exhibition > loop - raum für aktuelle kunst
curated by Vanessa Ohlraun

The exhibition is part of the program of club transmediale and takes up its focus Performing Sound. The exhibition shows works by Canadian artists who explore the figure of the popstar. In their enactments, the artists imitate Britney, rappers, rock stars, play with performative conventions in the music world and question notions of authenticity and representation.

David Armstrong Six
(Toronto, CA)
David Armstrong Six's piece >I've Been Thinkin'< (video, 8 minutes, 2002) is a rap music video in which we see the artist cruising through the streets of the Greater Toronto Area, singing a song of his own composition. As in many rap songs, the artist is full of anger and indignation at what he describes as a degenerate society. The street images reflected in his oversized sunglasses, however, show the endless highways of Suburbia, not of the Ghetto, and the brand of his car - a Volvo - also reveals his middle-class background. In his performance, the artist thus points to the contradictions inherent in the music industry, particularly in the rap music industry, in which social ascent and wealth are often met with suspicion, while at the same time perceived as a measure of success.

Rodney Graham
(Vancouver, CA)
Rodney Graham's piece >A Little Thought< (8 mm film transferred to DVD, 3:45 minutes loop, 2000) relates to the artist's current activity of writing, singing and recording songs, combining it with the cultural phenomenon of the music video. It is shot in Super 8 film and has a jerky home movie quality presenting a mixture of Northwestern stereotyped images, cherry blossoms, ducks in a pond, the road winding through the country, together with funky erotic guitar shots. The piece is a sly, self-ironic commentary on the artist who says of himself that his dream is to become a rock star. Although the artist is mostly absent in this piece, his identity as a singer-songwriter and performer is referred to in images of him stroking an electric guitar.

Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay
(Berlin/Toronto, CA)
'In >I am a Boyband< (video, 5 minutes, 2002) I perform as four different members of a boy group, singing to a 16th century madrigal song rearranged to have a pop-synth backbeat. >I am a Boyband< explores sameness in contemporary culture, examining the prefab, uncritical articulations of masculinity, love and relationships that are mass-produced as both entertainment and instructive socializing agents. I also aimed to call attention to the startling similarities between lyrics from Elizabethan court songs and contemporary pop music.' (Statement of the artist, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay).

Barbara Prokop
(Berlin/Vancouver, CA)
For >Britney: Still Me< (video, 7 minutes, 2003) Barbara Prokop asked a Britney Spears fan to mimic her idol, singing and dancing and talking to us as 'Britney'. In the course of the performance, which includes interviews interspersed between the dance scenes, 'Britney' reflects on her role as a pop star, her position in the music industry, and the effects of her new image on her career and her personal ambitions. Contrary to conventional views on pop stars as being manipulated puppets of the music industry, the performer in this video claims a position of self-determination and empowerment for her role model.

Kevin Schmidt
(Vancouver, CA)
In >Long Beach Led Zep< (video, 8 minutes, 2002), Kevin Schmidt stands on Vancouver Island's Long Beach with a Marshall amplifier and two loudspeakers powered by a gasoline generator, and plays one the most classic rock songs, Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven', on his electric guitar. Set before an archetypal West Coast scenery, the artist's performance plays with forms of sentimentality typical of rock music while expressing a desire to reclaim the soul-stirring potential of rock. Kevin Schmidt's video is a somewhat anachronistic version of a music video full of emotive truth, challenging the antagonistic categories of artificiality and authenticity underlying discourses on popular music.

Althea Thauberger
(Vancouver, CA)
In >Songstress< (video, 29 minutes, 2001/02), Althea Thauberger worked with eight young female singer-songwriters which she had chosen by placing an ad in a local weekly in Victoria, British Columbia. Together with the artist, the young women produced professional demos of their self-composed songs and then performed in front of her camera in lush nature settings, lip-synching to their pre-recorded songs. The video resulting from this collaborative process shows a series of portraits of aspiring folk singers struggling to express their desires and experiences in a personal way, while working through a web of conventions which link femininity to emotion and nature.


Vernissage: 07/02 - 20h
Exhibition 08/02 - 29/02
Wed - Sun 14 - 19h
loop - raum für aktuelle kunst
heeresbaeckerei (Ostflügel 2. OG)
Köpenicker Straße 16
Berlin-Kreuzberg
030/28390028
> www.loop-raum.de