EAI VIDEO PROJECT SPACE AT X: AUGUST + SEPTEMBER MERCE CUNNINGHAM Video Tribute August 18-21, 2009 CHARLOTTE MOORMAN Performance Documents August 25-28, 2009 STEINA Early Video September 2-4, 2009 August 18-28: Tuesday - Friday, Noon - 8 pm September 2-4: Wednesday - Friday, 11 am - 6 pm EAI Video Project Space X Initiative 548 West 22nd Street, Ground Floor New York, NY 10011 www.eai.org Admission free The EAI Video Project Space at X will feature three distinct week-long video programs, each focusing on a groundbreaking artist: Merce Cunningham, Charlotte Moorman and Steina. Presenting a selection of works from the EAI archives by these artists and their collaborators—including Charles Atlas, Nam June Paik, Jud Yalkut and Shigeko Kubota, among others—these programs will present three radically different, experimental approaches to analog video in the 1970s ranging from videodance to performance documentation and electronic image processing. ___________________________________ MERCE CUNNINGHAM Video Tribute August 18-21, 2009 Merce by Merce by Paik Part One: Blue Studio: Five Segments Charles Atlas and Merce Cunningham 1975-76, 15:38 min, color, sound Merce by Merce by Paik Part Two: Merce and Marcel Nam June Paik and Shigeko Kubota 1978, 13:05 min, color, sound Merce by Merce by Paik is a two-part tribute to visionary choreographer Merce Cunningham. Blue Studio: Five Segments is a stunning work of videodance by Cunningham and his then filmmaker-in-residence, artist Charles Atlas, one of the premier interpreters of dance, theater and performance on video. In a series of short pieces choreographed and performed specifically for video space, Cunningham's gestural dance is multiplied, overlaid and transported from the studio to a series of unexpected landscapes, accompanied by a disjunctive audio collage that includes the voices of John Cage and Jasper Johns. In Merce and Marcel, Nam June Paik and Shigeko Kubota create a densely textured, transcultural collage that pays tribute to the eponymous artists by addressing the relationship of art and life. Paik and Kubota link art to the movements and gestures of the everyday. In a witty temporal layering that Paik terms a "dance of time," rare interviews with Cunningham and Marcel Duchamp by Russell Connor are intercut and superimposed. ___________________________________ CHARLOTTE MOORMAN Performance Documents August 25-28, 2009 26'1.1499" For A String Player Jud Yalkut 1973, 42 min, color, sound Rare Performance Documents 1961-1994 Volume 1: Paik-Moorman Collaborations Charlotte Moorman and Nam June Paik 1965-73, compiled 2000, 25:08 min, b&w and color, sound TV Cello Premiere Nam June Paik, Jud Yalkut 1971, 7:25 min, color, silent Famously described by composer Edgar Varese as "the Jeanne d'Arc of new music," Charlotte Moorman was a central figure of the New York avant garde of the 1960s and '70s. As a performer, she was a longtime collaborator of Nam June Paik, who created many of his best-known pieces for her, including TV Bra for Living Sculpture (1969) and TV Cello (1971). Though her performances were marked by a playful delight in the absurd, this was framed at all times by a high seriousness in her approach to her music, even when hanging from a trapeze or suspended by balloons. At X, EAI presents videos by Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut that capture Moorman's unique performances. Included in the program are Yalkut's realization of Moorman and Paik's extraordinary performance of John Cage's composition 26'1.1499" For String Player, documentation of Moorman's first performance on Paik's TV Cello in 1971, and rare performance documentation from Paik's archive of Moorman playing the TV Cello while lying on Paik's TV Bed and early performances in Germany and New York from the 1960s. ___________________________________ STEINA Early Video September 1-4, 2009 Violin Power 1970-78, 10:04 min, b&w, sound Orbital Obsessions 1975-77; revised 1988, 24:25 min, b&w, sound Flux 1977, 8 min, color, sound Bad 1979, 2:14 min, color, sound Urban Episodes 1980, 8:50 min, color, sound Summer Salt 1982, 18:48 min, color, sound From the mid-1970s continuing into the present, Steina has explored intricate transformations of vision, space and sound, through a dynamic confluence of digital technologies, mechanical devices and natural landscape. This program looks at her earliest video works, produced in the 1970s and early '80s. After producing a pioneering body of work with Woody Vasulka at the beginning of the decade, Steina pursued the electronic interrelation of sound and image; the use of mechanized, pre-programmed image devices for explorations of perception, space, and modes of seeing. The program includes Orbital Obsessions, Steina's mesmerizing meditation on time, space, movement and the "mechanized decision-making of instruments"; Flux, a frenetic experiment in perceptual abstraction, created with lightening fast video switching, footage of flowing water and video noise; Summer Salt, a mechanically and electronically mediated exploration of the Southwestern landscape; and Steina's unconventional self-portrait, Violin Power, described by the artist as a "a demo tape on how to play video on the violin." ___________________________________ 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. 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