Winter 2007 - Pop Music and Consumer Culture

Although the dialog between contemporary art, mass media and popular culture does initiate revitalizing processes within different forms of cultural expression, recent technological, socio-economic and political developments are impacting all aspects of contemporary life, and human behavior and experience are becoming less diversified as culture becomes increasingly corporate, totalized and reductive.  Independent experimental production by artists that address these issues and new forms of communication between individuals and groups are emerging as an alternative creative economy whose critical discourses and projects contribute to the diversity of contemporary global life.

Some of the works in Pop Music and Consumer Culture such as Chris Wilcha's The Target Shoots First, Douglas Rushkoff's The Merchants of Cool and Jem Cohen's CHAIN examine advertising in broadcast media and the pop music industry, and the impact of corporate culture on the way that we live and express our social condition.  Advertising is consuming more and more aspects of all of culture and society.  Many alternative forms of communication and expression are so quickly absorbed and fed back to us that it is hard to maintain a subversive position without becoming a product of the mass market.  Reality programs in the guise of documentary productions are part of corporate pop culture's construction of a monolithic model of a thoroughly mediated everyday life as the norm for contemporary lifestyles.

Other works in Pop Music and Consumer Culture such as Kristin Lucas' anti-misogynistic music video project, Tony Oursler's Synesthesia interview with Tony Conrad, Cory Arcangel's pop music genre collider and Tony Cokes' interrogation of consumer culture show that it is possible to intervene and create a dialog between art and music.  They also develop a critical perspective within the means of production while contributing alternative models that provide a more diversified context for cultural expression.

Digital technology is contributing to a change in the means of media production and distribution, as a shift is being initiated from television to the Internet and other ubiquitous forms of telecommunication.  The transformation from being primarily consumers of recorded information to becoming producers and collaborators in the creation of media content is comparable to the video art revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.  Although this emerging media ecology is being colonized by corporate forces, Internet-based alternatives to the monolithic pop culture industry have potential for artists and programmers who are working collaboratively with new forms of social software, distribution networks, on-line communities and blogs that are part of a bottom-up rather than top-down community development.  –Patrick Clancy

February 9

The Target Shoots First, Chris Wilcha (USA), 1999, 70 min., video

“Wilcha, a 22-year-old college graduate and alternative-rock enthusiast, was hired by the Columbia Record and Tape Club to help launch a whole new niche-marketing division which brought him face-to-face with the contradictory meanings of the term ‘alternative’ once it’s been embraced by the mass market.” –Jonathan Rosenbaum

Beach Boys / Geto Boys, Cory Arcangel / Beige (USA), 2004, 4:13 min., video

Juxtaposing original live performance footage of the Beach Boys with a contemporary music video by the rap group Geto Boys, Arcangel calls attention not only to divergent readings and identifications, but also to the qualities shared by this American pop cultural material. –Electronic Arts Intermix

Celebrations for Breaking Routine, Kristin Lucas (USA), 2003, 24:51min., video

An alternative to corporate music videos that mass-market young female musicians, Celebrations for Breaking Routine documents girl bands in Liverpool and Basel recording original songs about the future commissioned by Lucas. These community-based collaborations resulted in alternative visions of female empowerment and identity in a media-driven culture. –Electronic Arts Intermix

February 16

The Merchants of Cool, Douglas Rushkoff (USA) and PBS Frontline, 2001, 53 min., DVD

As everyone from record promoters to TV executives to movie producers besieges today's teens with pseudo-authentic marketing pitches, teenagers increasingly look to the media to provide them with a ready-made identity predicated on today's version of what's cool.  “It's one enclosed feedback loop.  Kids' culture and media culture are now one and the same, and it becomes impossible to tell which came first – the anger or the marketing of the anger." –Douglas Rushkoff

Ad Vice, Tony Cokes (USA), 1999, 6:36 min., video

Ad Vice inhabits the realm of the music-video, only to use that form’s language against itself in a subtle critique of the interactions of desire and commerce in a capitalist culture.  –Electronic Arts Intermix

Synesthesia: Tony Conrad, Tony Oursler (USA), 1997 – 2001, 45:19 min., video

Tony Oursler’s Synesthesia project features interviews with twelve legendary figures in the downtown music, performance and art scenes.  Since the 1960s, Tony Conrad’s experimental work has helped define the contours of minimalism, both in music and in film.  –Electronic Arts Intermix

February 23

CHAIN, Jem Cohen (USA), 2004, 99 min., 16mm film shown on video