Archive for the ‘chriscoy’ Category

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

The BAMF! Studies by Chris Coy is a YouTube playlist consisting of fifty-three videos created by other YouTube users (almost all of which are teenage males) in which a character or a group of characters disappear in an inky vapor cloud, only to, finally, reappear in a similar vapor cloud a moment or two later elsewhere in the same physical space.

In each case, the disappearing effect is meant to mimic a similar effect produced by the Nightcrawler character in the X-Men comic book and film series.

“BAMF’S,” as these mimicries are often called, take their name from the distinctive sound made by Nightcrawler every time he disappears in the X-Men films—something in-between slamming and suction.

Taken individually, these videos, which generally run from a couple of seconds to between ten and twenty seconds, to, in some cases, over a minute, are moderately interesting—some videos are more dynamic than others; some videos are funnier than others; generally, though, it’s difficult to read anything into them as they’re fairly self-explanatory.

When re-contextualized in a sequence of videos though, a different picture emerges.

Again and again one views teenage boys amidst the trappings of a moderately comfortable suburban life—nice lawns, athletic clothing, family pictures, sofas, outdoor decks, etc.

And again and again, one views these teenage boys in the act of escaping this milieu.

The escapes occur in the form of, on the one hand, the demonstration of the teenager’s supernatural control over his own body in space, and, on the other hand, the execution of an action on a computer.

There’s something pathetic about these forms of escape, but, when viewed as a genre with its own conventions, one might pick up on something more to these videos, as well.

In Coy’s words:

…an understanding of the vastness of the need to broadcast a coping mechanism to others; like a shared frame in a comic book…

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

Chris Coy’s contribution to Contemporary Semantics Beta, an art show curated by Constant Dullaart at Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam, consists of two elements:

1. A pair of large, printed images hanging beside one another on the wall.

The first of these images depicts a straight-faced young man in a red t-shirt holding a completely blank, white rectangle vertically (as if it were a painting).

The second depicts a group of enthusiastically smiling young people in business attire holding a similarly blank, white rectangle horizontally (as if it were a novelty-size check).

In both of these images, it seems as though the white rectangle should contain some sort of signage which would relate it to the rest of the given scenario, but it doesn’t.

As it turns out, these are appropriated stock photographs whose original intention is to provide either (1.) a clean, broadly cliché “stock” image of a person or group of people holding a generic sign which, for example, a corporate client could easily digitally insert their own chosen signage into the white space; or (2.) a visual equivalent of the phrase “blank slate”which could be used in the off-chance that a magazine or advertising campaign need communicate the idea of “blank slate” in a single potent image.

It’s not the artist who subtracts from the original image here, but the original image created by a stock image company which subtracts from  itself; the artist merely points this phenomenon out.

2. The second element in the work is a large, completely blank, white rectangle which is placed on the gallery floor, leaning against the wall below the prints mentioned above.

This white rectangle functions the same way that the white rectangles in the stock photos do:

It is meant to be an open space for something that another person could insert; in this case an artwork.

Coy knows that the installation will survive as a digital photograph.

The white rectangle completes a loop—from the mutable digital image on the computer, to the art space, and back again.