“Escalate” is a small video sculpture of an escalator with a never ending stream of people traveling somewhere unknown. I wanted to create an artwork that represents motion without progress, ritualized movement, migration and escape.
In a world where we are witnessing the collapse of systems, asynchronous reactions to crisis, algorithmic prophecy, pseudoscience, and technology as an emotional prosthetic, maybe we’re all on the never ending escalator moving upwards or downwards towards everywhere and nowhere.
This work is currently on view @c24gallery as part of my show “Business as Usual”
How do we conduct or go about our “business” or should we conduct “business” at all in our current reality?
Created with the support of @fineacts
#gabebc #videosculpture #videoart
I directed a music video for @davidbyrneofficial new song. It’s called “Everybody Laughs” and to me the song is all about people and the power of living in a city surrounded by people. You’ll see some of my favorite folks in this video and also some of my favorite ideas about New York.
NYC is a void without people and it’s not a mistake that this video begins with David alone and ends with him surrounded by people. The video is about technology communication, humanity and connection and purposefully takes place in a black box for the first 2/3 of the video until it reaches what I call “the chorus”
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I’ll post more about the making of this soon. But a special thank you to
@sambader89@madperezbrowning who produced the video and brought all their fine friends along
@williamrexer who is an amazing DP and doesn’t check his Instagram but insisted on teaching students how to shoot video when he didn’t have to
@christina_leonardi@natalie_shinnick for organizing 150 people and renewing my faith in humanity
@celiarowlsonhall for choreographing the incredible selfie stick dance sequence
@salwathegreat for basically making this happen with @matadorrecords@patrickkoitzsch for editing and calling me at 1am when I thought there were editing glitches that didn’t exist
And all my friends, students and friends of friends who showed up to make art and dance in a time where it wasn’t expected, easy or clear what any of this was about.
In David’s words:
Ev’rybody looks and ev’rybody sees
Ev’rybody’s askin’ ev’rybody please
Ev’rybody’s goin’ ev’rywhere at once
Ev’rybody’s backside ev’rybody’s front
Ev’rybody dances ev’rybody stops
Ev’rybody wants what ev’rybody’s got
Ev’rybody wonders what cha gonna do
Ev’rybody’s wearing ev’rybody’s shoes
——-
I hope this video allows you to put down the phones, the VR headsets, the AI chat bots, the endless doom scrolls and step into everybody else’s shoes at least for a moment
—-Gabe
My new piece “Platform” exists in the new Madison concourse under Grand Central Station. It features portraits of 40 New Yorkers in a slow motion moment together of awe. I purposefully wanted to leave the “Platform” in this piece vague. Is it a política platform, a subway platform, a social media platform? Are these people looking at a great work of art or something terrifying?
🅿️
Thanks to everyone @mtaartsdesign and everyone who is part of the piece.
Documentation 📸 by @alanwinslow
#mta #grandcentralterminal #gabebc #videoart
In 2014 | pitched to create the first digital artwork for the Fulton Center in Lower Manhattan with @mtaartsdesign . I proposed an idea of 52 portraits of New Yorkers shot in super slow motion doing all the things that make New York a great city. I wanted to call it “New York Minute” based on the saying that Johnny Carson once said means the interval of time between an NYC traffic light turning green and the person behind you honking their horn.
This was the first work I made with an open call to the public to be in a video artwork. We got a sword swallower from Coney Island, dancers from the MET Opera, a Chef from the show Top Chef, a puppeteer, famous artists, bartenders, drag queens, tour guides and even someone who was definitely in the mob. I filmed the entire thing in a small theater at the Tisch building on Broadway over two weekends with the help of @todernst and @snackcabinet
When I filmed the work, the Fulton center was still under construction and I got to tour this giant empty transit hub ahead of its opening with the MTA. It felt like visiting the inside of an Egyptian pyramid while it was under construction.
New York Minute was really fun to make but now looking back on the work I see it as this very particular time capsule. Nobody in the footage is using phones, life seemed slower (and not just because the works was filmed at 5000fps) Also it’s sad to see how many people that were in the piece have passed away 12 years later.
Sometimes you’re sitting at the traffic light waiting and then flash forward and the person behind you is honking their horn.
#gabebc #videoart #publicart #newyorkminute
This is still the largest work I’ve made to date: “A Chorus,” 92 videos made for the screens in Times Square.
To me the spectacle of New York has never been the images you see in the advertisements on the screens in TS. The true spectacle of NYC is the people, all the micro bizarre, funny and sad interactions that take place on the sidewalks all around the city.
So I got over 150 New Yorkers together in big groups to make up this “Chorus” as part of the #midnightmoment with @tsqarts .
