rico by Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. An activist youth known for civil disobedience speeds a motorcycle around the island with a trumpet blaring like a military siren from his exhaust pipe. Lisi Raskin’s = is a video amalgamation of a desert, an active nuclear power plant, and an Olympic pool that once served as the largest Jewish cemetery in Eastern Europe. Sabine Gruffat’s And So Sings Our Mechanical Bride, is filmed in an abandoned nuclear test site in the American Midwest.

In Abandoned and Forgotten Land Works That Are not Necessarily Meant to Be Seen as Art, Mario García Torres films unusual landing strips in the American Southwest that were once used for aviation military exercises and today presumably by drug–traffickers. Randy Moore documents his version of a 1970s performance by Chris Burden in which the artist bikes across California’s Death Valley National Park in Death Drive Death Valley. On this occasion, however, the young artist wears a self–designed, professional racing outfit owing something to the costume of a medieval court jester, the spirit of futurism, and the colorful stripes of Paul Smith.

In Box, Sebastian Díaz Morales presents a set of quiet, subtle videos shot against the vast backdrop of Argentina’s Patagonia, creating a simple action turned extraneous, a defiant struggle against the elements of nature. And MK 12 Studio, a 6–team collective of artists, designers, and filmmakers, employs motion design—a combination of animation, video, and music—in Overload, a mesmerizing portrait of familiar corporate landscapes.

Art in General’s Annual Video Marathon, begun in 1997, was revamped and extended this year to include overlapping exhibitions, screenings, and discussions held from February 5 – March 26, 2005. Part I of the Video 2005 program, held from February 5–26, included Peacehead, an exhibition with new work by Michele O’Marah (Los Angeles); Old Habits Die Hard, a collection of 50 videos selected by 50 international artist–run centers; Video Stations, a collection of works by Aisha Burns, Paul Chan, Juan William Chavez, Rene Gabri, Kate Gilmore, Laura Horelli, Xaviera Simmons, Jim Skuldt, Inés Szigety and Abbey Williams; and Video Saturdays, including talks and screenings by Robert Cauble, Jonathan Cauette, Christopher Eamon, Martin Sastre and a web–transmission by Francois Bucher with writer Armando Silva.

No Convenient Subway Stops, held from March 5–26, is Part II of the Video 2005 program, and is curated by Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy (Art in General) and Jeffrey Walkowiak (guest curator).

Pressetext

No Convenient Subway Stops
Video 2005
Kuratoren: Sofia Hernandez Chong Cuy, Jeffrey Walkowiak

mit Allora & Calzadilla, Sebastian Diaz Morales, Mario Garcia Torres, Sabine Gruffat, MK 12 Studio, Randy Moore, Lisi Raskin