Critical Writing Index

It's Evening in America: Video Drive In

by Carole Ann Klonarides

Encontros Luso-Americanos De Arte Contemporanea / Portuguese-American Meetings on Contemporary Art, 1989, pp. 31,33,35,37

Lisboa: Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian - Fundacao Luso-Americana Para O Desenvolvimento, 1989

Catalog Essay for the 1989 Exhibition It's Evening in America, a video exhibition mounted in Lisboa, Portugal just as Ronal Reagan was leaving office as President of the United States. Each artist in the exhibition responds to the Reagan Administration by subverting the technologies of the media around which Reagan built his campaigns. Dealing with issues of racial identity, sexual identity, personal history, and the examination of spectacle these artists reveal precisely that which the media occludes. The essay ends with a timely warning: "The homogeneity of the media has perpetuated the public's willing suspension of disbelief, and conversely serves as a motivation for artists to break this hypnotic state. If these endeavors prove successful however, there is always the danger that the message can be discarded and the look co-opted."

ITEM 1989.096 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Things I Forgot to Tell Myself – Shelly Silver

Sightlines – Buchanan

The Touch – Nora Ligorano

The Touch – Marshall Reese

Free Society – Paul Garrin

Popular Thought – Terri Yarbrow

Cascade – MICA-TV

Charming Landscape – Dara Birnbaum

Colour Schemes – Shu Lea Cheung

Precious Products – George Kuchar

Mike – Michael Smith

They Are Lost to Vision Altogether – Tom Kalin