7:31 minutes
Canned Laughter was Okón’s response to an invitation from Ciudad Juárez , Mexico, where artists were asked to create works based on their experience of the city. Okón focuse d on Ciudad Juárez as a site for many ‘ maquiladoras ’ ( factories) and on its role within the global context. A mixed media and video installation , the work takes the form of a fictitious factory that produces canned laughter for sitcoms. The Factory ’s name, Bergson, refers to a collection of essays studying laughter that were published by French philosopher Henri Bergson in 1900 . Okón’s work Canned Laughter alludes to the dehumanization produced by mechanized processes and slavery in the age of globalization , as well as to the impossibility to translate and reproduce true emotions though technological means.
Working primarily in video, Okón combines the genre of do cumentary with performative elements that together blur the boundary between reality and fiction. His video installations capture improvisational narratives created by the artist and his collaborators—performers willing to participate in a game of social chance that may easily spiral out of control. In them, t he camera acts as a catalyst that unleashes his subjects , empowering them to act out an assumed character and in the process revealing thei r own awareness and perceptions. Characterized by their uncomfortable, somber nature these works deliberately provoke viewers through confrontational humor as a way to achieve catharsis . His videos are used as a device to implicate audiences and also activate them as a participant, pressuring them to consider questions of social conduct and personal behavior within the context of the authoritative nation-state, and to question their own attitudes towards power, ethics, and prejudice vis -á- vis class, status, and marginality. Described by Okón as near-sociological experiments, his works give the audience a unique insight into the subjects he portrays. Most importantly, they also evoke a sense of interconnectivity: deeply implicating us in issues that we may normally consider foreign or removed from our everyday lives.
Wright Imperial Hotel (2004) is a sort of bow and arrow made out of feathers, a São Paulo phone book, and other materials...
For Sentimentite Agnieszka Kurant collaborated with Justin Lane, CEO and Co-Founder of CulturePulse, to gather global sentiment data that has been harvested from millions of Twitter and Reddit posts related to 100 seismic events in recent history...
For Sentimentite Agnieszka Kurant collaborated with Justin Lane, CEO and Co-Founder of CulturePulse, to gather global sentiment data that has been harvested from millions of Twitter and Reddit posts related to 100 seismic events in recent history...
Fridge-Freezer is a 2-channel video installation where Yoshua Okón explores the darker side of suburbia, d escribed by the artist as “ the ideal environment for a numb existence of passive consumerism and social a nd environmental disengagement...
Wright Imperial Hotel (2004) is a sort of bow and arrow made out of feathers, a São Paulo phone book, and other materials...
Women Are the Post-Apocalyptic Future Skip to content Dana Schutz, "Civil Planning" (2004), oil on canvas (all photos Ela Bittencourt/ Hyperallergic ) BERLIN and PARIS — In recent years, impending ecological apocalypse has spurred a number of contemporary artists to visualize fears of an environmental collapse...
Yes, Toronto based Bahamian artist Gio Swaby is back on the podcast! I only had her on seven months ago, but since then her career has exploded… clearly, we need to hear everything! From articles in the New York Times and interviews on oprah.com, to five (FIVE!) museums acquiring her work! Also, can we talk […]...
Fridge-Freezer is a 2-channel video installation where Yoshua Okón explores the darker side of suburbia, d escribed by the artist as “ the ideal environment for a numb existence of passive consumerism and social a nd environmental disengagement...
The video Swimming in rivers of Glue is composed of various images of nature, exploring the themes of exploration of space and its colonization...
Shot in Oliveto Lucano, a village in the south of Italy, AUTOTROFIA (meaning self-eating) by artist Anton Vidokle is a cinéma vérité style film that slides fictive characters into real situations, and vice-versa, to draw a prolonged meditation on the cycle of life, seasonal renewal, and ecological awareness...
Message to the Extraterrestrials consists of a slide projector beaming images into the side of the telescope...
In 2015, while in residence at the Jatiwangi Art Factory (JaF) located in the village of Jatisura in Jatiwangi, West Java, Indonesia, Togar initiated the Jatiwangi Cup in which the artist, together with communities in the area, established an annual bodybuilding contest...
In 2015, while in residence at the Jatiwangi Art Factory (JaF) located in the village of Jatisura in Jatiwangi, West Java, Indonesia, Togar initiated the Jatiwangi Cup in which the artist, together with communities in the area, established an annual bodybuilding contest...
A Dream Under The Southern Bough: A Look Back and A Look Forward | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints CRISPI June 5, 2021 Alongside Goh Boon Teck, artistic director of Toy Factory, we look back at the journey of A Dream Under The Southern Bough , an ambitious trilogy retelling of Tang Xianzu’s 16th century epic of the same name, which combines Kun opera with contemporary staging and elements...