Sonic Acts 2019: Post-Screening Discussion with Tony Cokes - a podcast by Sonic Acts

SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL 2019 – HEREAFTER
Post-Screening Discussion: Tony Cokes in conversation with Mirna Belina.
23 February – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Following the screening of Black Celebration (1988, 17 min) Tony Cokes discusses the film with Mirna Belina and takes questions from the audience.

In Black Celebration (1988, 17 min), Tony Cokes merges newsreel footage of riots in urban black neighbourhoods in the 1960s with popular music and text commentary to create an incisive counter-reading. ?‘This videotape involves the riots that took place in the Watts section of Los Angeles, California in August, 1965 and the Black neighbourhoods of other American cities during the 1960s. The black and white work uses newsreel footage from events in Watts, Boston, Newark, and Detroit interspersed with text commentary. The newsreel voiceovers are replaced by music. The intent of the piece is to introduce a reading that will contradict received ideas which characterise these riots as criminal or irrational.’ (T.C.)
Black Celebration was made for the Bronx Museum of the Arts. Text: Morrissey, Martin L. Gore, Barbara Kruger, The Situationists International; Music: Skinny Puppy; Editor: Eleanor Goldsmith.

Tony Cokes makes video, installation, print, sound and other works that reframe appropriated texts to reflect upon capitalism, subjectivity, knowledge and pleasure. Cokes deploys sound as a crucial, intertextual element, complicating minimal visuals. He has shown works internationally at venues including Centre Georges Pompidou, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, ZKM, REDCAT and La Cinémathèque Française. Cokes has screened at festivals including the Berlin Biennale X, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rencontres Internationales Paris/?Berlin/?Madrid and Oberhausen. Cokes is Professor in Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, Providence, RI. His work is represented by Greene Naftali Gallery, New York.

Further episodes of Sonic Acts Podcast

Further podcasts by Sonic Acts

Website of Sonic Acts