Description

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) and the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts are pleased to co-present At Home with Mike Kelley, a series of online screenings and conversations about the artist's moving-image work. we present an online screening of Mike Kelley and Ericka Beckman's BLIND COUNTRY (1989) followed by a conversation between Beckman and curator Jamillah James. The event will be accessible at eai.org at 5 pm PDT / 8 pm EDT on Tuesday, July 28th. No RSVP or pre-registration is required. 



Read Mike Kelley on BLIND COUNTRY on the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts website.

Made in collaboration with fellow California Institute of the Arts alum Ericka Beckman, BLIND COUNTRY is loosely inspired by the H.G. Wells short story The Country of the Blind—an adolescent favorite of Kelley’s—in which a one-eyed man encounters a sightless society and must give up his vision to live among them. Kelley and Beckman’s take reframes the story as one of castration anxiety, emphasizing the “thinly veiled sexual and racial fears” embedded within Wells’ original. 

Ericka Beckman is an American artist and filmmaker based in New York. Beginning her career in the 1970s alongside peers at CalArts, she is considered a key figure in the Pictures Generation. Over her three-decade career, her playful yet formally demanding films challenge traditional aesthetic and cultural values, mixing games with fairytales to create hybrids with new rules. 

Jamillah James is Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA LA). With Margot Norton, she is curating the 2021 edition of the New Museum Triennial. Prior to joining ICA LA in 2016, James was Assistant Curator at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, working in collaboration with the nonprofit Art + Practice.