Description

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is pleased to present an evening of video and television works celebrating the publication launch of Broadcasting: EAI at ICA. This free screening features selections from the 2018 exhibition of the same name, and reflects on artist responses to themes of media saturation, commercialization, duration, and public engagement. Copies of the catalog will be for sale.

Free to attend. RSVP here.

Following the mass adoption of cable TV and home video recording technology in the early ‘80s, many artists had access to a new arsenal of strategies for intervening directly with televised media. Public broadcast carved out a space for experimentation, a sensibility showcased in such series as Jaime Davidovich’s The Live! Show (1979-84) and Robert Beck’s The Space Program (1985-86), both aired on the Manhattan Cable Network. The advent of specialized networks also presented new opportunities to mingle artists’ media with “normal” televised content: MTV, with their hip youth audience in mind, invited a number of artists to create culture-jamming interstitials in between music videos including video art pioneer Dara Birnbaum, and initiatives such as TRANS-VOICES commissioned artists including Birnbaum, Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, Philip Mallory Jones, and Tom Kalin to produce 60-second spots for American and French broadcast. As the choices on the TV remote became more vast, so too did an overwhelming sense of content glut and advertising onslaught. New consumer video formats like VHS and Betamax gave a new generation of artists the license to remix and deconstruct these images, a practice exemplified by works such as Cable Xcess (1996), a faux-infomercial by Kristin Lucas that warns of the long-term consequences of exposure to electromagnetic fields, and No Sell Out... or i wnt 2 b th ultimate commodity/ machine (Malcolm X Pt. 2) (1995), a stunning MTV-style indictment of consumerism and racial capitalism by “art-band” X-PRZ.

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.

Masks are strongly encouraged. 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.