The trickiest thing was trying to edit 92 videos at completely different aspect ratios to fit all the crazy different screen systems in Times Square. Before doing this project I sort of assumed there was one big HAL like computer than ran all the screens, but in reality each screen has it’s own system and operator. Every video has to be approved by each brand and I had to be very careful to make sure everyone’s clothes were brand free and all phone logos were covered up. To keep track, I covered my entire kitchen counter in printouts showing all the locations of each screen and their aspect ratios. (Photo 5)
Oh and at one point during a 28 hour long render, my cat jumped on the keyboard and killed the entire thing so I had to devise a clever way to keep her sleeping on the keyboard (photo 7)
STREAM is a large video work I made for @150mediastream . The work features over a hundred folks in Chicago in a never ending stream of humanity.
This site specific video artwork was actually shot in that very lobby where it was displayed with a little green screen and a whole ton of natural light. As I shot it, we had a live score accompanying the piece by @naesynthpop which you can hear if you unmute.
This is a busy office building but you rarely get to connect with the people inside. I wanted to feature the security guards, janitors, bankers, tourists, restaurant workers all on the same giant screen in the lobby. All people who make up the energy that fuels the Chicago skyline.
Curated by @yugezhou
Drifting Lull Music by NÆ @naesynthpop
#publicart #gabebc #150mediastream #videoart
BUSINESS AS USUAL opens @c24gallery March 5 6-8pm
I’ve been working on this show for years. It’s the culmination of 7 video shoots featuring over 100 people and many thoughts I’ve been thinking about crowds, technology, misinformation and modern life. Come check it out! Opening Thursday March 5 6-8pm
This is a giant egg video sculpture with people inside called “Followers.”
In 2019 I thought a lot about the role mobile phones and social media play in our lives. For the first time I felt like social media was changing my personal relationships and the way I related to the world. I felt a fear of making the wrong kind of art, missing out on parties, jealous of events I wish I had been invited to but would never actually attend. I had relationships that existed purely in memes and emojis and saw personal friendships that I had for years dissolve into instagram stories.
Followers is a video sculpture featuring a rabid crowd taking photos of an unseen subject encased in a ceramic egg. The piece questions the role of technology in our modern day evolution. With increasing access to speed, artificial intelligence and new technologies, are we becoming more advanced as a civilization or reverting into our primal animalistic selves. What are these “Followers” taking photos of? A car crash? The Mona Lisa? A friend’s wedding? Are they following a trend, stalking an ex or looking into a mirror?
Is the subject of a photo these days important or is it the way in which the photo is shared that matters more?
This one sculpture took me down a strange road of filming portraits of people in a crowd. There’s still something interesting and intimate about putting 10+ people together in a room and making a work of art together. Filming people while they are filming you back.
For this one I assembled 10 friends, my parents and sister in a small studio in downtown LA and told them they were taking photos of an animal they’d never seen before.
I still remember a New York City without phones, where awkward eye contact on the subway was the norm not the exception.
Yes I know the irony of all of this, posting these stories on Instagram…You are most likely reading this on your phone in your own little egg.
A good way to make money as an artist who works in “alternative mediums” is to do commercial projects. In 2017 I was asked to make a new artwork for Bose headphones who were developing a wearable collar speaker called the “Soundwear.” BOSE wanted to feature the product being used in strange artistic ways.
I wanted to make an immersive experience where everyone could feel like actors in a film. I wanted to create personalized monologues for anyone to perform with no acting experience necessary.
I found 5 old cars full of personality and wrote 10 minute scenes that would take place in each car from the point of view of a different character: A lonesome truck driver, a person who lives in their van, a frazzled parent late to pick up their kid from school, a couple on a first date. I then hired voice artists to record these scenes from a first person narration perspective.
In the experience, guests would get in a car, put on one of these sound collars and hear an inner monologue as one of these characters. The audio would instruct you to do different things in the scene: make eye contact with the person next to you (you’re on a date!) open the glove box find a camera and take a photo of your life, listen to your own heartbeat. Each story was moody, awkward and at times silly. I wanted tochallenge the participant to inhabit another person’s body in a sort of automotive seance.
I decided to call the project “Pile Up” as it was a kind of car crash of stories strung together by the form factor of a vehicle.
Years later I got a call from a startup guy who loved the project. He invited me to try out his own audio experience. I met him by the beach in LA and only then found out it was an erotic audio startup with first person perspective spicy stories. We listened to audio porn together watching the ocean until I bid him adieu.
You never know what will happen when you make a commercial.
In 2009 I was invited to bring art to the house of an art collector in San Francisco to put it on display for her husband’s birthday. The collectors had a crazy house in the hills with an all white padded room where they would host big parties. I decided to bring the people in jars, the blender, and also wanted to make a new piece for this padded room. I found a vintage suitcase and bought a white pipe which I affixed to the front. I installed a dvd player and monitor inside it. Then, not knowing exactly what to put on the video inside, I decided to film myself naked in the fetal position as if someone had packed me inside.
