Description

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EAI and The Kitchen are pleased to present a screening and panel discussion as part of the current exhibition Lines of Distribution, on view at The Kitchen at Westbeth. The event will include a showing of Two Moon July (1986), a made-for-television “arts and entertainment special” directed by Tom Bowes and produced for The Kitchen by Carlota Schoolman, followed by a panel discussion on the broader field of artistic experiments with broadcast platforms in the 1980s featuring artists Judith Barry and Kit Fitzgerald, along with writer and musician Johanna Fateman. The event celebrates the life and practice of Tom Bowes (1948–2024), who was on staff at The Kitchen for over five years before directing Two Moon July, and marks a collaboration between two organizations with longstanding investments in artists' television.

Two Moon July documents a dramatized day-in-the-life of The Kitchen, portraying the institution’s signature range of activities spanning video, music, dance, performance, and film in a style that merges aspects of a variety show and a documentary. The special is one of several artworks The Kitchen produced for broadcast in the 1980s, during a time when various art centers were experimenting with television as a mode of distribution that could present avant-garde art to wider audiences nationally and internationally. Barry and Fitzgerald will reflect on their respective engagements with television during this era. Examples discussed will include Barry's 1989 essay "This is Not a Paradox," which explores how video artists worked with broadcast media throughout the decade, and Fitzgerald's works of video art that circulated over the airwaves, such as Olympic Fragments (made with John Sanborn, 1980), an excerpt of which appears in Two Moon July. In conversation with Fateman, the artists take up questions about the possibilities—and pitfalls—of television as a platform for artistic expression in the 1980s, while also considering the evolving relationship between art and mass media into the present day.

Lines of Distribution examines a subset of The Kitchen’s programmatic initiatives from the 1970s and 1980s—including television productions—that extended beyond the institution’s New York space to distribute the art forms it supported throughout the United States and abroad. The exhibition features a section of archival materials related to Two Moon July, alongside a new video work by artist Wong Kit Yi, which draws inspiration from the television special.

Judith Barry is an artist and writer whose work combines a number of disciplines including installation and project-based research, architecture/exhibition design, film/video, performance art/dance, sculpture, photography, and digital media. She has exhibited internationally at such venues as the Berlin Biennale, Venice Biennale(s) of Art/Architecture, Sharjah Biennial, São Paolo Biennale, Nagoya Biennale, Carnegie International, Whitney Biennial, Sydney Biennale, and Documenta, among others. Public Fantasy, a collection of Barryʼs essays, was published by the ICA in London (1991). Her work is included in the collection of MoMA, NYC; Whitney Museum, NYC; Generali Foundation, Vienna; MCA, San Diego; Pompidou Center, Paris; Le Caixa, Barcelona; MACBA, Barcelona; FNAC, Paris; Goetz Collection, Munich; Frac Lorraine, Metz; KANAL, Brussels; and CIFO, Miami, among others. She has taught and lectured extensively in the USA, Asia, and Europe. Currently she is a Professor in the ACT program at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Johanna Fateman is a writer, art critic, and musician. She is the co-chief art critic at CULTURED magazine. Her band, Le Tigre, reunited after 17 years to tour in the summer of 2023.

Kit Fitzgerald is a video artist and director whose work encompasses a range of forms - video art, music video, interactive performance, digital painting, and documentary. Her work ranges from high-level cinematography to expressive layered drawings, and addresses themes of place, sensuality, and the humanization of technology. She is known for her collaborations with artists such as composers Peter Gordon, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Max Roach, and Ned Sublette; poet Sekou Sundiata; and theatre companies The Talking Band and North Netherlands Theatre.

Her video projection and live video performances include The Return of the Native (BAM Next Wave, Het Muziektheater Amsterdam), Max Roach Live! and JUJU with Max Roach (LaMama, Lincoln Center, Aaron Davis Hall, 92 nd St Y), The Mother of Us All (MetLiveArts), Arthur Russell’s Instrumentals (Sydney Festival, Primavera Festival), Adelic Penguins (Sony Japan), Frozen Moments of Passion (Roulette), and Partytime (LaMama, Fest Uno Napoli). Fitzgerald’s involvement in dance includes work with Twyla Tharp, Bebe Miller, New York City Ballet, Trisha Brown, and Donald Byrd. Her productions have featured Bill T. Jones, Arnie Zane, members of Stephen Petronio Dance, and she directed the documentary “Bart Cook: Choreographer.”

Fitzgerald’s work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, where it has been in four exhibitions. She has participated twice in the Whitney Biennial, and received grants from The Rockefeller Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and commissions from Tokyo Broadcasting System, NHK, and Sony Japan. She won first prize at the International Electronic Cinema Festival (Montreux), Tokyo International HDTV Festival, and International Women’s Biennale (Vienna). Her work is distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix, New York.