Alex Bag - Hardcover

Gygax, Raphael; Hainley, Bruce; Phillips, Glenn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3037642203 ISBN 13: 9783037642207

Publisher: JRP | Ringier, 2011

Synopsis

Since the mid-1990s, Alex Bag (born 1969) has been among the leading protagonists of video performance, regarded as a vital precursor by a generation of younger artists such as Cory Arcangel or Shana Moulton. Bag became known for her video performances, in which she humorously critiqued TV culture and the clichés of the contemporary art world. An extraordinarily flexible actress, Bag often appeared herself, taking on a multitude of roles. In the video that gained her initial recognition, “Untitled Fall `95” (1995), she played an art student who, as though in a video diary, depicted her desires and hopes as an artist and in her everyday schooling. In other videos she has frequently investigated the advertising structures of network TV (as in “Coven Services,” 2004), or the most diverse TV genres and formats (“Fancy Pantz,” 1997, “Gladia Daters,” 2005). This first Alex Bag monograph includes a complete videography with transcriptions, scripts and stills.

About this title

Review:

In 1995, as Matthew Barney became famous for his opulent, surrealist film epic, video artist Alex Bag rose to stardom as a kind of anti-Cremaster, creating no-budget video art with little more than cheap wigs, bedsheet backdrops, appropriated television clips, and stuffed animals.
The book contains stills, photographs, reproductions of her notebook pages, essays by critics, and scripts for the videos. Reading these screenplays shifts the focus from the brilliance of Bag's performances and her purposefully makeshift art direction to the strength of her writing. Her pitch-perfect use of vernacular speech and mastery of of plot and character become clearer, underscoring what's long been known - she is a comic genuis, and one of the world's coolest harridans. (Johanna Fateman Bookforum)

From Bookforum:

Reading these screenplays shifts the focus from the brilliance of Bag's performances and her purposefully makeshift art direction to the strength of her writing. Bag's post-Pop, pre-YouTube tour de force has become a prescient cult classic for a new generation. —Johanna Fateman

About this edition

• Publisher: JRP | Ringier
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 3037642203
• ISBN 13: 9783037642207
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 230
• Editor: Gygax Raphael, Munder Heike