Co-Existing and Co-Llaborating
Artists Jennifer and Kevin McCoy and Potter Belmar Labs in attendance
$7 non-members, Aurora members free with RSVP
The point between love and hate is a fine line when you live and work with your partner. The shared physical space of the home and mental space of love and relationships has tremendous influences on the art-making process, development and professional drive of individuals. As part of Fotofest’s Biennial event, Aurora will feature the work of six collaborative teams of artists, including Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Darrin Martin and Jamil Hellu, Potter Belmar Labs, Duke and Battersby, Voshardt and Humphrey and Dana and Travis Hanmer, this program highlights some of the video art world’s better known teams who know the ups and downs of living and working together during the creative process.
Some of the specific works featured include "I'll Replace You," described as a project that used a casting call then fifty actors to replace the artists in executing the many responsibilities they undertake every day (Jennifer and Kevin McCoy); "Equal/Opposite," which explores our reactions to emotional stimuli by focusing on the aftershock of intimate physical actions (Travis and Dana Hanmer); "Beauty Plus Pity," which sets a colorful single-channel video within a lush viewing environment populated by costumed taxidermic animals (Duke and Battersby); "Subjects Unknown," a photography series and video that takes inspiration from the ambiguous yet intimate relationships documented between men in the history of early photography (Darrin Martin and Jamil Hellu), "Double Thunder" a short video work chronicling a journey through town and country (Potter Belmar Labs) and two videos, "Parametabolic" and "New and Improved" (Robyn Voshardt and Sven Humphrey), that explore states of being and patterns of thinking - from anxiety and restlessness to motivation and control - on personal, social, and institutional levels.
Jennifer and Kevin McCoy are a New York-based collaborative team who are also married. They work with interactive media, film, performance and installation to explore personal experience in relation with new technology, the mass media, and global commerce. Their work has been widely exhibited including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, BFI (British Film Institute) Southbank in London, The San Jose Museum of Art, Palazzo della Papesse and Artists Space in New York. They were the 2005 recipients of the Wired Rave Award for Art.
Potter-Belmar Labs is Leslie Raymond and Jason Jay Stevens, collaborating artists since 1999, with internationally exhibited, prize-winning work, in live cinema performance, single-channel video, and installation art. Their latest short, Double Thunder, won Honorable Mention at its debut at the 2009 Fargo Film Festival. Potter-Belmar Labs specializes in audience-participatory, multimedia spectacles and curiosities. Their work offers means of interaction, like unique switches, sounds and peepholes, and their live cinema performances often involve direct audience participation.
Special thanks to Art Lies, A Contemporary Art Quarterlyfor their support of this program.