Alex Bag

EAI presented 45 Years of Performance Video from EAI, a survey of four decades of artists' engagement with video and performance. This project is presented in conjunction with 100 Years, an exhibition on the history of performance art organized by P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and Performa 09.

On June 23rd, EAI's project space will launch with Character Witness, a program of videos by artists who take on the role of actor in their own narratives. Featuring a cross-generational group of artists, including Kalup Linzy, Alex Bag, Michael Smith, MICA-TV, William Wegman, Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn, and Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson, these works also share a focus that resonates in the current economic and cultural climate: The irreverent investigation of the artist in relation to the art world and the art market.

In casting themselves in their own stories, the artists pursue a range of strategies, from playing or voicing a suite of multiple characters to performing alongside an ensemble cast or assuming fictionalized versions of themselves. Blurring the lines between narrative, performance and documentary, the artists take on these roles to critique, question, and satirize the systems around the marketing of the artist and the selling of their art.

EAI presented an evening of conversation and screening with artist Alex Bag and writer and curator David Rimanelli.

In Bag's performance-driven conceptual parodies, she questions how we define ourselves in relation to a media-fueled consumer culture. Focusing her lens on high and low culture, the mainstream and the underground, Bag creates her own unique simulations of TV. Together, Bag and Rimanelli screened and discussed video works that span the artist's entire career. Artists & Participants Video & Image Archive

Young and Restless featured 21 recent performance-based works by 17 women artists. These energetic, often ironic pieces, made between 1993 and 1997, showcased artists who engage in dynamic explorations of female identity. Organized into 4 programs, each between 45 minutes and one hour in length, the exhibition was curated by Stephen Vitiello, co-organized by Barbara London and Sally Berger, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and distributed by EAI.