BEG TO DIFFER -
KERRY TRIBE & ZARINA NARES
August 17th - September 7th, 2024
Kerry Tribe’s Critical Mass (2013) restages Hollis Frampton’s 1970 experimental film of a couple’s explosive argument in which 16mm footage is copied, cut into snippets, and reassembled. By slicing the dialogue, Frampton causes the increasingly frenetic stuttering of the conversation to disrupt the temporal flow of the film. In Tribe’s restaging of Critical Mass, two actors memorize the linguistic breakdown of the original; every stutter is performed so that Frampton’s celluloid procedures are resituated as live action. This gesture productively shifts the process of identification a viewer would typically have toward an actor. Rather than suspending disbelief or immersing oneself in the narrative on screen, viewers are reminded by Tribe of the components of cinema—a script, memorization, and an editing process. In Critical Mass one’s attention is steered away from focusing on fictional characters to instead be situated within the visceral experience of a complete communication breakdown.
Zarina Nares also re-presents a heated dispute in her work I Disagree (2022), in which two monitors display a constructed conversation about the viral debate that took over TikTok: Adam Levine cheating on his wife Behati Prinsloo with Sumner Stroh. Functioning like a Shakespearean chorus, an impassioned TikTok community provides narrative insight, speculation, and meta-arguments about the celebrities' infidelity. Nares combs through an archive of short videos, giving a linear sequence to otherwise rhizomatic digital content. Her synced edit oscillates between two channels of visuals and sound, materially emphasizing and representing both sides of the debate. Taking on a viral scandal which might be easily dismissed as trivial, I Disagree reveals a public psyche and digital discourse which touches on themes of judgment, blame, fear, desire, and societal values pertaining to monogamy.
Both Nares and Tribe pull from existing material, careful to maintain the integrity of the original content while shifting its presentation. In the case of Critical Mass, the reference to Hollis Frampton’s work contains a nostalgic reverence for experimental cinema of the 1970s. Whereas the found footage in I Disagree is hyper-contemporary—Nares responds to the material in almost real time, creating the artwork the same year in which the scandal and corresponding response on TikTok occurred. Despite the decades between the source material used by Tribe and Nares, their works both foreground the heteronormative trope of a husband in search of freedom and a female partner's desire for honesty and understanding. Together, these videos re-examine the familiar tension of such relationship drama, prompting the viewer to locate moments of both identification and difference.
ARTIST BIOS:
Kerry Tribe is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Known for expansive and profound works in film, video and mixed media, her practice explores elusive aspects of human consciousness including memory, love and doubt. Recent projects consider text messaging within a family, the use of “standardized patients” in medical training, and the interconnected ecologies of the Los Angeles River. Tribe’s work has been the subject of solo presentations at the Wellcome Collection, London; Cantor Arts Center and Anderson Collection at Stanford University; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and The Power Plant, Toronto.
Zarina Nares is a New York City-born artist of Indian Muslim and British descent. She pursued her higher education at Goldsmiths University of London, where she studied electronic music, computing, and technology. Her multi-media practice explores feminine identity in virtual spaces through the themes of self-worth, desire, authenticity, and performance of self. She examines how these aspects are digitally shaped and how they relate to broader societal structures both past and present. Zarina has exhibited at Public Works, Brooklyn, New York, Eugster Gallery, Belgrade, Serbia, The Source, Woodstock, New York, and screened at Sara’s Gallery, New York, Heavy Manner’s Library, Los Angeles, and Toxi, Zurich, Switzerland. Her work has appeared in AUTRE Magazine, Do Not Research, and DSCENE, and her book TIK TOK + THE PATRIARCHY + THE 4TH DIMENSION sold at Printed Matter and Pioneer Works.
WORKS LIST:
Kerry Tribe
Critical Mass, 2013
Single-channel video with sound
25 minutes
Zarina Nares
I Disagree, 2022
Two-channel video
13:22 loop