Description

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A screening of films and videos that examines capital’s meanings and mutations across contexts.

For Value Propositions, the curator Ella den Elzen has selected a series of films and videos that examine the meaning and mutations of value in finance, culture, and beyond. The works in Value Propositions address the malleability of value as a term and an indicator of worth in relation to commodities and abstractions, from the art market to the void.

The screening will begin with Moyra Davey’s Hell Notes (1990/2017), which the artist describes as a “Freudian interpretation of money (money = shit)” that morphs into “a love letter to New York City.” While Hell Notes takes on money and currency, Dora Budor and Noah Barker’s Chase Manhattan (2021–2022) documents the demolition of a modernist skyscraper to make way for the construction of JPMorganChase’s new headquarters, following a dump truck that carries the building’s metal armature and steel beams. Nandi Loaf’s thê ABSOLUTE RECKONING : plot device - minimal derivative symbol impulse (2024), an homage to John Cage’s 4' 33", considers the forms of value produced through art. Vera Lutz’s The Happiness Experiment (2025) shifts between light and darkness to reveal and conceal piles of commodities and everyday objects, toying with the perception of value.

In Hannah Black’s Broken Windows (2022), three young women recall participating in the 2020 protests against police violence in New York, and discuss the momentary interruption of capitalist systems of control through rioting and looting. ITSOFOMO (In the Shadow of Forward Motion) (1989), an adaptation of a performance by David Wojnarowicz and Ben Neill, combines text, voiceover, and imagery to create a sense of acceleration that echoes the urgency of the AIDS crisis—and of a movement built on contesting the state’s devaluation of those most vulnerable to the disease. Value Propositions will conclude with Tony Cokes’s Ad Vice (1999), a music video that presents advertising slogans as platitudes, philosophical musings, and propaganda—or all of the above—with a soundtrack by the band SWIPE.

Copresented with Triple Canopy, this roving, raucous series of films and videos will be followed by a reception with drinks available for purchase.

Value Propositions is made possible through the generous support of the Lambent Foundation/Fund of Tides Foundation; the Teiger Foundation; Critical Minded, an initiative to invest in cultural critics of color cofounded by the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Ford Foundation; the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; the Chauncey and Marion D. McCormick Family Foundation; the Ken and Judith Joy Family Foundation; the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Foundation; the Stolbun Family; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and Triple Canopy’s Publishers Circle and Board of Directors.

Participants

Ella den Elzen is a curator based in New York.

Dora Budor and Noah Barker are artists based in New York. In their films, Budor and Barker trace psychogeographic resonances spawning from sites of development and social life.

Hannah Black is an artist and writer. She is the author of Tuesday or September or the End (2022) and Dark Pool Party (2016). Her most recent exhibition was “The Directions” at Vleeshal in the Netherlands.

Tony Cokes is a media artist creating video works that recontextualize historical and cultural moments. He joined the faculty of Brown University in 1993 and is currently a professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media.

Moyra Davey is an artist based in New York. She works across genres of photography, film/video, and writing.

Nandi Loaf is an artist living and working in the twenty-first century.

Vera Lutz is an artist based in Berlin. Lutz is co-organizer of the reading series a poetics at Haus am Waldsee, Berlin and editor of the Anna Mendelssohn Reader.

Ben Neill is a composer and performer with an extensive history in NYC’s underground music and arts scenes, and the author of Diffusing Music: Trajectories of Sonic Democratization (2024). Neill is the inventor of the Mutantrumpet, a hybrid electro-acoustic instrument. Neill generates immersive experiences that merge ambient music, electronic grooves, and interactive video, all controlled live by his instrument. He holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Manhattan School of Music and is an Emeritus Professor of Music at Ramapo College of New Jersey, where he founded an MFA program in Creative Music Technology in 2021.

David Wojnarowicz (1954–1992) was an artist, writer, and activist.

Triple Canopy is a magazine that works with artists and writers to address the critical issues that define contemporary life.