"AN EVENING WITH
DOUGLAS DAVIS"
*Saturday, March 10 (10PM)*
at: FUN
(130 Madison Street -- Under the Manhattan Bridge, New York)
[VIDEO SCREENINGS]
"A Conversation"
by Joseph Beuys, Douglas Davis, and Nam June Paik
1974, 34 min, b&w.
This historical tape, documents a conversation
among artists Joseph Beuys, Douglas Davis and Nam June Paik at Ronald
Feldman Fine Arts in New York in 1974. During
the discussion, they introduce the theme of the potential for artists'
use of
satellite technology.
With: Joseph Beuys, Douglas Davis, Nam June Paik. Videotaped by Bill Viola.
"Post-Video"
by Douglas Davis
1981, 29:06 min, b&w and color.
Post-Video is an anthology of Douglas Davis' works
from 1976 - 1980, with commentary by John Hanhardt (ex-Curator of
Film/Video, Whitney Museum, NY): Davis' work
centers on "the appropriation of satellite communication technologies to
create aesthetic texts," as well as the artistic
exploration of "the true communication potential and resources of global
communication."
Produced by Electronic Arts Intermix.
"Ménage
à Trois"
by
Douglas Davis
1986, 59:45
min, color.
Ménage
à Trois was a live satellite and radio performance linking the Guggenheim
Museum (New York), Stedelijk Museum
(Amsterdam),
and the Venice Biennale. With live satellite technology allowing narrative
simultaneity + juxtaposition, this work
examines the
role of the viewer in television culture + that of the video camera as
witness. Three phone-in "witnesses" debate
guilt, innocence,
and the concept of the "reader" -- in this case, viewer -- as murderer.
Following the telecast, the international
audience participated
in a live broadcast on National Public Radio, which addressed technology's
mediating effect on public
and private
morality.
Produced by PBS, RAI-TV + VPRO-TV.
[WEB SCREENINGS]
"Terrible Beauty"
http://here.is/TERRIBLEBEAUTY
An Evolving Work of Meta-Media Theater in which You play an active, critical role EACH TIME the story leaps into a new phase in a new city led by the new man or woman above...PUSHING THE ARTIST ASIDE, TURNING HIM, HIS GENDER, AND HIS BRAINS INSIDE OUT... and laying final claim to his precious oh too precious, virginal ID,In this action you will play many roles, as Voyeur, as Playwright, as Reader/Critic, as Actor (yes you can read lines in company with a global cast of volunteers, whom you can already see, hear, and scent below) ... and in so doing you will join the twisting, Moebius-strip virtuality of the new century, where nothing will ever stand still for long...but twist, twist, twist twist twist
"MoralPornography.com"
http://moralpornography.com
"A moral pornographer might use pornography as a critique of current relations between the sexes. His business would be the total de-mystification of the flesh and the subsequent revelation, through the infinite modulations of the sexual act, of the real relations between man and his kind. Such a pornographer would not be the enemy of women...."
--Angela Carter, "Polemical Preface: Pornography in the Service of Women"
Please join us for an evening with artist, theorist, performer, teacher + writer, DOUGLAS DAVIS, who has played an active role in contemporary art since the 1960's. A pioneer of video in the 1970's, and web art in the 1990's, his "live" satellite performance/video/web pieces are seminal exercises in the use of interactive technology as a medium for art + communications. In 1977 he joined with Nam June Paik + Joseph Beuys for the first live international satellite telecast by artists, transmitted from Documenta 6 in Kassel, West Germany. Davis' pioneering work with interactivity has evolved with new technologies. His ongoing interactive project for the World Wide Web, entitled The World's First Collaborative Sentence, was commissioned by the Lehman College/CUNY Art Gallery and is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. "Metabody" (The World's First Collaborative Visions of the Beautiful), 1997, collection George H. Waterman III, website co-sponsored and hosted by P.S.1/The Institute of Contemporary Art, NYC; Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; Municipal Gallery and Museum, Reyjkavik, Iceland; Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; Donajski Digtal Gallery, Warsaw shows you hundreds of bodies sent from all cultures. "Terrible Beauty", an evolving work of interactive global theater (on-going since 1997), uses the bodies and faces on the web as theatrical partners. And now, "Moralpornography.com", which just opened in Copenhagen, Denmark, will scandalize our mayor, delight you, and reform heterosexuality forever.
As an artist/performer, Davis confronts the anonymity and passivity of technological production and reception, establishing an intimate, interactive dialogue with the viewer as a forum for intellectual and moral debate. Articulating his approach to video, Davis writes: "Television is usually considered a public medium, but because of the way it is experienced -- in a personal space -- it is in fact quite private. When I began to work overtly with the medium, I acted out of the same sense of intimacy, this time on the other side of the screen."
The author of several books, including Artculture: Essays on the Post-Modern (1977) and The Museum Impossible: Architecture and Culture in the Post-Pompidou Era (1990), and The Five Myths of Television Power. Davis has been a critic for Newsweek and contributor of essays, opinions and fiction to the New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, The Village Voice, and The New York Press.
Davis received a B.A. from American University and an M.A. from Rutgers University. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (D.A.A.D.); he was artist-in-residence at the TV Lab at WNET/Thirteen, New York, and a Fulbright Scholar at the State University of the Humanities in Moscow.
Davis' work has been seen in solo shows at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Metropolitan Museum, New York; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse; and The Kitchen, New York, among other institutions. His work has also been exhibited at festivals and institutions including the Venice Biennale; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Kolnischer Kunstverein, Cologne; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Douglas Davis lives and works in New York, and is currently readying himself for several global network theater projects linking cities around the world.
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Organised by:
Cristine Wang
(New Media Arts Curator)
www.tribes.org/dystopiaMedia Sponsor:
NY Arts Magazine
www.nyartsmagazine.comVideos on Generous Loan by:
Electronic Arts Intermix
www.eai.org
FUN is located at 130 Madison Street--
(under the Manhattan Bridge, New
York)
F train to East Broadway
Tel: 212-964-0303
* * F R E E A D M I S S I O N W / T H I S I N V I T E * *