Monday March 17, 7PM
SHELF LIVES
Videos by Eileen Maxson
admission $6 – artist in person
© Courtesy of the artist
We are very pleased to welcome New York/Netherlands-based artist Eileen Maxson to Microscope for a special screening program of video works. Maxson, who is strongly influenced by 90s American pop culture and blockbuster movies, presents “a medley of [her own] faulty transmissions, serious ladies, and televised hallucinations” made between 2002 and the present. Heavy-hearted, yet humorous, Maxson performs in many of the videos as characters trapped by media, and frequently sabotaged by technology including, among others, a rejected VHS application to the Real World, an online romance scam victim, and a stock footage sunburn victim. Also included in the program are excerpts from a new work-in-progress inspired by the film “Reality Bites”(1994)!
“(Maxson’s) videos evoke a world of faulty transmissions, moribund formats, and women under the influence of both. Each elegantly crafted tape conjures up a hidden history of media, one that emphasizes its most marginal and ephemeral forms…” – Thomas Beard
_
Eileen Maxson (New York, 1980) is an interdisciplinary artist working at the confluence of video, performance and installation. Her works humorously interrogate the borders between imagination and consumer coercion; technology and true personality Her works have been seen at museums and microcinemas including Anthology Film Archives, New York; Art in General, New York; LACMA, Los Angeles; Light Industry, Brooklyn; Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster; and THE INTERNET.
Maxson has been awarded residencies at De Ateliers, Amsterdam; International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), Brooklyn; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC). New York. She has received grants from the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam; Artadia: The Fund for Art & Dialogue, New York; The Dallas Museum of Art; Centrum Beeldende Kunst, Rotterdam. Eileen was also the first recipient of the Arthouse Texas Prize (2005). In 2008, a DVD complication of her videos “Lost Broadcasts” was released by Aurora Picture Show and Microcinema International.
Eileen holds an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (2008) and a BFA from University of Houston (2002). She lives and works in New York and the Netherlands.
PROGRAM:
TAPE 5925: AMY GOODROW
06:22 min, 2002
Maxson performs an asocial college student’s VHS audition tape to the “Real World”. A secret is revealed and the resulting confession lands on the desk of a jaded MTV employee, who fast-forwards through the details of her dejected story.
I KNOW IT WHEN I SEE IT, 2014
12:00 min (Excerpt, In-Progress), 2014
Re-enacting a scene in the film “Reality Bites”, young female creatives are challenged to define irony on camera. Their videos tape over an original VHS of the movie.
DATE WITH DECEIT
4:27, 2009
A victim of online romance scams reveals the details of her deceptions. She admits “it wasn’t exactly love at first type”, but falls hard nonetheless
E-LUV
0:45, 2009
From ____ to ______.
COURT TV UNKNOWN
3:17, 2008
A televised nightmare, recorded LIVE and relived online.
TONITE (REPRISE)*
1:56, 2006
Disappearing in front of the bright lights of a TV News conference, one woman articulates the melancholy and contradictions of the present moment.
CINDERELLA+++
2:00, 2002
Cinderella meets 90210, Lady gets a new reputation.
DISED 2604: Prof. Catherine Poplar
5:00, 2004
From the start, Catherine Poplar’s lecture entitled “Existentialism and Stephen King: The Artist’s Role in Society According to the ‘Shawshank Redemption’” is plagued with technical disaster. Repeatedly interrupted by a faulty microphone, the professor distressingly and humorously stumbles through the recording.
CACHED CURSES
2:20, 2010
An ear worm exorcism, psychic bubbling of worry, trash, cash and (so last century) curses.
Total Running Time: about 45 min
Still from “TAPE 5925: AMY GOODROW” (Eileen Maxson, 2002) © Courtesy of the artist
