Time Batteries

Light Industry
220 36th Street, 5th Floor
Brooklyn, New York
http://www.lightindustry.org

Time Batteries
Presented by David Joselit

Wednesday, April 8, 2009 at 7:30pm

Data storage is one of our fundamental economic, political and historical challenges. Data is collected from us whenever we click, charge, or swipe—it helps politicians decide who “we” are and what “we” want. Wal-mart knows how to use it to sell us things and Obama knows how to read it to take the nation’s temperature. But is there an aesthetics of data storage? Now that anybody can record almost anything, can this form of primitive image accumulation be a kind of art?

“Time Batteries” handle duration differently from classic video works by artists like Peter Campus, Bruce Nauman or Joan Jonas where the dilation of time was tied to the expansion of perception. Duration is now linked to the banal but fundamental ethos of storage. I will test this thesis by presenting two works: Mary Ellen Carroll’s film Alas poor YORICK! (2008) in which the artist’s drawing made from her hand transcription of the entire text of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy on a single sheet is burned on a beach in Truro, and Rachel Harrison’s Roman Holiday, a found moment of slapstick recorded from a restaurant table in Rome. I’ll discuss questions of media transfer and consumption (in fire, in boredom, and even of products) as manifest in these works, and I’ll draw a historical genealogy for a possible aesthetics of data storage.

David Joselit worked as a curator at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston from 1983-1989 where he co-organized several exhibitions including "DISSENT: The Issue of Modern Art in Boston," (1985) "Endgame: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture" (1986) and "The British Edge" (1987). After receiving his Ph.D. in Art History from Harvard in 1995, he joined the Department of Art History and Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine, where he taught until 2003. He is currently Professor and Chair of the History of Art Department at Yale. Joselit is author of Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910-1941 (MIT Press, 1998), American Art Since 1945 (Thames and Hudson, World of Art Series, 2003), and Feedback: Television Against Democracy (MIT Press, 2007). He writes regularly on contemporary art and culture for such publications as OCTOBER and Artforum.

Tickets - $7, available at door.

About Light Industry

Light Industry is a new venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn, New York. Developed and overseen by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, the project has begun as a series of events at Industry City in Sunset Park, each organized by a different artist, critic, or curator. Conceptually, Light Industry draws equal inspiration from the long history of alternative art spaces in New York as well its storied tradition of cinematheques and other intrepid film exhibitors. Through a regular program of screenings, performances, and lectures, its goal is to explore new models for the presentation of time-based media and foster an ongoing dialogue amongst a wide range of artists and audiences within the city.

About Industry City

Industry City, an industrial complex in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, is home to a cross-section of manufacturing, warehousing and light industry. As part of a regeneration program intended to diversify the use of its 6 million square feet of space to better reflect 21st century production, Industry City now includes workspace for artists. In addition to offering studios at competitive rates, Industry City also provides a limited number of low-cost studios for artists in financial need. This program was conceived in response to the lack of affordable workspace for artists in New York City and aims to establish a new paradigm for industrial redevelopment–one that does not displace artists, workers, local residents or industry but instead builds a sustainable community in a context that integrates cultural and industrial production.

For more information, please visit http://www.industrycityartproject.org