Artist Tony Cokes presents three days of events highlighting his critical explorations of media production. His videos use sound, colour and text to subvert various practices and discourses within pop and electronic music, art, television and cinema. Politically and culturally resonant, they pay close attention to racial representation and the context of late capitalism. Inventing a new style of video essay, these works offer radical new ways of telling stories, understanding images and experiencing sound.
Opening the three-day Tony Cokes retrospective will be a free looped installation of Could You Visit Me in Dreams? a perfect introduction to Cokes's practice of remixing through sound and textual cut-up.
Day two will see a unique presentation of three of his videos in his Art Critique series underlining and questioning the systems of cultural production in capitalist society. This will be followed by Pop Manifesto series - a live remix of the artist’s videos, looking critically at music production and history, followed by a live discussion with Tony Cokes.
The final day will offer a rare chance to see one of Tony Cokes’s early video essays on black representation in cinema, FADE TO BLACK. They examine the representations of African American actors in Hollywood film. Followed by Cokes’s Evil.16 (Torture. Musik) and a question and answer session with the artist.
Tony Cokes: Sound System culminates in a lecture by the artist on his practice and the remixing and reframing of found materials.
