EAI OUTDOOR VIDEO SCREENING on the ROOFTOP at X INITIATIVE PLAYTIME Thursday, July 30, 2009 9:00 pm X Initiative (rooftop) 548 West 22nd Street New York, NY 10011 www.eai.org RSVP Required: info@x-initiative.org or 917-697-4886 Admission free On Thursday, July 30th, EAI will present Playtime, the first of two evening screenings on the rooftop of the X Initiative. Playtime celebrates the sight gag and the visual pun. Engaging the medium, these works employ a purely visual mode of communication, one that depends on comic timing as well as space. The artists look not only to silent comedies for influence, but to the external storytelling of Jacques Tati, the surreal anthropomorphizations of Ernie Kovacks and the tradition of trick photography tracing back to the Lumiere Brothers. Aided by props and animals, the artists appear alone with their cameras, concocting vignettes of wit and expressiveness, without the use of dialogue. Playtime salutes the absurd, the wayward and the out of place. Included in the program are works by Stuart Sherman, VALIE EXPORT, Phyllis Baldino, George Kuchar, John Baldessari, William Wegman, Cynthia Maughan and James Byrne, among others. ___________________________________ EAI SUMMER PROGRAMS AT X: SETH PRICE: REDISTRIBUTION until August 8, 2009, EAI Video Project Space at X (ground floor) EAI presents the latest iteration of Seth Price's new video, Redistribution, at the EAI Video Project Space at X. Begun in 2007 and conceived as a never-finished, constantly updated work, takes up a Guggenheim 'artist's talk' delivered by Price only to pull it apart, reassemble it and graft new material to it, resulting in an open-form hybrid. TALK SHOW Outdoor Screening at X (rooftop) Thursday, August 6, 2009, 9pm On the rooftop at X, EAI presents a program that focuses on artists who use video to bring the interview or autobiographical account into their art. Included in the program are Tony Oursler's interview with Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon; a 1982 video "magazine edition" by MICA-TV and Richard Prince; Chris Burden's video confessional, Big Wrench; footage of art collective Ant Farm's 1976 appearances on Australian talk shows; and Russell Connor's fascinating, rare 1964 interview with Marcel Duchamp, in which the legendary Dadaist looks back on his life and the art of the 20th century. ___________________________________ EAI at X Initiative For the summer of 2009, EAI presents a series of public programs at X, the not-for-profit, temporary exhibition space located in Manhattan's West Chelsea neighborhood. Highlighting a multi-generational, multi-disciplinary range of artists and practices, EAI's programs at X bring new works by emerging artists into dialogue with rarely seen historical treasures from the EAI archives. The EAI Video Project Space, located on the groundfloor of X, features a curated exhibition program of artists’ video from EAI’s major collection of media artworks. EAI will also hold two outdoor, evening screenings on the rooftop at X, presenting works from the EAI collection in the open air, with Manhattan's nighttime skyline as a backdrop. X is located at 542 West 22nd Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues. http://x-initiative.org/ ___________________________________ About EAI Founded in 1971, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is one of the world's leading nonprofit resources for video art. A pioneering advocate for media art and artists, EAI's core program is the distribution and preservation of a major collection of over 3,500 new and historical media works by artists. EAI fosters the creation, exhibition, distribution and preservation of video art and digital art. EAI's activities include a preservation program, viewing access, educational services, extensive online resources, and public programs such as artists' talks, exhibitions and panels. The Online Catalogue is a comprehensive resource on the artists and works in the EAI collection, and also features extensive materials on exhibiting, collecting and preserving media art: www.eai.org Electronic Arts Intermix 535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor New York, NY 10011 (212) 337-0680 tel (212) 337-0679 fax info@eai.org