ANTEK WALCZAK Screening + Artist Talk Wednesday, September 23, 2009 6:30 pm Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) 535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor New York, NY 10011 www.eai.org Admission free
			The video works of Antek Walczak grew out of his participation in the art/fashion collective Bernadette Corporation and the late '90s downtown New York scene. On hiatus from the collective's video productions, Walczak produced a separate but parallel body of media work. In these provocative videos, Walczak speculates on the relationships between fashion, capitalism, globalization and the many other surfaces on which commercial images grow. At EAI, Walczak will screen and speak about two of these works: Dynasty (1998, 49:52 min), and Run With Zeros (1999, 9 min). The ambitious forty-nine minute Dynasty (1998), largely assembled from abandoned footage for unrealized Bernadette Corporation fashion spots, has an alternative title: "Beginnings That Never End." Walczak describes the video as a "celebration of the richness of the first ten minutes of any film" presented under false pretenses; a "collection of sketches, scenes, reports, and fragments glued together with fashion models and held up by voice-over-writing." Comedy, commerce and production play out across the loosely connected vignettes, which include the story of the daughters of the fantastically wealthy Baskins and Robbins families; Crime Punishers, a satirical police drama set in the suburbs; Acapulco Story, an action-packed story about drugs, sex and fashion, in which all the action happens off-screen; and a sci-fi story about psychic youth defending the Earth from aliens in 2010. Run With Zeros (1999) is a short video that follows fashion designer Susan Ciancolo's Run 8 collection from fashion show to the racks at Barney's. In the process, Walczak traces the lifecycle of consumer capitalism: desire, consumption and disposal. Characterized by what Walczak terms a "neo-Godardian lo-fi Rousellian distracted-narrative style," both works define an early-21st-century condition, "a passion for dead fictional substances and authentic forms, a haunted authorial voice speaking across grids of nonlinear layers, tracks, clips and timelines." In his media work, Walczak set his sights on the darkened cinema. Almost by accident, Walczak's videos also form a critical snapshot of creative life and attitudes in a strangely melancholy pre-millennial downtown New York. ___________________________________ Antek Walczak was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota in 1968 and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received a BFA at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. His work has been shown at Cinematexas, Austin; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Fri-Art in Fribourg, Switzerland, and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, among others. He has been a core member of Bernadette Corporation since 1994. He has written for publications including Purple, Pacemaker, Pazmaker, Zehar, and Made in USA. ___________________________________ 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 ___________________________________ This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs