Sondra Perry

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is pleased to present a selection of works recently added to our distribution catalogue. The evening takes its title from one of Cory Arcangel’s Runners series videos: a screen recording of a live bot performance on Walmart’s Instagram feed, in which the bot systematically “likes” every post, undermining the genuineness of Walmart’s slogan, and the supposed engagement with its customers. Videos in this screening share an emphasis on human care, curiosity, and idiosyncrasy as artists utilize evolving tools and platforms to witness the multidirectional links between technology, labor, and interpersonal relationships.

In this array of short videos, artists contend with the larger topics of AI, “essential” work, labor economies, and the false naturalization of technological progress. Two videos from Zoe Beloff and Eric Muzzy’s @ Work series (2022), now installed as a mural at the Electrical Industry Training Center in Long Island City, will bookend the evening. Following an expanded definition of “essential worker,” Beloff and Muzzy conducted interviews throughout New York City reflecting on cultural economies of labor and the diverse, often overlooked, skillsets involved in her interviewee’s vocations. Sondra Perry’s phantom. menace. (2023) uses AI DALL-E animation software to play out a speculative interaction based on a version of Perry’s Newark studio, formerly a barbershop. Kit Fitzgerald’s Romance (1986) comprises vibrant, computer-generated video paintings live-edited and set to original music by Peter Gordon. Cory Arcangel’s Transitions (2007), A Couple Thousand Short Films about Glenn Gould (2007), and Making Your Life a Little Easier (2020) make use of popular digital-age forms such as the stock video transition, social media feed, and self-directed YouTube performances to contextualize the relationships between these tools, their users and audiences, and technological development at large. Finally, Kristin Lucas’ Inforeceptor (1994), shot on Hi-8 and Super-8, provides a playful yet ominous anticipation of the then-cresting World Wide Web.

Following the program, there will be an informal chat with artists Kit Fitzgerald, Zoe Beloff, and Michael Britto. An online, closed-captioned version of this program will be accessible for a limited time in March.

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)’s venue is located at 264 Canal Street, 3W, near several Canal Street subway stations. Our floor is accessible by elevator (63" × 60" car, 31" door) and stairway. Due to the age and other characteristics of the building, our bathrooms are not ADA-accessible, though several such bathrooms are located nearby. If you have questions about access, please contact cstrange@eai.org in advance of the event.

If you are experiencing a fever, cough, shortness of breath, loss of taste or smell, or other symptoms that could be related to COVID-19, we ask that you please stay home.

Image: Sondra Perry, phantom. menace. (2023). A warped, AI-generated closeup of two Black men shaking hands, shrouded in green light against an abstract blue background.

The special selection of media artworks for the public spaces of the Sagamore Hotel was drawn from EAI's extensive archive. The media artworks on display in the hotel presented formal, conceptual, or perceptual transformations of natural landscapes and environments. In works that range from the playful to the socially resonant, the artists investigate diverse notions of landscape, from transmutations of nature, the body, and everyday objects to the "media landscape" of today's televisual and digital cultures. Moving between abstraction and representation, the organic and the electronic, these works—which span five decades—also explore the materiality and meanings of video and digital media.

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) presented an artist talk with Sondra Perry, whose formally striking works in video, computer-based media, and performance unflinchingly confront themes of power, agency, and racial and gender identities.At EAI, Perry screened and discussed recent and upcoming projects, including the ambitious work-in-progress, My Twilight Zone Thing, developed through a residency in Recess's Session program. This event launched EAI's distribution of Perry's work.