Action Adventure at CANADA NYC

July 13, 2006

Type: discussion

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ACTION ADVENTURE

Premiere Screening: 8pm Sharp, Thursday, July 13, 2006
CANADA, NYC: 55 Chrystie Street (between Hester & Canal)

Organized by Melissa Brown, Josh Kline, and Michael Williams

Exhibition runs from July 13 ? August 13, 2006

Participating Artists:

Tanyth Berkeley
Antoine Catala
Jeremiah Clancy
Jim Drain
Tim Etchells
Alistair Banks Griffin
Marie Lorenz and Lan Tuazon
Rachel Mason
Chris Moukarbel
Shana Moulton
Julie Orser
Paper Rad
Scott Reeder
Trevor Shimizu
Jocelyn Shipley
Cate Snook
Ryan Trecartin
Siebren Versteeg
Abbey Williams
Stina Wirfelt

Summer is here. Time to take a time-out from the high temperatures and
humidity in an air-conditioned movie theater. Time to kick back and eat
popcorn in the dark. Time to spend some quality time with slick
multi-million-dollar Hollywood fantasies.

Action Adventure is a group video show in the spirit of the Hollywood
Blockbuster. The major part of the project is a 90 minute-long curated
program of video exploring the influence of the movies in videos made by
artists. Cinema provides a momentary escape for billions of people from
The ordinary difficulties of their lives. It is a mass-produced language of
imagination and emotions universally understood in our culture. The
Artists in Action Adventure harness elements of the movies to tap into this
system. They reuse, rearrange, or redeploy the ideas and strategies of
Hollywood in the service of art-making.

Jim Drain, Jocelyn Shipley, and Antoine Catala hijack cliche movie genres
by creating absurdist parodies. Ryan Trecartin takes the narrative and
edits it into something new and radical. Shana Moulton, Paper Rad and Scott
Reeder create vivid character-driven stories. Stina Wirfelt and Tim Etchells
take on the stars. Abbey Williams pays homage to Kenneth Anger by doing a
remake. Rachel Mason, Marie Lorenz, and Lan Tuazon perform daring and
dangerous deeds and document them. Tanyth Berkeley turns the camera on the
audience and experiments with slow-motion excitement. Jeremiah Clancy, Julie
Orser, Alistair Banks Griffin, and Cate Snook create moments of abstracted
cinematic beauty. Chris Moukarbel takes bootlegging a little too far. Trevor
Shimizu