PARTICIPANTS
      Johan Grimonprez

The work of internationally acclaimed film & video director Johan Grimonprez will be at the Project Room, Santa Monica Museum of Art from April 20-June 9 2002, in an exhibition organized by Ciara Ennis.

The title of the exhibition - How Do We Know the Sky Isn't Really Green and We're just Colorblind? sets the uncertain tone for Grimonprez's investigation into the history of sky-jacking and its interpretation, mythologizing, and manipulation by the media over the past thirty years. For the project, Grimonprez has created an environment reminiscent of an airport lounge complete with television monitors, coffee tables, INFLIGHT magazine, and extra wide seating. Also on view will be Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, (1997) Grimonperez' sensational and critically acclaimed study of sky-jacking.

Grimonprez has presented his work in numerous exhibitions, events & festivals around the world; including Documenta X, (Kassel); Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Deitch Projects, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Gent; and the Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London.

He studied at the School of Visual Arts and attended the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York. He is currently researching a new film project on 'Happy Endings'.

    Symposium Abstract: INDEPENDENCE DAY REALTIME

As the cold war gave way to the Gulf War and the New World Order, America found itself refashioning its imaginary other. A growing fear of the political unknown yielded infowar and aliens invading the American bedroom.

Once we were "skyjacked" in planes; now we are spacenapped in UFOs or cyberjacked on the 'Net. Comet Hale-Bopp beams thirty-nine members of San Diego's technosect over the stars. All wore Nike shoes saying: Do It! Larry King Live goes live with presidents and alien abductees alike. A recent poll stated that UFO believers in the US outnumber the voters who put Reagan, Bush, and Clinton in office. Put differently: more people believe in aliens than the American president. If anything, on that fateful morning of September 11, America's political unconscious came haunting back through Hollywood's imagination, and symptom (flying saucers beaming out of nowhere to demolish the trade towers) met reality (the dark underside of repressed world politics struck back at the first world)."

LINK

How Do We Know the Sky Isn't Really Green and We're just Colorblind

To: http://www.smmoa.org/

dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y,

http://www.irational.org/video/2.html

INFLIGHT

http://www.smak.be/smak2000/expo/grimonp