I called the work Separation Anxiety because as a child I had horrible separation anxiety and I was also really emo in 2009. I brought the suitcase to JFK and TSA promptly pulled it out of line for a further inspection. They plugged it into an outlet and with a smirk and eye roll let me take it through.
I arrived in San Francisco with the suitcase partly painted and spent 6 hours in the collectors garage spray painting it white to match the padded room. While the paint was drying I installed the other two pieces in the house. The birthday party was crazy. There were a bunch of models and silicon valley types djing and eating crudité. I however, busted my Arduino setting up the Blender and spent a good hour moping and apologizing for the work which couldn’t be interactive. Very Emo.
This is when I learned that people don’t really care that much about interactivity when high on ecstasy at a party. They thought the holographic people in the suitcase and blenders were great to look at. This is also when I learned to always have a “B-Mode” for any interactive work in case the interactivity stops working. Nobody knows if something isn’t working if it still looks good.
The next morning the collector asked me how much separation anxiety would cost to keep in the white padded room permanently. I had no idea what to say so I just guessed $1,000 which was 3x what it cost me to make it. She wrote me a check on the spot and I had made my first ever video art sale.
I was also very happy not to have to go through airport security naked again.
In 2010 I showed work at DUMBO art festival and they put me in the back room of an old office. In 2011 I was determined to make something featured, so I made “For Those Who Wait,” a sculpture about time spinning out of control, a big video mapping piece that was also interactive. I knew if I made a large interactive room full of clocks that melted and transformed, it would be featured. I was not wrong. The work was a big hit and I did tons of video interviews which you can still find online to this day. Video art in an empty grimy alley in dumbo that smelled like fish and hot trash? what could be better?
A year later I got an email inviting me to show the work at the Jepsen center in Georgia. I didn’t realize that this was a legit big museum. I’d never done a museum show before, but figured it couldn’t be much different than DUMBO.
I shipped my work and flew down only to discover a whole crew of museum staff ready to help me install. Until this point Id always begged friends or Craigslist to help me. Now I had a real scissor lift and two amazing guys who installed the whole thing for me. I was amazed and also felt like I really needed to up my museum ready materials and tech.
That night the installers and I went out in Savannah. Art handlers are some of the friendliest fun and hard drinking people I know. All I remember is driving around in a van and drinking beers at a VFW hall. The next morning I woke up hungover to a worried call from the curator of the museum. The crank for the piece was no longer working. The clocks just stopped.
This kind of call is still my greatest fear as a media artist. For days I tried everything to get the sensor to connect reliably. I paid to extend my hotel and rescheduled my flights. I would be losing money on this trip. I felt like I was going insane wondering what could be wrong.
At about 5am one night I stumbled on a message board which explained how usb cables over 20 feet need power or else they can drop signal. The next day I got a powered usb and the piece never had another problem. I flew back to NY $700 poorer questioning if this career was really worth it. I would need to take on more work to make rent.
🕕
The 2010s were a very exciting time to make media art in NYC. People were constantly asking me to curate shows in spaces that I wouldn’t have otherwise been allowed into. These fancy places wouldn’t pay me (of course) but they would pretty much let me do whatever I wanted in huge rooms with rich people and as a baby artist this was worth it. I bought the whole “exposure” as payment thing.
In 2012 I was asked to make a work and curate a show at the Paley Center for Television in NY. Keep in mind I had never curated anything in my life. The Paley had seen my people in jars and thought: let’s give this kid the keys for a month. I packed the show with friends and made it about the future of television.
For my own piece, I wanted to make something about television going online. At the time, YouTube was used pretty much silly cartoons and music videos and occasionally porn. People weren’t talking into the camera in the way they do today. There was very little “liking or subscribing.”
I did however see a future where TV would exit the frame and people would be characters in our own channels.
I made this piece Tube with an old CRT monitor. Two static figures emerge from the screen and walk around on top of the TV. Kind of like two moving antennas that are trying to find a signal. I filmed myself and @cvitto and wanted to make it so that when the two figures touch or come into contact with each other, the TV would shut off and suck them back into the tv set. I bought the first tv I used for this piece on Craigslist and drove with my friend @lakt42 to Philadelphia to pick it up. It weighed 100 pounds and was 4 stories up a walk up.
This was the first piece I made which I really felt was a work of art. I don’t know why that is. Maybe it’s because it was using an old TV and I suffered to make it. At the opening of the show someone asked me if I knew how a tube tv worked and I lied and said “yes.” I really had no clue, but who asks that sort of question anyways?
The tube on the first tv burned out a week before the show finished. I just left it turned off for the last week of the show.
Later it was purchased by the Turner Broadcasting Company.
