Garage Door Video Series: Jennifer and Kevin McCoy

May 3, 2015 - July 7, 2015

BRIC

Stoop at BRIC House- A public cultural gathering space featuring free, drop-in programming, and offering a place to sit, observe, and discuss the atrwork exhihited in the Gallery of BRIC House.


Works Shown

Silicon Flats

2014, HD video

Overlapping images of Silicon Valley's natural environment, its industry, and the architecture of its suburban technology headquarter buildings. 9:50

Discovery of Freedom

2014, HD video

A collaged landscape of images from DeSmet, SD, this video is a winter portrait of the site of the famous Laura Ingalls Wilder "Little House on the Prarie". In this work the stark landscape of Wilder's youth is juxtaposed with the architecture of the rural industrial present in the town near the homestead site. The McCoys were first drawn to the site during a summer cross country driving trip which began their research into America’s “frontier” ideology. Research into the site revealed that the Ingalls family was granted the homestead land by the United States government. The conditions were harsh and the family moved after a short time. Later, Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane co-wrote the famous books, based on the family’s time at the homestead. A journalist and pundit of her time, Wilder’s daughter coined the term “libertarian” (along with the more famous Ayn Rand). Excerpt below

Mussafah

2011, video

In this 49 minute video, Mussafah, the camera takes a journey through the manufacturing zone of Abu Dhabi. Far from the glittering skyscrapers and beaches, Mussafah is the place in Abu Dhabi to fix motors, to bend aluminum, to produce tangible material goods. It is the "back of the shop", literally the place where the advertising signs are printed. Using a slow tracking shot, the McCoy's video allows the eye to take in the details of this environment with all its complexity. It is a work place, yet there are clothes hanging on clotheslines and chickens in the street. It is Arab, yet multinational logos and English signs abound. Its streets are largely devoid of people, yet it operates on 24 hour work shifts. In previous work, the McCoys fabricated post-apocalyptic miniatures to shoot tracking shots of blown out malls. As they have found in Abu Dhabi, the need to create these landscapes from the imagination was unnecessary.