EAI Presents at Monkeytown

EAI is pleased to present the first in an ongoing series of monthly programs at Monkeytown in Williamsburg. The programs will feature works selected from EAI's extensive collection and profile the artists whose works make up this extraordinary archive. Each program will screen twice every Thursday night each week of the month.

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September 2005: Forcefield

Every Thursday night, September 8-29, 2005
First Seating: 7:30 pm
Second Seating: 10:00 pm

Admission: $10

Monkeytown
58 North 3rd Street
Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Reservations are recommended:
http://www.monkeytownhq.com/reservations.html
hotline: 718.384.1369

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Forcefield, an artist collective that began in 1996 in Providence, Rhode Island, forged an aesthetic program that encompassed music, performance, installation, textiles, printmaking, and video. All activities were anonymous and group-oriented, and the collective's members operated under aliases. Members P Lobe and Meerk Puffy founded Forcefield as a two-man band, and were later joined by Gorgon Radeo and Le Geef, at which point the four broadened their scope and range of media.

Three of the four Forcefield members were also residents of Fort Thunder, a 9,000 square-foot living space in Providence, which was furnished with layer upon layer of found detritus. Live events hosted at the space included music shows, craft fairs, indoor fireworks displays, cookie bake-offs, radio plays, costumed wrestling matches, garden competitions, bicycle repair, and Halloween mazes. Forcefield's work is situated within this disparate and self-contained cycle of creation and exhibition, and employed a healthy disregard for disciplinary boundaries.

Forcefield's art work has been exhibited at the Institute for Contemporary Art, London; the Daniel Reich Gallery, New York; Space 1026, Philadelphia; Art Basel Miami; Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; Tate Britain; and the 2002 Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among other venues.

Forcefield is currently vacationing in the Bermuda Triangle.

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This program presents a selection of Forcefield’s video works, produced between 1996 and 2003. The videos operate on several levels simultaneously, with a sensibility that oscillates between utter mysteriousness and goofball humor. The collective's output ranged from pulsing geometric experiments with shape and color to animated organic abstractions to strange narrative pieces featuring sad robots and people in full-body knitted costumes. Using obsolete equipment and defunct electronics, Forcefield constructed a conflicted, decaying symbology that is both strangely anachronistic and completely contemporary at the same time.

Warmup, 2002, 7 min
Berry Face, 2002, 3:51 min
Meta Radeo, 2003, 3:02 min
Diamond, 2003, 12:43 min
Third Annual Roggabogga Motion Picture, 2002, 6:21 min
Brown Shmoo, 2002, 36 sec
Tunnel Vision, 2001, 11:43 min
Assassins Ride, 2002, 8:10 min
Video I, 1996, 2:20 min
Video II, 1996, 2:10 min
The Sad Robot, 1996, 2:08 min
Video III, 2000, 10:44 min
Live 2000, 2000, 2:53 min


For more information about Forcefield please visit: www.eai.org.

Programmed by Josh Kline


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Upcoming Programs:

October 2005: Imagination Station.


Works by Dara Birnbaum, Shana Moulton, Michael Smith, and Bruce and Norman Yonemoto.

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About EAI

Founded in 1971, Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is one of the world's leading nonprofit resources for video art and interactive media. EAI's core program is the international distribution of a major collection of new and historical media works by artists. EAI's programs include a preservation program, viewing access, educational services, online resources, and public programs such as exhibitions and lectures. The Online Catalogue provides a comprehensive resource on the 175 artists and 3,000 works in the EAI collection, including artists' biographies, descriptions of works, QuickTime excerpts, research materials, Web projects, and online ordering.

Electronic Arts Intermix
535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10011
(212) 337-0680 tel
(212) 337-0679 fax
info@eai.org
http://www.eai.org