Wu Tsang

Related EAI Public Programs

 
 
(Mis)Reading the Image: Selections by Darrin Martin
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) eai.org

Tuesday, April 18 to Friday, April 28

This online selection of videos by Darrin Martin stems from the artist’s research seeking disability representation in EAI’s collection—both intentional and unintentional. The titles span early conceptual video to contemporary performance, engaging themes of perceptual difference, semiotic play, and embodiment, and present an array of strategies for access. In Shape of a Right Statement, Wu Tsang re-performs text by the late disability rights activist Mel Baggs. Phyllis Baldino’s Absence is Present: MayJuneJuly and Absence is Present: Dead Nature in the Dark overlay handheld footage with a fuzzy, floating orb meant to represent a blindspot experienced by the artist following open heart surgery. Lawrence Andrews’ Birthday and Anal Denial explore the titular prompts through simultaneous on-screen text and spoken monologue. In John Baldessari’s The Meaning of Various News Photos to Ed Henderson, the artist dissects the semiotics of news media while prompting his interlocutor to verbally describe isolated newspaper clippings. Cecilia Vicuña’s Fire Over Water hauntingly addresses industrial climate disaster through a poetic rendering of the artist’s experience watching Gasland 2. Finally, Shana Moulton’s Whispering Pines 6 problematizes the incomplete promise of wellness culture to make its subjects feel whole. The videos are closed captioned. Baldessari and Moulton’s works are presented with open captions in a window-boxed format to minimize interference with the image. Baldino’s works are included with and without audio descriptions, which were written by EAI staff in collaboration with the artist. Available through April 28.

Watch here.
 
(Mis)Reading the Image: Selections by Darrin Martin
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) 264 Canal Street #3W
New York, NY 10013

March 30th, 2023
7:00 pm ET

RSVP here. Seating is first come, first serve. RSVP does not guarantee entry,​​ but helps us track interest and send event updates and reminders.

Image: Still from Shana Moulton, Whispering Pines 6, 2006. An incomplete jigsaw puzzle is presented on a green table marbled with black veins. A hand pressing pieces in place is pictured coming in from the side. Enough of the puzzle is complete to reveal a waterfall descending from a cliff that ends in a rainbow and mist into the forest below.

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is pleased to present a screening and discussion lead by artist and educator Darrin Martin, whose video, performance, and print-based installations have considered the synesthetic qualities of perception, and notions of accessibility through the use of tactility, sonic analogies, and audio descriptions.

Beginning in 2010, Martin started to explore EAI’s collection with two goals in mind: to search for disability representation, and in pursuit of experimental video work that considers disability access at its inception—even if it might not have been the impetus for its making. As an extension of this project, Martin has assembled a program of works by six artists whose practices span from early conceptual video to contemporary performance, each uniquely engaging the themes of perceptual difference, semiotic play, and embodiment. This event will feature open captioning and live ASL interpretation. A free, closed-captioned online streaming version of this event will be available in mid-April.

Martin writes: “The works in (Mis)Reading the Image are never what they appear to be at face value and/or have found new perspectives within and against each other in time. Their relationship to language, text, and image is built upon shifts in context whether through the performative work of Wu Tsang embodying the words of a late autism rights activist Mel Baggs, an attempt to audio describe images removed from newspaper clippings in John Baldessari’s The Meaning of Various News Photos to Ed Henderson, or in the stuttering poetic plea of Cecilia Vicuña’s emotional summary of a film that rings the alarm over specific man-made environmental catastrophes. Woven throughout the program are selections from Phyllis Baldino’s Absence is Present which manifests her experience with a blind spot and two works from Lawrence AndrewsSelections from the Library, which take the approach of building an image within the viewer using text and sound that resists simple approaches to reification. Finally, Shana Moulton’s Whispering Pines 6 places the viewer as witness to the trajectory of her alter ego Cynthia’s attempt to find wholeness in a world of image fragmentation and missing pieces.

Darrin Martin creates videos and installations that engage qualities of perception mediated through the lens of both obsolete and new technologies. His latest projects consider ways in which meaning is layered and performative using sonic analogies and audio descriptions. Through collaborations with artist Torsten Zenas Burns, they build speculative fictions around re-imagined educational practices and dystopian cosplay paradigms. Martin is a Professor in the Art and Art History Department at University California, Davis.

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)’s venue is located at 264 Canal Street, 3W, near several Canal Street subway stations. Our floor is accessible by elevator (63" × 60" car, 31" door) and stairway. Due to the age and other characteristics of the building, our bathrooms are not ADA-accessible, though several such bathrooms are located nearby. If you have questions about access, please contact cstrange@eai.org in advance of the event.
 
Maintaining Clarity: Recent Works in Distribution
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) 264 Canal Street #3W
New York, NY 10013

February 28th, 2023
7:00 pm ET

RSVP here. Seating is first come, first serve. RSVP does not guarantee entry, but helps us track interest and send event updates and reminders.

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is pleased to present an eclectic selection of videos ranging from frenetic experiments to raw cell phone footage, musical numbers to satirical riffs on sleek consumer electronics, culled from works recently added to our distribution catalogue. The evening takes its title from Ulysses Jenkins’s Sobriety (2022), a new video and song by his conceptual art band Othervisions about keeping one’s head above water amid tumult.

In this collection of short works, artists contend with technology’s travails and possibilities, exploring how digital devices interact with the corporeal world. Cecelia Condit’s AI and I considers the artist’s relationship to Amazon’s Alexa. Jayson Musson’s Blockedt! pitches a functionless “anti-social social networking” app, co-developed with Buzzfeed founder Jonah Peretti for Rhizome’s Seven on Seven. Shelly Silver’s Score for Joanna Kotze, described by the artist as a “dance film that primarily leaves us in the dark,” flickers through photographs of flowers, buildings, and debris, and C. Spencer Yeh’s Three Waves collages close-up video and recordings from the artist’s mouth. LoVid’s Three Moons compiles footage of weeds, wild flora, and friends in and around Long Island taken with a custom-built temporospatial camera, and Wu Tsang’s iPhone-shot Girl Talk captures poet and scholar Fred Moten letting loose to Josiah Wise’s cover of the eponymous 1965 jazz standard.

Following the program, there will be an informal chat with Cecelia Condit, LoVid, Shelly Silver, and C. Spencer Yeh. An online, closed-captioned version of this program will be accessible for a limited time in March.

Please note that works in this program contain flashing lights and intense visual patterns.

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)’s venue is located at 264 Canal Street, 3W, near several Canal Street subway stations. Our floor is accessible by elevator (63" × 60" car, 31" door) and stairway. Due to the age and other characteristics of the building, our bathrooms are not ADA-accessible, though several such bathrooms are located nearby. If you have questions about access, please contact cstrange@eai.org in advance of the event.