Jennifer and Kevin McCoy - I'll Replace You: Outsourcing Everyday Life April 13, 2009

NYC-based artist team Jennifer and Kevin McCoy appear in UC Berkeley's ATC Colloquium to discuss recent work. "Lately we've been thinking about social roles, stereotypes, typecasting, categorization, and genres. We wonder how meaning is put together at all and how memories are formed in the first place. We collaborate, but mostly to figure out what it means to speak together, two as one. We think that we're always operating within at-hand, prescribed categories, but that these categories are fundamentally unable to accommodate the experiences they are meant to frame. As our own lives become more and more fragmented, each role is fulfilled by an increasingly abstract approximation. Soon there may be nothing there at all. We've gotten to this point after trying many different strategies: exhaustive categorization, recreation and reenactment, automation, miniaturization, and most recently full outsourcing and personal replacement. We'll present a report on our progress." - Jennifer and Kevin McCoy

Jennifer and Kevin McCoy's multimedia artworks examine the genres and conventions of filmmaking, memory and language. They are known for constructing subjective databases of existing material and making fragmentary miniature film sets with lights, video cameras, and moving sculptural elements to create live cinematic events. Recently they have begun to include autobiographical references in their projects. The McCoys' work has been widely exhibited in the US and internationally - their most recent shows include Museum of Modern Art (NY), British Film Institute/Southbank (London), Hanover Kunstverein, The Beall Center (Irvine, CA), pkm Gallery (Beijing), The San Jose Museum of Art, Palazzo della Papesse, The Addison Museum of American Art, The Nevada Museum of Art, and Artists Space (NY). Their work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Speed Museum.

http://www.mccoyspace.com

Free.

Official Website: http://bcnm.berkeley.edu