Tag: Jennifer and Kevin McCoy
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Paper Mirror
“Post 2020 pandemic lockdown, we see New York City storefronts in various stages of development, from fully open, to provisionally boarded up with wood and cardboard, to empty and labelled with “For Rent” signs. We also see street art both sanctioned and unsanctioned, signals of the city’s eternal creative life. For 601’s storefront, we present a new way of marking place using the architecture itself. We have created intricate drawings that trace the contours of the windows’ usual reflection from across Eldridge Street. Over the last few years, Kevin has developed a large scale software driven plotter that deploys traditional art materials (in this case ballpoint pen) to translate source photography into crazily detailed line drawings. In this manner, we render photos of the facing facade into a “Paper Mirror”. This project extends our use of technology in our collaborations in various ways. One common idea in many of our projects is to record, stream, or include images of the site in which the artwork is presented. In our work, technology serves as a mediator between the human and the world, and as an active force which not only shapes its material but reframes the entire project of what we choose to see. Often, we find that lived experience outstrips available modes of presentation and discourse. By inserting a technical layer of mediation we can often reinscribe the feeling of surprise usually only available through chance encounters.”
A film work of cinematic scale, Cleaner traces the creative awakening of a maintenance worker. Her movements are framed within the routines of manual labor yet set against the work environment of the tech economy. The film, shot on location at the headquarters of Kickstarter, juxtaposes the physicality of traditional labor with the abstraction of technological work through its use of soaring camera work, precise framing, and choreography inspired by every day movement. This fractured narrative exposes the tight grip of corporate social space and the precarity inherent in all forms of work today.
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Public Key/Private Key
Jennifer and Kevin McCoy’s Public Key / Private Key explores museums’ ownership of art and the role of donors in building museum collections. For this project, the artists donated an original artwork, a 16mm film, to the Whitney Museum’s Special Collection on behalf of members of the public. Visitors to the project page could register their names and explain why they would be interested in becoming a donor. Fifty of them were chosen by the artists on the basis of the originality of their submission. The acquisition of an artwork for a museum collection typically ends the work’s market life, permanently associating the donor with the gift. With Public Key / Private Key, the artists extend that market life: each donor receives a digital certificate, which they are free to transfer, gift, or sell at will. The digital certificates are based on a blockchain, a technology also used in cryptocurrencies to ensure the uniqueness of a transaction. The blockchain becomes a method of recording the work’s provenance as the list of fifty donors evolves through the transfer of the digital certificates over time. The changing list of donors will be tracked for six months on whitney.org. The Public Key / Private Key film also has a blockchain key embedded in it and, should it be shown as part of an exhibition at the Whitney Museum, the first audience member to take note of and submit the key to the artists will become the fifty-first donor of record. Public Key / Private Key complicates the traditional relationship between museum, benefactor, and audience, turning the public into donors as well as viewers, able to trade and transfer their title. (text from the Whitney Museum’s online exhibition “Public Key / Private Key” 2019)
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Every Shot, Every Episode
The source material for this work is a collection of 10,000 shots from Starsky & Hutch. Each episode is broken down into a series of individual shots. The artists have assigned key words to each shot: every plaid, every sexy outfit, every yellow Volkswagen, etc. There are 278 categories in total. Each category is archived on an individual video CD which is labelled in clear, bold lettering and installed in the gallery on a shelf. Video CDs are chosen by the gallery visitor and played via the built-in video screen.
On May 2nd, 2014 I sent a transaction to the NameCoin cryptocurrency network which read: I assert title to the file at the URL with the creator’s public announcement of it’s publishing. The file whose SHA256 hash is d41b8540cbacdf1467cdc5d17316dcb672c8b43235fa16cde98e79825b68709a is taken to be the file in question. Title transfers to whoever controls this blockchain entry. This is the first digital artwork to be attributed on-chain and the first fully specific, fully transferable NFT. The on-chain data is still live. Here is the record from a NameCoin blockchain explorer: https://nmc.tokenview.com/en/tx/fa8b9a6ad4d266ffbec4f9a1217e0dbcd657bb1eb3ed49912a2ab1bd3bb48f8d
URL https://twitter.com/mccoyspace/status/462320426719641600
An algorithmic video of a nighttime passage through an abandon tunnel. An esophageal journey.
Evoking a disintegrating communique, this early digital video shreds and shifts the face of a young woman, often passing through episodes of skull like imagery or even complete abstraction.
An encapsulation of a road movie, The Farm depicts a midnight run through a blighted zone.
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Double Fantasy
A reimagining of images created by miniature cameras and small motors mounted on one of the McCoys Double Fantasy sculptures, this video depicts mythic and religious iconography through the lens of American youth.