calendario eventi  :: 

X

6/2/2004

I wanna be a Popstar

loop - raum fuer aktuelle kunst, Kreuzberg

with David Armstrong Six (Toronto), Rodney Graham (Vancouver), Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay (Berlin/Toronto), Barbara Prokop (Berlin/Vancouver), Kevin Schmidt (Vancouver) and Althea Thauberger (Vancouver)

Curator: Vanessa Ohlraun

Vernissage: Saturday, February 7, 2004, 8 p.m.

Opening hours: Wednesdays to Sundays 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Artist Talk / Finissage: February 29, 2004, 3 p.m. Artist Barbara Prokop and Curator Vanessa Ohlraun will be giving an introduction to the exhibition and to the Canadian contemporary art scene. contact

The exhibition "I Wanna Be a Popstar is part" of the program of Club Transmediale and takes up its festival theme “Performing Sound”. The exhibition shows works by Canadian artists who explore the figure of the pop star. 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.

A central issue shared by the artists exhibited is their fundamental ambivalence towards the figure of the pop star. On the one hand, the pop star serves as a projection screen for dreams and desires, as well as a model of identification that is revered and imitated. The performances of the artists convey a certain authenticity and a genuine desire to be taken seriously as musicians. On the other hand, the amateurish nature of their “music videos”, as well as their overstylized settings and unprofessional imitations undermine conventional representations and constructions of the pop star.

The video Long Beach Led Zep (2002) by Kevin Schmidt shows this ambivalence in an exemplary way. In this work, the artist plays the rock classic “Stairway to Heaven” on his electric guitar while standing in a dramatic West Coast landscape at sunset. The sentimentality of the rock song is visually mirrored in the representation of nature, but can hardly be taken seriously in this exaggerated form. In his 8mm film A Little Thought (2000), Rodney Graham also plays with romantic landscape images, interspersing them with funky erotic guitar shots and accompanying them with his own music. The romanticism seems to be presented with less irony in Althea Thauberger ’s video Songstress (2001/02), which shows a series of young women interpreting their self-composed folk songs in lush natural settings. In their awkwardness, these personal performances come across as refreshingly honest and unpretentious. They offer an alternative to the artificial music video productions of the commercial music industry. The latter are mimicked by Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay in his piece I am a Boyband (2002). In this video, the artist manifests himself as four digitally cloned singers performing in the typical manner of a boyband, thereby taking the artificiality of media-made pop stars to an extreme. His emotional lyrics, however, reveal a touch of romanticism and a hidden wish to be a pop star. In Barbara Prokop’s video Britney: Still Me (2003), a Britney Spears fan plays the role of her idol. Dance and music scenes alternate with improvised interviews in which the performer puts herself in the place of the revered star. Instead of presenting herself as the artificial product of the music industry that she is often claimed to be, “Britney” adopts a position of self-determination and empowerment. David Armstrong Six is more critical towards the music world in his video I’ve Been Thinkin’ (2002). In this piece, the artist performs as a rap singer, employing the characteristic codes of the genre: car rides through the city, angry lyrics and the direct gaze into the camera are common means of conveying authenticity in rap music videos. Yet with his oversized sunglasses mirroring the outside world, the artist alludes to the mediated nature of “realness”, thus subverting claims to authenticity.

An exhibition in the program of Club Transmediale, in cooperation with the Canadian Embassy Berlin, loop - raum für aktuelle kunst and Verein zur Förderung aktueller Kunst, Berlin e.V.

loop - raum für aktuelle kunst
Westflugel 2. OG
Kopenicker Str. 16
10997 Kreuzberg

stampa

permanent link