TALK AMERICAN
Museum of Contemporary Photography
Wednesday, September 12, 2012 | 6:00pm
Stephanie Barber — Dogs
Video Playlist is a recurring series of one-night public video screenings guest curated in response to MoCP exhibitions. Jesse Malmed will present a program in conjunction with the Peripheral Views: States of America exhibition that includes a live, participatory performance during the screening.
Talk barely, talk breathily, talk American. The works in this screening address the complexity of language and the myriad ways it shapes our experience of reality. Any place as big as America, with as many voices as America, has a multitude of expressions that exist at the periphery.
This program brings the following to a center: a Sci-Fi CAPTCHA tale, what Microsoft Word found wrong with the Unabomber, how jargon becomes gibberish, a report from the out-of-bodied, a political speech about political speech, and finally, real talk from a pair of paper-mache dogs. Following the screening, Malmed will present selections from The Body Electronic, an ongoing and evolving series of participatory video-based performances. Malmed offers a visual, polyvocal, and interactive experience that engages audience members in dizzying, surprising, and humorous ways.
Joe Sandler - OOBE | Video | 2007 | 3 mins.
“A vivid account of the other side after an out of body experience.” -JS
Peter Rose - The Pressures of the Text | Video | 1983 | 17 mins.
“Integrates direct address, invented languages, ideographic subtitles, sign language, and simultaneous translation to investigate the feel and form of sense, the shifting boundaries between meaning and meaninglessness. A parody of art/critspeak, educational instruction, gothic narrative, and pornography.”
—PR
Peggy Ahwesh - 73 Suspect Words | Video | 2000 | 4 mins.
“The results of running a spell check on The Unabomber Manifesto.”
—PA
Doug Hall - The Speech | Video | 1982 | 4 mins.
“This tape grew out of my fascination with Ronald Reagan and his uncanny ability to demonstrate what I called the ‘Signifiers of Americanism’. Through gesture and intonation, he seemed to suggest many of the virtues that Americans hold dear. Although not directly about Reagan, The Speech suggests some of these issues, while remaining purposely ambiguous. The tape is really a speech about speeches.”
—DH (courtesy of Video Data Bank)
Gabrielle de Vietri - CAPTCHA (Chapter One) | Video | 2011 | 5 mins.
“A fantasy fairytale is elicited from the perverted non-words of the online Turing test, CAPTCHA.”
—GdV
Stephanie Barber - Dogs | 16 mm | 2000 | 15 mins.
“Barber acts out a philosophical discourse on the nature of art, emotion and individualism, its profundity undercut - and then magnified - by the fact that her interlocutors are two papier-mâché dog-head hand-puppets with sad eyes.”
—Ed Halter (for Afterall)
Jesse Malmed - Selections from The Body Electronic | Video, Voices | 2000s | 30 mins.
“Out toward the horizons where video meets performance meets poem.”
—Lisa Radon (Oregon Arts Watch)