The video work “Blue Life Seminar” by MFA alum and Fine Arts faculty American Artist @a_____rtist is streaming from July 20 – August 3 @themuseumofmodernart as part of their Hyundai Card Video Views series featuring video works from the collection. Not to be missed!
“I felt that the only way to address absurdity was with absurdity.” — American Artist
Since legally changing their name in 2013, an act that made them both anonymous and ubiquitous, American Artist has been producing what they describe as “thought experiments.” These interdisciplinary artworks propose alternative realities that examine the implicit biases pervading contemporary culture and technology.
In “I’m Blue (If I Was █████ I Would Die),” a body of work from 2019, the artist turned their attention to the American law enforcement system. The video “Blue Life Seminar” was shown in a constructed classroom environment prepped for a fictional police-training seminar.
An otherworldly “talking head,” drawn from science fiction and recent historical events, addresses a room of imagined cadets from a digital void, invoking the one-way address of television and the instant engagement of social media.
Stream “Blue Life Seminar” from July 20 – August 3 in the latest installment of our Hyundai Card Video Views series featuring video works from the collection, link in bio.
Read an interview between @a_____rtist and Erica Papernik-Shimizu on #MoMAMagazine.American Artist’s video “2015” (2019) is currently on view in “Pervasive Light: Works from MoMA’s Media and Performance Collection,” the Museum’s partnership exhibition with Hyundai Card in Seoul.
