The Highest Grossing Film of 1994

Event Info

Date	07.28.17
Format	Exhibition
Medium	Digital Art Film Sculpture
Admission	Free

Involved

Event artist	Lee Webster Gray Swartzel Joy Pollard-cruz Shobun Baile Alex Lukas Everest Pipkin
Presented by	IRL Welcome To My Homepage
Funded by	Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department
Associated Program	IRL · Welcome to my Homepage

Produced alongside the political theatre of 2017, The Highest Grossing Film of 1994 approaches issues of capital, entertainment and collapse. Examining pop-culture fantasies of wealth and decay by isolating a section of time that runs from 60’s gameshows to sci-fi visions of the post-apocalypse, the work in this exhibition attempts to stitch a circular micro-narrative out of this linear timeline by drawing those edges together.

It follows a cultural cycle that runs through eras characterized by hope, wealth and opulence, the production of free-use materials, eventual abuse of power, through stagnation and failure. Here, though, that apocalyptic failure returns to (perhaps false) hope through a lens of nostalgia.

Resisting total destruction fantasies, the work instead offers an optimistic breakage of power where failures can become useful tools.

Lee Webster uses the sets of 1960s game shows, emptied of people and indicators of game play, to uncover the framing devices used in television media that set the social coding of the era and capitalist optimism for the rest of that century.

Gray Swartzel works collaboratively with Verónica Vega after meeting through a Craigslist ad where he sought an artist in Manhattan to claim him as her child. The documentation of their constructed relationship investigates biopolitics and the state of global currency in regard to the degradation of the patriarchal order.

Everest Pipkin is working with issues of ownership and capital, specifically through an archive of free 3d models sourced from public online repositories, mostly produced from 1995-2015.

Joy Pollard-Cruz uses civic power structures force-flexed into contemporary poptopian fantasy.

Shobun Baile is creating sound installations based in soon-to-be-unrealized architectural plans and renderings.

Alex Lukas investigates vernacular markings as hyper-localized broadcasts, a form of analog communication especially suited to an impending “after,” with the ability to be received across and through time.