LABORAL - CENTRO DE ARTE Y CREACIÓN INDUSTRIAL

AESTHETICS / SIMBOLIC LANGUAGE

AES+F

Last Riot (2007)

Single-channel HD video. 26’ 30”

Courtesy: the artists; MAM Moscow; Triumph Gallery, Moscow; Claire Oliver Gallery, New York

Last Riot, a photo-realistic yet simulated synthetic world seamlessly fuses political and economic conflict and the language of advertising. The artists describe this mutated world as a paradise frozen in time where the past coexists with the future, a paradise populated by sexless inhabitants that seem closer to angels than humans. Using the media language of the 21st century, from product placement to computer- generated imagery, AES+F stage a “last riot” where all are fighting against all in a world that celebrates the end of ideology, history and ethics.

MARGOT LOVEJOY

Storm from Paradise (1999)

Single-channel video projection, installation, sound.

Courtesy: the artist. Uzlyau, Tuva singing with permission from Russian Radio. Acknowledgements: Miles Dudgeon

Storm from Paradise literally references Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History, looking at the wreckage of the past while being propelled backwards into the future by a storm from paradise. Historical images from various journals, US archives and UNESCO magazines, combined with photographs by the artist, represent the machinery of production and war, a growing pile of discarded consumer goods, environmental catastrophe, alienation and poverty. Projected through layers of transparent scrim that suggest the dimension of time, the artwork raises questions about the political, social and scientific choices made during the past few decades, as ell as the philosophies and discoveries that have been driving these choices.