Saturday April 2, 7:30pm
Alright Class: Hits & Rarely Screened Videos by Ben Coonley
artist in person
Still from “Why Cecco Beppe Does Not Die”, 2009, single-channel HD video, 5 minutes
Microscope is extremely pleased to present a solo screening of works by Ben Coonley featuring 3D, Pony, Cat, and “Pentar” videos along with pre-show Powerpoint slides by the artist whose solo exhibition “Moonley” is currently on view at the gallery through April 3rd.
The works in the program, completed between 2002 and 2013, range from “hits” or Youtube videos gone viral such as the first two installments of Coonley’s “Trick Pony Trilogy” and his 2006 cat love letter “Valentine for Perfect Strangers”, to lesser known works as the outer space cine-opera “Mercury” and the Performa commission “Why Cecco Beppe Does Not Die”, playful and personal remake of a scene from the 1916 film “Vita Futurista”.
The screening also includes the rarely screened “Future of Metal” shot by the artist at the age of 13 on VHS and documenting the first (and last) metal battle of the bands at his junior high school.
Ben Coonley will be in attendance and available for a Q&A following the screening. Surprises to be expected.
$7 general admission
$5 students with ID
Free for Members!
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BEN COONLEY is an artist working with video, computers, 3D, and cats. His work has been screened in venues including BAM’s 2015 “3D in the 21st Century” series, MoMA PS1’s “Greater New York: Cinema”, Performa, the New Museum, the Moscow Biennale, and the International Film Festival Rotterdam. In 2010, he was named one of Film Comment’s “21 Leading Lights of Projection Performance”. Coonley studied Art Semiotics as an undergraduate at Brown University, and received an MFA from Bard College in 2003. Coonley was born in Boston, MA and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Program:
Pre-Show Slides for Greater New Yorkers (2010) – pre-screening loop
PowerPoint “pre-screening edutainment” originally created for MoMA PS1’s “Greater New York: Cinema” exhibition.
Axle
video, 2008, 35 seconds
One of “Seven Video Responses to Constant Dullaart’s YouTube as a Subject” posted on YouTube under an anonymous pseudonym. Each of the seven videos in the series riff on the ubiquitous loading wheel that appears when streaming video is buffered due to a slow network connection.
Artist Statement
video, 2010, 2 minutes 42 seconds
The artist attempts to lay bare his art/life by lip-syncing the apology Tiger Woods delivered to an auditorium of friends and family the wake of his infamous sex scandal.
Future of Metal
video, 1990–present, 22 minutes
Documentation of an ill-fated junior high school battle of the bands videotaped by the artist when he was 13-years-old and edited many years later. A never-ending work-in-progress.
One Trick Pony
video, 2002, 4 minutes 56 seconds
Introduces the audience to the rockin’ talkin’ pony, who provides musical accompaniment for a series of Texas country dance lessons.
Experimental Philosophy in 3-D starring Amanda Palmer
HD 3D video, 2013, 7 minutes 20 seconds
The third installment in a series of web videos that illustrate findings from the burgeoning field of experimental philosophy, an interdisciplinary practice that uses empirical research methods borrowed from psychology and social sciences to investigate philosophical concepts. Watermarked stock videos and songs from Apple’s stock music library are used to illustrated “Folk Moral Relativism,” an experiment designed to test the claims of several philosophers that regular people tend to hold absolutist views of morality. The video uses stereopsis (the binocular depth sense) as a visual analogy for one kind of commonly experienced moral relativism. Sponsored by a grant from the Art Matters Foundation.
Why Cecco Beppe Does Not Die
HD video, 2009, 4 minutes 41 seconds
Otto the cat vs. the Italian Futurists. A remake of a scene from the lost Futurist omnibus film “Vita Futurista” (1916) created for “Futurist Life Redux” (2009), a Performa Commission with SFMOMA and Portland Green Cultural Projects.
Mercury
HD video, 2011, 5 minutes 16 seconds
A mercurial cine-opera set to visuals gathered by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft. Lyrics composed in collaboration with the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN). Created as part of the omnibus project “Orbit(film).”
Valentine for Perfect Strangers
video, 2006, 3 minutes 20 seconds
A romantic e-card from Otto, a feral cat seeking love from a stranger on the Internet. Otto edits himself into clips from the 1980’s sitcom Perfect Strangers and asks strangers on YouTube to return the favor.
New York Underground Film Festival Trailer Starting Dr Zizmor
video, 2008, 1 minute 10 seconds
New York’s most iconic dermatologist salutes the underground.
The Best Gifts
video, 2006, 2 minutes 39 seconds
A volunteer tour guide explains Christo’s Central Park Gates to a virtual tourist.
3D Trick Pony
3d video, 2002, 5 minutes 30 seconds
The second installment in “The Pony Collection,” a series of videos adapted from live performances created between 2002-2003. In this video, the artist and his talking pony present an audience interactive demonstration of Lev Kulshov’s famous editing experiment and a 3D review of loosely related principles of subject/spectator empathy.
Still from “Experimental Philosophy In 3D (Absolute Folk)”, 2013, Stereoscopic 3D Video, 7.5 minutes
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Microscope Gallery Events Series 2016 is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).
With the underwriting support of the Robert D. Bielecki Foundation.
