Radical Software Group (RSG)

The re-edit and the remix have become increasingly important strategies for artists working with appropriated moving images. In the era of YouTube and affordable, user-friendly video editing software, a minimalist approach to reworking appropriated material has emerged. What is the most economical way to make something new from something old?

Eschewing collage, the artists in this program choose to make works by refashioning a single piece of found video or film, such as a Hollywood action movie, a '70s sitcom, or a low-resolution video clip. Though recalling Internet fan edits and exercises encountered in film school editing classes, these remixes and re-edits by artists are driven by conceptual or formal investigations. Employing an economy of means, these artists create new forms of cultural critique and media intervention.

EAI participated in LOOP :THE VIDEO ART FAIR '05, featuring works by artists including Cory Arcangel, Bernadette Corporation, Shana Moulton, Takeshi Murata, Paper Rad, and Radical Software Group (RSG). EAI also took part in the discussion: Best Practices for the Trade of Video Art. This panel examined key issues relating to the presentation, sale, and preservation of video art, and highlighted best practices.

EAI curated the second manifestation of Smack Mellon's multi-screen video exhibition. MULTIPLEX 2 featured new and classic video works from the EAI collection, and was the inaugural exhibition of Smack Mellon's new gallery space.

For the Liverpool Biennial, members of artist collective Paper Rad presented a special program of video works that they selected from EAI's major collection of media art. The program included an animated introduction and conclusion created by Paper Rad specifically for this screening. Paper Rad synthesizes popular material from television, video games, and advertising, reprogramming these references with an exuberantly neo-primitivist digital aesthetic. In this program Paper Rad presented works by Forcefield, Radical Software Group (RSG), Mike Smith, Steina and Woody Vasulka, and William Wegman.

EAI presented a live performance event and video screening featuring three new art collectives who re-activate the lo-fi. Cory Arcangel and Alex Galloway from Beige and Radical Software Group demonstrated the subversive genre of video game hacking. Video work by Forcefield and a live music performance from Termination Gnome galvanized obsolete analogue signal-processors and defunct electronics. With psychedelic ebullience, Paper Rad synthesized and re-staged popular material from the Internet, television, video games, and advertising. An analogous era of analogue synthesis was bridged by rarely screened video from technical pioneers of the 1960s and 70s.