MUNICH.- “Again and Again” looks at how non-temporal strategies of repetition such as loops, multi-channel installation, splitscreen, multiple perspectives, and experiments with seriality were posited as formal and spatial means to expand the narrative toolkit of digital video throughout the 1990s and 2000s. The exhibition takes this as its starting point to examine artistic meditations on the cleaved and reproduced self. The videos and photographs on display manifest how artists engaged with a renewed interest in selfhood at the turn of the twenty-first century in relation to broader discourses on identity politics, gender studies, mass media, scientific progress, and, of course, the history of their chosen medium, the moving image.

The first examples of video art from late 1960s and early 1970s demonstrate how this medium was interlocked with notions of selfhood from its very genesis. The relationship between the object being filmed (most often the artist herself), the camera, and the playback monitor, meant that artists could simultaneously view the pictures they were creating and interact immediately with their own image. As a result, artists often integrated the playback monitor into the work, using it, in essence, as one would use a mirror. This fusion of physical reflection with the cognitive act of self-reflexivity suggested that, in video art, the psychological state no longer constituted a subject matter, but became an intrinsic part of the medium itself.

“Again and Again” looks more closely at this amalgamation of psychology and moving image through the works of Kristin Lucas, Doug Aitken and Tracey Emin. In the work “The Interview”, for instance, Emin engages in a psychoanalytical dialogue with herself staged as a conversation between two Traceys dressed in different outfits. Sat upon the familiar leitmotif of the couch, one Tracey represents the irrational, while the second plays Devil’s advocate, proffering a more rational version of events in a sequence that clearly acknowledges Freudian concepts.

A critical analysis of the link between personal identity and mass media is evident in several works in the exhibition which scrutinize more popular, mainstream forms of image production, including cinema, television, and advertising. Mathilde ter Heijne and Candice Breitz, for example, employ found footage and sampling techniques in order to examine how the media influences the development of female identity. For the work “Becoming” (2003) Breitz slips into the role of Hollywood’s leading ladies in order to analyze the tired and clichéd cinematic portrayal of female behavior. The title simultaneously references Simone de Beauvoir’s theory of The Second Sex (1949), which states that “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”, and the popular, aspirational MTV show “Becoming”, which offered fans the chance to reenact music videos by their favorite stars. Upon entering the room, the viewer encounters a Hollywood actress, be it Meg Ryan, Cameron Diaz, or Julia Roberts, as she recites stereotypical and sexist lines that are commonly articulated in popular cinema. As we circumnavigate the installation, we see how Breitz mimics these scenes in black and white, paying particular attention to body language and facial expression. It is Breitz’s repetition of these gestures, combined with her short haircut and austere white shirt, which highlights the absurdity of Hollywood’s simplifying and over-glamourizing of womanhood.

The exhibition further probes the ever-changing understanding of gender identity throughout the late 1990’s and early 2000’s with the work of Cindy Sherman, Mark Leckey, Ryan Trecartin and Brice Dellsperger. In the ongoing series “Body Double” (1995), Dellsperger recreates popular films by using either one or very few protagonists who are then replicated with the aid of visual effects. For “Body Double #17”, Dellsperger reenacts David Lynch’s cult movie “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” (1992) using only two sisters who, although similar in appearance, are not identical twins. As the scenes unravel both the male and the female roles are acted out by just these two actresses, thus frustrating the audience by negating any visual codes of gender. As a result, the viewer has to shift focus to the behavioral dynamics and the actions of the characters in order to determine their “true sex”.

Ryan Trecartin expands the spectrum of gender in his 2003 work “What’s the Love Making Babies For”, in which he attacks heteronormative models of sexual identity, as well as traditional notions of procreation. By proffering an alternative “faggy gay” existence, Trecartin takes a critical stance against the classical heterosexual family model and its connotations of selfoptimization and success. Further interrogation of human reproductive biology is evident in Matthew Barney’s seminal series Cremaster Cycle, and Bjørn Melhus’ 8-channel installation “Again and Again (the borderer)” (1998), which looks at the potentially disastrous consequences of artificial reproductive technology in the wake of the first experiments in human cloning.

By depicting momentary instances of the division of the self, “Again and Again” offers a critical view of recurring identity models and how they are perpetuated by the media and social constructs. The spectrum of the self presented in the exhibition extends from the autobiographical or confessional, as in the work of Leckey or Emin, through to the typified and schematic, as demonstrated by Sherman or Melhus. By traversing and deconstructing these various models of subjecthood and objecthood the works collectively probe individual sovereignty at the advent of the twenty-first century.

Again and Again is curated by Daniel Milnes.