Description

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) presented a screening and artist talk with pioneering media artist Anthony Ramos, whose powerful video works join art with activism. In this rare New York appearance, Ramos screened a series of early video works from the early 1970s, which have been newly preserved by EAI. In these rarely seen pieces, Ramos engaged in direct performances for the camera that confront the politics of race and identity. Other groundbreaking works merge documentary, performance, and mass media imagery in incisive cultural critiques. The evening featured Black & White, an early two-channel video installation, and the premiere preview of Decent Men, a video piece created over almost forty years, in which Ramos delivers an extended monologue on his eighteen-month prison term for resisting the draft during the Vietnam War.