May 12th. Performance: Specters of the riot
A lecture-performance-discussion about <Specters of the riot>
Open Prototyping at the EYEBEAM Art and Technology Center
540 West 21st street, New York, NY10011
RSVP: taeyoon at eyebeam dot org
Taeyoon Choi will present text, image, sound and technology from his continuing research on the 1992 Los Angeles riot. The performance will follow a journey of 8mm home video recording of Rodney King beating to local television station to national television network to collective consciousness and appropriation by the popular culture. The performance is delivered in a format of lecture in order to create a space for discussion and participation. Specters of the riot, in this case, are following speculations that will be elaborated and discussed.
- How have the events been portrayed in the collective narratives of different local ethnic groups, in popular culture (film and music), and in the mainstream media?
- Did popularization of consumer camcorders lead to citizen journalism as well as surveillance? On that note, how to use the learnings about American television culture of early 1990s to understand contemporary internet culture?
- What effect did the representation of urban space, youth, race and violence in the media have on the physical space and social relations in interracial neighborhood?
In December of 2010, Taeyoon presented Specters of the Riot as speculations and contextual questions to a group of L.A. artists and researchers at the Public School in Telic Arts Exchange, Los Angeles. The presentation centered around the similarities and differences in factors that triggered violence in the 1965 Watts riot, 1992 Rodney King riot, and present day violence in LA. The discussion lead to questions such as Why did violence erupt as instances of riots? Why weren’t non-violent methods employed? Why did these events not build towards a larger sustained movement? Or did they?
The May 12th performance is open to the public via RSVP. Eyebeam will be officially closed by the time of performance and there is will be an instruction by the entrance to ring a door bell. This event is part of Open Prototyping.
Eyebeam presents Open Prototyping, an environment designed to share the ongoing research and production of its fellows and residents. The main exhibition space will operate as a platform for public engagement through workshops, presentations, demonstrations, and informal daily interactions. Like the recent X-Labprogram, Open Prototyping fosters an experimental approach that embraces tinkering, critical dialogue, user testing, and the real-time presentation of creative research. <from Eyebeam’s website>