FACING the LENS

Facing the Lens consists of videos that attempt to deconstruct the fourth wall by directly engaging with a screen, either through physical contact or dialog. This series explores the humanistic qualities of technology as a subject, directly and indirectly. Facing the Lens features works by Liat Berdugo, Dana Sederowsky, Guy Ben-Ner and Kent Anderson Butler.

LIAT BERDUGO

LIAT BERDUGO
Title: “My iPhone is Everything, v.16”
Date: 2012
Duration: 00:02:42
www.digikits.ch

Project Description

In this body of video work, developed through the generous support of The Vermont Studio Center, iPhones and iPads are re-cast as objects that they could never truly be. As these devices increasingly become our do-anything Swiss army knives in an increasingly digitized world, My iPhone is Everything asks, “What would a world look like in which we push these limits to their absolute extremes? What is it that we are ultimately willing to believe technology can do?”.

Liat Berdugo

Bio

Liat Berdugo (US) is an American artist and writer whose work focuses on the strange, delightful and increasingly ambiguous terrain between the digital and the analog, the online and the offline, and the scientific and the literary. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and festivals internationally, including The Simultan Festival in Romania, STIGMART/10 in Italy, Athens Video */ Art Festival, and DysTorpia Media Project in New York. She is the 2012 winner of the Anomalous Press Chapbook Competition and her book, The Everyday Maths, was published in 2013. She holds an M.F.A. in Digital + Media art from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her recent work explores the totemic and fetishized sides of technology and the gestures surrounding its condensation to the surfaces of touch-screens.

KENT ANDERSON BUTLER

KENT ANDERSON BUTLER
Title: “The Raft Is Not The Shore”
Date: 2012
Duration: 00:08:00
Photos: Kent Anderson Butler
www.kentandersonbutler.com

Project Description

“The Raft Is Not the Shore”, is rooted in the concept of “Love”. The phrase, “I love you, will you love me?” which is used in the piece, has many implications and layers. The love that individuals share with each other is an essential element of who we are as humans. It is what moves and sustains us in life.

Kent Butler Anderson

Bio

Kent Anderson Butler is a Los Angeles based artist working in video installation, performance and photography. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally including: The International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Venezuela, Charlie James Gallery- Los Angeles, The Pasadena Museum of California Art, Fringe Exhibitions – Los Angeles, Orange County Museum of Art, Cave Gallery- Brooklyn, NY, Photo Miami, Track 16 Gallery- Santa Monica, Carl Berg Projects-West Hollywood, Art Center College of Design, and Hunter College, NY. His video work is also in the video art libraries at Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, and Fringe Exhibitions.

DANA SEDEROWSKY

DANA SEDEROWSKY
Title: “Hasselblad Announcements (part of a triptych)”
Date: 2010
Duration: 00:00:42
Photos: Dana Sederowsky
www.danasederowsky.com

Project Description

Dana Sederowsky uses a rigorous system of rules when producing her video performance work. For instance, the camera should be still and portray without cuts and she uses a monochrome background. Also, Sederowsky only uses her own face and body and performs text she has written herself.

The video triptych “Hasselblad Announcements” is about still photography. In the last of the three sequences we literally see the face bang the camera in a frantic attempt to enter into a close encounter with the viewer.

Dana Sederowsky

Bio

Dana Sederowsky is a Swedish video artist and photographer currently based in Berlin as artist-in-residence at GlogauAIR. Sederowsky has a background in still photography and works with video performance often using language and text. She frequently investigates language through linguistic exercises and phonological experiments, directly in the face of the viewer. She has had several exhibitions for example Hasselblad Center Gothenburg Sweden, Bow Arts Trust London, Museo de la Ciudad Queretaro Mexico, Baltic Newcastle, National Center for Contemporary Art in Ekaterinburg and Moscow.

GUY BEN-NER

GUY BEN-NER
Title: “Drop The Monkey”
Date: 2009
Duration: 00:08:35
Photos: Guy Ben-Ner, courtesy of the artist and Aspect Ratio, Chicago

Project Description

Performa 2009 originally commissioned, “Drop the Monkey”, a “live film” from Israeli video artist Guy Ben-Ner. Ben-Ner created this work over the course of a year making 25 roundtrips between Berlin and Tel Aviv ostensibly to visit his girlfriend who lived in another city.

Created as a performance, this “live film” is shot in-situ where no external edits or post-production are done therefore necessitating a physical move between places to transition between camera shots. The ensuing dialogue gives more evidence to this struggle between art and life and parades a fable channeled through a conversation with himself via cell phone all rhyming in English and Hebrew.

Guy Ben-Ner Drop The Monkey

Bio

Guy Ben-Ner was born in Ramat Gan, Israel. He studied at Hamidrasha School of Art at Beit Berl College before going on to receive an MFA at New Yorkʼs Columbia University. The 2006 recipient of a DAAD Grant, Ben-Ner has exhibited at the Venice Biennial, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, and the Center for Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv. In 2009, MASS MoCA presented, “Thursday the 12th,” a solo retrospective of Ben-Nerʼs video and installation work. Ben-Nerʼs work has also been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Skulptur Projekte, Münster; the Liverpool Biennial and Performa 2009. In 2013, Aspect Ratio offered the US premiere to Soundtrack.