Mike Smith at The Building
June 16th 2009
the building
Platz der Vereinten Nationen 14A
Berlin 10249 DE
T: 030 28 04 79 73
Michael Smith will present a selection of artists’ videotape portraits of people and places. After thinking how to organize a program drawing from works in the e-flux video library, Smith figured it best if he gathered pieces he already knew and liked. The works chosen offer depictions of individuals and situations experienced through objects, accessories, and ambient snippets, framed and captured with the detachment of a “fly on the wall” and/or the furtiveness of a thief. The program includes videos by Phyllis Baldino, Ronnie Bass, Roberto Bellini, Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn, Joanna Malinowska, Shana Moulton, Stuart Sherman and Jason Simon.
The screening will be followed by a conversation between Michael Smith and John Miller, artist/writer living in Berlin and New York City.
Michael Smith has exhibited worldwide at various museums, galleries, universities, festivals, night clubs, on TV and in the streets. In New York City, he has had solo shows and screenings at The New Museum, The Whitney Museum, the Christine Burgin Gallery and MOMA. He has also had solo exhibitions at Le Magasin in Grenoble, Objectif in Antwerp, Galleria Emi Fontana in Milan, Hales Gallery in London and EDB Projects in Amsterdam. In 2007-08 his retrospective Mike’s World: Michael Smith & Joshua White (and other collaborators) was exhibited at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, Texas and at the ICA in Philadelphia.Currently, Smith is included in the group exhibition The Pictures Generation: 1974-1984 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This fall, a large-scale video installation made in collaboration with Mike Kelley will be at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City, New York. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and Austin, Texas.
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EVR
e-flux video rental (EVR) is an ongoing work by Anton Vidokle and Julieta Aranda, comprising a free video rental, a public screening room, and a film and video archive that is constantly growing. This collection of over 850 works of film and video art has been assembled in collaboration with more than 400 artists, curators and critics.
EVR is an exploration of alternative processes of circulation and distribution, and it is structured to function like a typical video rental store, except that it operates for free. VHS tapes can be watched in the space, or, once a new member fills out a membership form and contract, they can be checked out and viewed at home.
Originally presented at a storefront in New York, in 2004, EVR has traveled to art venues in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Seoul, Paris, Istanbul, Canary Islands, Austin, Budapest, Boston, Antwerp, Berlin, Miami, Lyon, Lisbon and Colombia. EVR will travel to Dakar, in 2010. Having outlived the technology that made it possible (VHS video tape players), the project will be permanently archived at the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut and Moderna Galerija in Ljubljana.
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the building
Platz der Vereinten Nationen 14A
Berlin 10249 DE
T: 030 28 04 79 73
the building is open Thursday through Saturday, 12 – 6 pm.