LC: This exhibition was a partial survey lation so that it would exaggerate a of work you’ve created since 2005. Can feeling of “thingness”? you describe the selection? Was the MBS: I wanted to show work that could intent to show a breadth of work or to touch upon that idea in different ways— Gray Areas narrow in on several themes or formal pieces with different relationships to strategies? duration, to other media (sculpture, paint- MBS: I’ve rarely gotten the opportunity ing, etc.), to scale, to display technologies to show different bodies of work in the (CRT monitors vs. video projection vs. An Interview between Michael Bell-Smith and Lauren Cornell same space over the last ten years. I flat screens). I wanted some videos to feel wanted to have a variety of pieces talking more like objects, others like pictures, to each other, creating new associations and still others like more traditional and meanings. In that respect, I saw the video screenings. show working as a typical survey might: a For instance, three videos—Glitter way to present a more multifaceted idea Grade, Return to Forever, and On The of what I do. Another aspect of the show Grid—were projected on the wall at a was thinking about the duality of video scale comparable to paintings or large as both digital files and as things. On photographs. These three works are quite one hand, video is portable and ephem- minimal; very little “happens” in them. eral, while on the other, your experience They work more with the language of pic- 33 as a viewer is entirely dependent on its tures than the ideas of montage we might physical manifestation. This might seem traditionally associate with video or film. like a no-brainer for someone working So the display echoes the work. Battle- with video, especially in art spaces, but as ship Potemkin Dance Edit (120 BPM), video bleeds into more and more of our which is very much about montage, was life through our various screens and envi- shown with a selection of other works on ronmental advertising, the “thingness” of a large flat screen TV opposite a couch. video becomes a more complicated and The viewer was given a remote to select important issue. which video to watch: it was set up like a living room. So while these videos are all LC: Your work has always engaged basically QuickTime files, their physical so incisively with how moving image manifestations, and how the viewer en- creation, exhibition and distribution gages with them, was completely different. have changed in light of digital media. The promotional video for my DVD “Thingness” addresses key challenges multiple, Digital Fireplace Upside-Down, of how digital video exists in physi- was broadcast on public access television cal space. And yet, I wonder how you in Portland in conjunction with the exhi- make the idea visible within an in- bition, bringing in a whole other idea of stallation when we are all already so video “thingness” and its transmission. accustomed to seeing video through So, I didn’t work to exaggerate it exactly, a device? Did you conceive the instal- but hoped that through this variety, the ICA @ MECA “thingness” would become more pro- years. I stripped them of all color and special effects, this also seems to be but when edited together reveal their role nounced. The aim, I suppose, was that arranged them to fill the page. Each page at play with your work N.E.W. Y.O.R.K. simply as placeholders. In some respect this marriage of (as you put it) device and has a singular category of image—Tape, / M.I.A.M.I. / L.A.S. V.E.G.A.S. (2010) it was an anti-supercut. video, would carry more intentionality, Trees, Frames, Splatters, etc. I like the which features establishing shots of echoing this shifting role of video and its suggestion of functionality, of a system, the eponymous cities. It seems that LC: Right. Establishing shots would delivery in our culture. albeit in ways that might be a little cryp- here, similar strategies to those used be an unlikely material for a fan-made tic or misguided. in Creative Elements are at play in the supercut as they’re such a non-event LC: Let’s move away from a strict focus The prints are straight out of the appropriation of this TV show. Can you compared to the larger dramas at play. on video. Your work is also animated book: pages blown up, pigment printed describe how you conceived this piece? I felt like you were kind of turning the by conceptual strategies that draw on, on canvas, and stretched. The composi- MBS: The point of departure for N.E.W. establishing shots into stock images— and I would say offer, an update to the tions are very basic, just filling up the Y.O.R.K. / M.I.A.M.I. / L.A.S. V.E.G.A.S. showing how they were staging or history of appropriation in art. This page. It’s like a manual recreation of was Internet culture, specifically a type framing the city, instead of being it. is seen quite clearly through Creative computer logic. They’re noncomposi- of fan edit called a supercut. It’s a video MBS: Yes, it ended up being a reverse Elements, the book published in con- tions, yet there are still decisions being where all instances of a particular TV or engineering of a stock footage collection. junction with the show, and the related made in their arrangement and I think film trope are isolated from their context, There’s a stock footage company called prints. Can you discuss these projects? there’s something compelling in how that things like cutting together every time Art Beats that sells collections of aerial MBS: The inspiration for Creative Ele- looks. By having them pose as paintings, the word “dude” is uttered in The Big views of cities, including the three that I ments was the black and white clip art I wanted to amp up the proposition of Lebowski. I see it as a sort of low-brow worked with—they look almost identical books used by graphic designers before the pages as aesthetic objects. They were conceptual art. I remember seeing works to the shots in my videos. The piece then 36 37 the advent of desktop publishing. The hung in a grid to play up the sameness. I with similar strategies by Jennifer and takes on this roll of reframing the func- designer would cut the images, standard like the idea that at a remove, the individ- Kevin McCoy years ago, and how excit- tional as aesthetic, similar to the Creative clip art type things, out of the book to ual elements become lost, highlighting ing they felt. Now they’re something that Elements works. I think there’s a produc- use in ads, magazines, brochures, etc. the formal arrangement. It’s a take on the teenagers are posting online for YouTube tive awkwardness in that process. The books are still being made (now they way we read images online, like the way views; it’s a radical shift. With that disper- come with a CD of digital files) but with Google Image Search categorizes similar sion there’s something lost; the gesture LC: Along the same lines, the overlaid the Internet, they’re relics of a different images based solely on forms and colors, loses much of its efficacy, but there’s also sketches seemed like a playful kind of time. Why deal with a physical thing ignoring content or meaning. something gained: all these “non-artists” watermarking—perhaps like a slight when you can download whatever image working in this quasiconceptual zone. alteration to say you’d been there? you want online? While those books LC: This fascination with “creative” The contradiction of this loss /gain These markings also appear in Art might not be so useful anymore, you can defaults recurs in your work: in “De- was exciting to me; I wanted to work with Tape; can you explain them a bit more? still consider them in other ways: aes- Employed” for instance, a video (not the form, but move it somewhere else. I Are you playing off the idea of owner- thetically, as classifications of objects, as featured within the show) in which isolated the establishing shots— shots ship/copyright of images? catalogs of the language of design and digital special effects are displayed that “establish” a scene by showing its MBS: With the sketching, there are a lot advertising. With Creative Elements, I centrally so that they become the location—from the entirety of the 2004 of ideas at play for me. One is that idea wanted to ape the form of these books content, not just the elements that cre- season of the three different TV shows in of ownership and copyright: the water- while playing up the qualities that reso- ate the visual form or narrative. This the CSI franchise. The result was a TV-fil- marking of digital images, the signature nate for me. consideration and deconstruction of tered portrait of the three cities in which or remarque of the artist, graffiti. I like So I made my own, working with visual vocabularies plays out through- the shows takes place: New York, Miami that the squiggles sit on the “surface,” images from a collection of digital clip out different systems of classification. and Las Vegas. I liked the idea that these my mark on top of my environment.