Charles Atlas at Electronic Arts Intermix tomorrow night

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 6:30 pm

Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)
535 West 22nd Street, 5th Floor
New York, NY 10011
Free Admission

Electronic Arts Intermix presents a screening of the work of Season 2 video artist and Season 3/4 director Charles Atlas, followed by an in-depth talk. The recently restored Hail the New Puritan (1985-86), Atlas’ groundbreaking collaboration with choreographer Michael Clark, will be screened, along with excerpts from his recent Instant Fame installation series and his live collaborations with Fennesz and Antony and the Johnsons. Atlas will discuss his work and take questions from the audience.

A mesmerizing blend of dance, music, drama and “mockumentary,” Hail the New Puritan engagingly presents Clark as choreographer, dancer, celebrity, lover, and nightclubber. It portrays the vitality of London’s mid-’80s underground scene in the face of economic turmoil and political division, through the lens of athletic, post-modern dance.

Atlas has collaborated live with many eminent performers. In Turning, his recent partnership with celebrated singer Antony, he captured and processed images of thirteen “beauties” as they literally turned on a podium onstage, projecting their refashioned images onto a large screen. Atlas’ video intensified Antony’s intimate investigations of image, identity, and metamorphosis.

In his collaboration with Austrian electronic music composer and performer Fennesz, Atlas processed visual samples live, while Fennesz played guitar and manipulated appropriated sounds. In dialogue with the composer’s moody, atmospheric music, Atlas’ poignant collages were a dramatic mix of found film footage and video clips.

Atlas also used live mixing in his recent video installation Instant Fame. In a Warholian celebration of exhibitionism, he set up a studio in a gallery and shot footage of anyone who wanted to be videotaped: they could perform or simply sit for the camera. The images were reworked in real time and simultaneously projected in an adjacent exhibition space.

View additional images and clips of Atlas’ work on EAI’s site here.