Cindy Sherman: An Interview

MICA-TV

1980-81, 10:20 min, color, sound

Artist Cindy Sherman first came to widespread attention in the early 1980s with evocative photographs that simulated film stills. Posing as "B" movie characters, she cast herself as director, producer and protagonist, masquerading as a startling range of female identities. The stylized scenarios...

Conversations wit de Churen V: As da Art World Might Turn

Kalup Linzy

2006, 12:10 min, color, sound

Both a "belated sequel to Alex Bag's scabrous art-school confidential Fall 95," (as Elizabeth Schambelan put it in Artforum), and a "self-immolating response to the enthusiastic reception that followed [Linzy's] breakout in 2005," (as Karen Rosenberg pointed out in New York Times), this episode of the Churen series is a melodrama of an art-school graduate's journey from crushing obscurity to solo show. Wallowing at home and listening to Tina Turner, the young painter Katonya prays, "Dear God, ain't nothing going right since I lost my job, my best friend and my boyfriend." When she lands a studio visit from the bitchy director of Madame Gallery, Katonya sets her expectations a little too high.

East Coast, West Coast

Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson

1969, 22 min, b&w, sound

Holt and Smithson's first collaborative experiment with video takes the form of a humorous bi-coastal art dialogue. Joined by their friends Joan Jonas and Peter Campus, the artists improvise a conversation based on opposing — and stereotypical — positions of East and West Coast art of the late 1960s. Holt assumes the role of an intellectual conceptual artist from New York, while Smithson plays the laid back Californian driven by feelings and instinct.

How to Curate Your Own Group Exhibition

Michael Smith

1996, 2:55 min, color, sound

Commissioned for Hans-Ulrich Obrist's "Museum-in-Progress" series Do It, Smith's How to Curate Your Own Group Exhibition is a deadpan infomercial explaining exactly what the beginning curator needs to know. Television professionals shot and edited the piece, yielding a flashy "spot" in which...

KK Queens Survey

Kalup Linzy

2005, 7:20 min, color, sound

In KK Queens Survey, Linzy appears as a New York artist/diva who submits to an outrageous telephone survey on her artistic and personal practices. Debra Singer writes in Artforum, "Linzy's blistering lampoon of art world power dynamics typifies Linzy's trademark mixture of raunchy humor, campy theatricality, sexual intrigue and poignant social commentary."

The Van

Alex Bag 

2001, 12:55 min, color, sound

Originally projected in the interior of a customized Dodge at the 2001 Armory Show in New York, The Van features Bag as three young female artists riding in the back of a van, en route to the Armory Show. They compete for the attention of their gallerist Leroy, who, dressed as a pimp, promises them major recognition and designer handbags. As Bag derides the wish lists of the art-star hopefuls (the Turner Prize, the cover of ArtForum, Rosalind Krauss' critical attention, "more product endorsement"), she implicates the contemporary art world—herself included—in a bacchanal of greed.

The World of Photography

Michael Smith and William Wegman

1986, 24:35 min, color, sound

Artists Michael Smith and William Wegman — both of whom use conceptual humor as an art-making strategy — collaborated on this satirical commentary on photography, the process of image-making, and the interchange of "high" art and "low" culture. The tape is structured as an instructional guide...

Winner

Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn

2002, 15:43 min, color, sound

Winner is a fictional interview gone awry, featuring a reticent sweepstakes winner who doggedly avoids receiving her prize and manages to morph an ad spot into a mini documentary about her art work.