November 2013, eyebeam, NYC
Dual Exhibition, Book Launch and Performative Reading at Eyebeam Storefront
Eyebeam alumni Paul Amitai and eteam investigate the relationship between history, fiction, documentation, and science fiction with a dual exhibition and book launch for Amitai's In Between Statesand eteam's Buzz Cut. Independently published, both the books and exhibition explore the uncanny experience of observing foreign landscapes that are equally mundane and loaded with trace evidence from the past.
Opening night will include performative readings, an exercise in “parallel storytelling” in which each artist’s overlapping images and text allow the audience to weave their own narrative through the counterpoint dialogue between the artists’ presentations.
Paul Amitai’s In Between States is a work of personal and historical investigation and speculation, a detective story that merges contemporary field recording, archival documents, and fictional writings. The project examines the relationship between two adjacent sites – a post-World War II displaced persons camp and a present-day corporate industry park located outside of Frankfurt. In Between States also presents an alternate version of the camp as a space station orbiting Earth, devised through collaboration between governments and corporations. The installation is comprised of lost transmissions taken from the space station.
In 2012 eteam visited the towns of Mars and Moon Township in Pennsylvania. Their approach in Buzz Cut is documentary, positioning themselves as cultural anthropologists who view the towns as if they were simulated environments on the planet Mars and Earth’s satellite, the Moon. eteam will create a site-specific installation in the Eyebeam Storefront that will feature a multi-channel video and a large-scale photographic print.
