e-flux Film is very pleased to present the October 2024 edition of our online series Staff Picks, featuring Tony Oursler and Constance DeJong’s Joyride (TM) (1988, 14 minutes).
The allegorical Joyride (TM), a collaboration between artist Tony Oursler and writer Constance DeJong, takes the form of a dreamlike roller-coaster ride through a corporate theme park, an odyssey of the spectacle of consumer culture and the American marketplace. The artists write that it is “inspired by institutional versus private-sector devotion to the ‘transcendental.’” As guardians of the cultural torch, theme parks and museums herd millions of thrill-seekers through a mental haze towards a re-shaped history and a sketchy future. Here objects and environment become one. A souvenir is purchased and relocated in the home; it is used to unlock the crowded and carbon dioxide-filled corridor to the ‘transcendental.’”
Watch the film here.
Tony Oursler is best known for his innovative integration of video, sculpture, and performance. A pioneering figure in new media since the 1970s, Oursler has explored diverse methods of incorporating video into his practice, breaking video art out of the two-dimensional screen to create moving three-dimensional environments with the use of projections. At the center of Oursler’s practice is a persisting preoccupation with technology and its effect on humanity. His videos often take as their subject the human face, fragmenting and distorting its physiognomy, and thus the legibility of expression, by projecting it onto inanimate objects or embedding it into his sculptures. With these video-sculptures Oursler explores the role that the rapid growth of technology plays in altering, and often inhibiting, human social behavior. Solo exhibitions of his work have been organized at Kunstraum Dornbirn, Austria (2021); Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan (2021); Musée d’Arts de Nantes, France (2020); Nanjing Eye Pedestrian Bridge, China (2019); Public Art Fund, New York (2018); The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2016); LUMA Foundation, Arles (2015); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2014); Tate Modern, London(2013); Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo (2013); Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev (2013); and Art Sonje Center, Seoul (2012) among numerous others.
Constance DeJong is an artist and writer who has worked for thirty years on narrative form within the context of avant-garde music and contemporary art. Considered one of the progenitors of media art, or time-based media, DeJong shapes her intricate narrative form through performances, audio installations, print texts, electronic objects, and video works. Since the 1980s, DeJong has collaborated with Phillip Glass, Tony Oursler, and the Builders Association on performances and videos at Walker Art Museum, Minneapolis (US), the Wexner Center (Columbus, US), Philadelphia Museum of Art (US), and in New York, at The Kitchen, Thread Waxing Space, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Dia Center for the Arts. Her books include Modern Love, I.T.I.L.O.E., and SpeakChamber, and her work is included in the anthologies Up is Up, But So is Down: New York’s Downtown Literary Scene, 1974–1991 (NYU Press, 2006); Blasted Allegories (New Museum/MIT, 1987); and Wild History (Tanam Press, 1985). Her work has recently been exhibited at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (Arizona, US), the Fisher Landau Center for Art (Long Island City, US), the New Mexico Museum of Art (Santa Fe, US), the Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of New Mexico (Santa Fe, US), the Tucson Museum of Art (Arizona, US), the Albuquerque Museum, (New Mexico, US), and the University Art Museum, University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, US), amongst others.
Staff Picks is a streaming series on e-flux Film of recommended videos designed to disrupt the monotony of an algorithm. Before the end times of big data, we used to discover suggested content along dusty shelves in video rental stores, where Post-it notes scribbled by shift workers implored us to experience the same movies that made them guffaw, scream, or weep. Sometimes the content bored us, sometimes it overwhelmed us, and sometimes, as if by magic, it was just right. e-flux invites you to relive this rental store mode of perusal, with personalized picks curated through judgment that does not take into consideration your viewing history.
For more information, contact program [at] e-flux.com.