{"id":3820,"date":"2012-05-30T15:45:38","date_gmt":"2012-05-30T13:45:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/?p=3820"},"modified":"2012-05-30T15:45:38","modified_gmt":"2012-05-30T13:45:38","slug":"how-to-get-ahead-in-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/how-to-get-ahead-in-television\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Get Ahead In Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0New York artist Alex Bag became the medium she loves and loathes \u2013TV. In her high-grain, lo-def video critiques, art-school grads, gallerists, punks, PRs and vacuous presenters are all subverted with savage wit, and she also turns the camera back on herself. \u201cAutobiography: it’s this malignant, festering, oozing thing that will not die no matter how many times you burn or stab it,\u201d she tells Francesca Gavin.<\/em>
<\/strong><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Never mind the internet: back in the day, the medium that brainwashed humanity more powerfully than any other was television, and one of the most interesting artists to critique and take over the medium is Alex Bag.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bag is the ultimate TV viewer \u2013 squeezing, absorbing, loving, hating and regurgitating TV to art audiences in a refreshing, inventive and thought-provoking way. \u201cHell yes I watch TV,\u201d she says. \u201cNot as much as I would like, which would not be humanly possible. I love how it’s so reliable. So dependable. Always there. Always giving\u2026 Selfless. It’s Ouroboros right there in the living room. Just eating itself contentedly,\u201d she notes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bag was born in New York in 1969, and without her there would probably not be Ryan Trecartin\u2019s confessional hyper-Americana or Kalup Lindsay\u2019s soap opera switch-up. In Alex Bag\u2019s work, identity is constantly fluid, the representation of femininity is perpetually in flux. \u201cAll gender roles are role play,\u201d she says. She was also an early pioneer for TV glitch art, before the waves of YouTube make-and-do flooded the collective virtual psyches<\/span><\/p>\n

The work that made Bag\u2019s name was \u201cFall \u201995\u201d, from the same year. The DIY confessional film depicts Bag as an art student recording the growing pains of the art school experience directly into a VHS camera. Interspersed with the student protagonist\u2019s development and thoughts, Bag added small segments like scenes glimpsed from a changing remote control. They ranged from a lo-fi toy soap opera about bunny murder to fake chatline sex ads, to a comedic take on dated video art.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bag is the queen of pop metamorphosis, a mantle she may steal from Cindy Sherman. Like Sherman, she has used herself as a medium, twisting the process of performance to suit her sense of satire. In her films she personifies a cast of over-the-top characters, advertising clich\u00e9s and Hollywood divas. The whole of audio-visual archive culture is hers to be reused and reworked. She highlights the ideological mechanisms that we suck up unawares. Her work is an ode to trash TV and its melting, ever-changing sense of meaning and identity. \u201cShapeshifting is a hobby that I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone with a fractured psyche,\u201d Bag says. \u201cIt’s a relatively healthy outlet to drain perpetual pain, disappointment and yearning into.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Apart from Bag\u2019s deft performances and transformations, what makes \u201cFall \u201995\u201d so enjoyable to watch is how it highlights the stupidity, hypocrisy and motivations of the art world itself. It\u2019s a vein that has run throughout her practice. Art is a source of humour in \u201cFancy Pantz\u201d (1997), depicting a terrible art dance troupe, and 2001\u2019s \u201cThe Van\u201d. In the latter, three artists (all played by Bag herself) are filmed in the back of a van, talking about their work on the way to an art fair. Each describe their work, all perfect contemporary artwork clich\u00e9s. The gallerist \u201cLeroy Laloup\u201d is equally as risible, exclaiming, \u201cI\u2019m the best, my gallery is the best and you girls, you\u2019re the best! You\u2019re like the coolest, sexiest, hippest pieces of art known to man.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s interesting about examining the structures in the art world itself? \u201cWhat’s that tattoo on Angelina Jolie’s stomach?\u201d Bag wonders.\u00a0 \u201c\u2018Destroy what you love\u2019 or \u2018Eat what you love\u2019 or \u2018Eat what you destroy\u2019? Whatever it says, that’s my answer.\u201d (In fact, it\u2019s \u201cQuod me nutrit me destruit\u201d; \u201cWhat nourishes me, also destroys me.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

