Friday, April 17, 2009

Auto-Remix Mode

In addition to the Interview magazine interview, there are a few more interviews and email dialogues related to my shows in New York and Seoul that are now in process and I'll post some excerpts and links to them once they are posted online.

In the meantime, to a curator who used the term "affective" in her writing about my work, I responded by saying:
I am interested in your use of the term affective since I too am using it, but perhaps in a different way, drawing from Bergson's Mind and Matter in relation to my new theories on "remixology" and what it means to "become a postproduction medium." Living, in this way, is an auto-remix process that takes place via affective filtering and proactive manipulation of the source material we experience while selectively tapping into our memories, imaginations, and creative unconscious. Sometimes by entering these (potentially) negative spaces we reveal the darker undertones of a life struggling to be creative as part of an innate desire to participate in what feels like a cultural renewal process that keeps the body throbbing in its eros-driven agenda to stay alive. To stay alive is to come, again, or to make an appearance, an image-appearance, the way any image may come and reveal its in-and-out state of presence ... thus the possibility of a chora-obscura ...
Chora Obscura is the working title of the third work in my Foreign Film Series ...


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Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Interview with Interview magazine

Interview magazine, founded by artist Andy Warhol and Gerard Malanga in 1969, has just published an interview they conducted with me over the last week ("The Future of Amerika"). The writer, Ana Finel Honigman, asked me some really smart questions that triggered some unexpected responses. I was lucky that she just happened to be in Seoul for an exhibition of my video work at the opening of a new video wall at the luxury W. Hotel in Seoul Walker-Hill last week. This created a nice convergence of topics to discuss in relation to the opening of Immobilité in New York last week too.

Here's an excerpt:
ANA FINEL HONIGMAN: So far, the most famous cell-phone films are the "Happy Slapping" evidence movies of kids performing acts of violence. Were you hoping that the beauty of your film would redeem the medium its associations with "Happy Slapping," amateur porn and DIY recordings of other anti-social behaviour?

MARK AMERIKA: Yes. Having lived through both postmodernism and poststructuralism, I think it's safe to say that we are on the verge of something that feels much more intense and requires a new attitude about our approach to life in an age of aesthetics. Instead of feeling jaded by everything there is now this feeling that we need to tap into this enormous creative potential that we're just beginning to connect to via the network. One word that people keep using to describe both Immobilité and my role as the artist who made it is "romantic." At first, I was suspicious of that term, but now I embrace it. We are definitely living in a pre-romantic era and the "pre" is disappearing quickly. The election of Obama has totally verified that.
The entire interview is here.

There's also an excellent interview that Interview recently posted with Sophie Calle, whose new exhibition at Paula Cooper just opened on Thursday night:
Sophie Calle’s art mixes image and text to provoke the kind of intense emotional response usually inspired by epic literature or film.
Something to aspire to, no doubt.


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Sunday, April 12, 2009

FACToid

The Streaming Museum version of the Immobilité remixes are now playing in Liverpool at FACT as part of FACT TV:
FACT stands for the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology and is the UK's leading organization for commissioning, exhibiting, promoting and supporting artists' work and innovation in the fields of film, video, and new media.



They have commissioned and presented over 250 digital media artworks with artists including Mark Wallinger, Barbara Kruger, Tony Oursler, Pipilotti Rist, Vito Acconci and Isaac Julien.
This TV exhibition of the Immobilité remixes takes place in conjunction with the feature-length version of the film at the Chelsea Museum of Art and runs from April 8 to May 9, 2009.



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