EAI Invites: Mendi + Keith Obadike
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)
535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor New York, NY 10011
January 10th, 2019 7:00 PM
$7 general, $5 student, free for EAI members
Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI) is pleased to launch a new public program series, inviting guests to present works of their choosing from the EAI collection. This series is intended to open the archive to new insights, engaging the catalogue from a fresh perspective. EAI Invites will provide a catalyst to consider familiar work from an unexpected angle, or to call attention to artists or works that have a particular significance to the guest. For our first event, Mendi + Keith Obadike will present a selection of "artist-made 'music videos,'" including works by Kit Fitzgerald and John Sanborn, Philip Mallory Jones (Wassa), Bill Viola (Playing Soul Music to My Freckles) and Tony Cokes (5%), among others, followed by an informal conversation with the audience.
5% is a ten-minute work that questions the cult of pop stardom, deconstructs music industry practices, considers the problematics of live performance, and suggests other, more anonymous working strategies.
"For this work I decided to collaborate closely with musician, media artist, and designer Scott Pagano who, along with Marc Pierson, currently forms the core of SWIPE. Our idea of generic music came out of a belief that pop music was more about life under post-industrial commodity capital than it was about "love," "emotion," or "personal expression." Narratives of superstardom were the grease that kept the idiotic grind looped, moving in place. The soundtrack is two recent SWIPE tracks: mm_2 (2000) and 1cc_v2+ (2001)."
--Tony Cokes
Image: 5%, Tony Cokes and Scott Pagano, 2001, 10:03 min, color, sound (still)