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There is a sense of disillusionment or disintegration in much of Bag\u2019s work. Her characters are often moaning about their lot, their creative failure, their disappointments with life. She reveals the flipside of the superficial character of TV culture and the upbeat, positivist rhetoric of America, and her work illuminates the darker side of contemporary capitalism. The character in \u201cFall \u201995\u201d moves from youthful teenage rebellion to utter disappointment for a creative future. \u201c\u2018Failure is an option!\u2019 My high school football coach used to scream that at us before every game and I guess it sort of stuck.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUntitled (Project for the Whitney Museum)\u201d is another perfect case of the disillusionment of TV culture and the inner life. The film was commissioned in 2009 for the Whitney Museum\u2019s foyer. Bag is the clinically depressed star of a Seventies-style variety children\u2019s TV programme, talking to her puppet dragon sidekick while apocalyptic psychedelic visuals play on the screen behind her. In the 1970s Bag\u2019s mother hosted children\u2019s shows including The Patchwork family and The Carol Corbett Show; the artist even featured as a child on screen.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, there are autobiographical references in her work, though it could appear she hides herself behind the cast of characters in her films. \u201cYou can run, but you can’t hide from autobiography. It’s this malignant, festering, oozing thing that will not die no matter how many times you burn or stab it. Obviously some people I’ve been are closer to \u2018me\u2019 or my demographic equivalent, but I’ve also tried to move far, far away, to leave my troubles behind as it were. No matter where you go, there you are. Most clich\u00e9s are true, especially\u00a0when you’re hallucinating.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Bag is an incredibly entertaining comic writer \u2013 something innately part of her approach. As she points out, \u201cwhen depression and anxiety have been clinically diagnosed, throw away those psych-meds, slap on a clown nose and smile smile smile.\u201d Her typewritten stream-of-consciousness texts are spread throughout the monograph published last year by JRP Ringier to accompany her retrospective at the Migros Museum. Bag describes the process in typically poetic terms: \u201cMy writing process usually begins with a quick trip to the Amazon, where I gather the leaves of certain plants and the bark of certain trees. I grind them into a sort of poultice, which I spread on rye toast and devour. Next I place some heavy stones on my eyes and wait. Sooner or later my ancestors and a few obscure saints come swirling into focus, ranting and raving, at which point I rush to the nearest typewriter and start translating.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the power of her performative skills, Bag largely works on her own. \u201cI have horrible, crippling stage fright. I don’t mind performing, I can even force myself to enjoy it, it’s being watched that ruins everything. Over time I’ve devised certain ways to avoid this conundrum. Being alone is best, but I’ve found a few relatives and friends that I’m not afraid to play with.\u201d There is a sense of intimacy that emerges between Bag and the camera, which she often addresses directly. \u201cWhen the fourth wall is smashed to bits and the lady looks you right in the eye, then you know it’s TV you’re watching.\u201d That intimacy is also revealed in the sound elements of her work. In \u201cUntitled Fall \u201995\u201d, for example, accompanying the speech is the constant sound traffic passing in streets near by. \u201cBefore \u2018reality TV\u2019 there was something much closer to reality. Something much noisier.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Bag has exhibited a large number of mediums alongside her films \u2013 drawings, sculptures, collages, photographs, and small TV-based video snippets made from found bootleg footage. Yet this ephemera seems to support and become overpowered by her film pieces. In her films the mechanisms of capitalism are stripped bare. \u201cThe funniest part is when all the recent art school graduates become disillusioned and bitter and rush en masse to the nearest advertising agency recruitment center to sign up. It’s hilarious when they use all their art school knowhow to sell crap to their generation. It’s so clever when they re-invent clever,\u201d she notes, tongue firmly in cheek. In the film 2004 \u201cCoven Services for Consumer Mesmerism, Product Sorcery, and the Necromantic Reimagination of Consumption\u201d Bag created fictional adverts for brands such as Chase Bank, Monsanto and AOL Time Warner by her gothic witchy agency. A critique of the mesmeric nature of the global PR machine is implicit in the title alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

This month Team Gallery in New York is bringing together Alex Bag\u2019s first artworks \u2013 a public broadcast TV series she created in collaboration with Art Club 2000 member Patterson Beckwith between 1994 and 1997. \u201cCash from Chaos\/Unicorns and Rainbows\u201d was a weekly 30-minute TV show the duo created in the days when public TV channels would enable general audiences to broadcast their 15 minutes of fame. It established the approaches in her work \u2013 Bag\u2019s absorption by the medium she comments on. \u201cActually hijacking a regular time slot on a real TV gave us the greatest sense of joy and accomplishment. Being in our early twenties didn’t hurt either,\u201d she recalls.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the materials she was using at the start of her career were contemporary, they have quickly become retro and historic: lo-fi grain of VHS, the DIY framing and texture. \u201cIs VHS retro? I’m so old I remember when it was new. That ‘grain’ is the voice of the disenfranchised, or used to be before everything went hi-def and dumb.\u201d Her work exploits and highlights ideas around the audience\u2019s short attention span – something that started with TV and is only increasing in the post-internet era. \u201cThe faster time marches forward, the more compelled I am to retreat backward. I have this anxiety about history. I keep feeling like I’m forgetting something or I didn’t know it to begin with.\u201d Here retro imagery and approach is a very sordid security blanket in the wave of so-called progress.<\/span><\/p>\n

teamgal.com<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Text: Francesca Gavin<\/strong><\/span>
From Sleek 33, The Brand New Retro<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\u00a0New York artist Alex Bag became the medium she loves and loathes \u2013TV. In her high-grain, lo-def video critiques, art-school grads, gallerists, punks, PRs and vacuous presenters are all subverted with savage wit, and she also turns the camera back on herself. \u201cAutobiography: it’s this malignant, festering, oozing thing that will not die no matter…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[287,288],"class_list":["post-3820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-alex-bag","tag-francesca-gavin"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\nHow To Get Ahead In Television How To Get Ahead In Television<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/how-to-get-ahead-in-television\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How To Get Ahead In Television How To Get Ahead In Television\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00a0New York artist Alex Bag became the medium she loves and loathes \u2013TV. In her high-grain, lo-def video critiques, art-school grads, gallerists, punks, PRs and vacuous presenters are all subverted with savage wit, and she also turns the camera back on herself. \u201cAutobiography: it’s this malignant, festering, oozing thing that will not die no matter...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/how-to-get-ahead-in-television\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Sleek Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sleekmag\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-05-30T13:45:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@sleekmag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@sleekmag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Verfasst von\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"sleek team\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Gesch\u00e4tzte Lesezeit\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8\u00a0Minuten\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/\",\"name\":\"Sleek Magazine\",\"description\":\"Sleek is Germany\u2019s leading independent media house\/brand for creativity and innovation located in Berlin the creative capital of the world. 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