Sonic Acts 2019: Tony Cokes – the next ‘revolution’? 07.2001 (revised 02.2019) – or progress doe... - a podcast by Sonic Acts

SONIC ACTS FESTIVAL 2019 – HEREAFTER
Tony Cokes – the next ‘revolution’? 07.2001 (revised 02.2019) – or progress does not exist
23 February – De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

With an introduction by Ash Sarkar.

In his talk, Tony Cokes will revisit some of his ideas he deployed in a talk presented in July 2001. He will begin with Black Celebration (1988), his first work to examine the legacy of the late 60s and early 70s. That video appropriated newsreel images of urban uprisings in Watts, Boston, Detroit and Newark. Cokes juxtaposed the footage with an ‘industrial’ music soundtrack by Skinny Puppy and visual text quotations, prominently from Situationist International’s The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy. The video re-presents these historical events from a distant, but desiring perspective that would counter Reagan-era amnesia or dismissal. Cokes’ presentation will discuss this period in relation to a trajectory within his artistic practice that questions the mythic idea of progress. He will connect three threads: his scepticism with regard to historical constructions, the media’s attempted conversion of ‘revolution’ into a debased marketing trope, and the question of how these representations resonate in our current climate of fear and proto-fascist nationalisms.


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.

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