“Let’s Pretend This Never Happened” (Dec. 12th 7-10pm)

Events / News, Project Space

“Let’s Pretend This Never Happened” at Workspace is a looped screening of videos by Sema Bekirovic, Richard Bott (Animal Charm), Diego Casas, Tyler Coburn, Charles Irvin, and Brad Troemel. Curated by Graham Kolbeins.

Where do mass media philosophies overlap with corporate culture? Do the fluctuations of a globalized economy effect the way we understand selfhood? Conjuring nostalgia for new age mystery, abstract self-improvement, smoky corporate environments and industrial parks, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened is a showcase of videos equally fixated on reviving and exorcizing the recent past.

Toying with the terror of aesthetic and linguistic ambiguity, these artworks feel haunted by the expired cultural project of searching for ethereal, solipsistic personal truths. Our national adventures in self-hypnosis have been interrupted by a decade of external anxiety about the foreign and uncontrollable. Seeking “inner peace” has been replaced by “asking the Universe to provide abundance.” Coping with increasingly de-centralized economies that pull opportunity towards those willing to sacrifice the most, we seduce ourselves into thinking we can reverse the effects of gravity. Embrace the denial, and reverse the effects of time. Let’s pretend this never happened.

Lia Lowenthal’s installation, “I Brush My Teeth With My Left Hand to Loosen Up” will be up in the main gallery of workspace, with the screening taking place in the back studio.

Links:

http://www.semabekirovic.nl/

http://www.animalcharm.com/

http://www.tylercoburn.com/

http://charlesirvin.com/home.html

http://thejogging.tumblr.com/