Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo, 10 November 2013 — 03 December 2013
Nathan Budzinski, Paul Becker, Kate Cooper, Robert Carter, Theo Cook, Benedict Drew, Marianne Forrest, o F F Love, Andrew Kerton, Leslie Kulesh, Huw Lemmey, Francesco Pedraglio, Lorenzo Tebano and Jess Wiesner
Viewing Copy, 2013. Courtesy of the artists.

Viewing Copy is an exhibition showing Auto Italia’s work in Cairo, Egypt for the first time. It presents the organisation’s collective practice by re-considering two past projects: Auto Italia LIVE: Double Dip Concession and My Skin Is at War With a World of Data.

Exploring the potential that the exchange of ‘viewing copies’ allows for sharing and reproducing work and images, the exhibition takes work that has previously been shown online, in print, and in gallery shows and re-interprets the material within the physical possibilities of the CIC space.

In adapting and re-activating two projects which engage directly with the possibilities and limitations of digital networks, Viewing Copy focuses on the creation and dissemination of images, exploring alternative formats for the distribution of artwork both on and offline.

Auto Italia LIVE: Double Dip Concession is an artist-run TV series, performed before a studio audience and broadcast live over the internet. Viewing Copy focuses on the most recent episode of the series, Double Dip Concession, translating the entire one-hour episode into Arabic. Produced with a full technical crew, artists responded to the familiar tropes and formulas of television programming, working on all aspects of production and opening a space for criticality and intervention within the medium of TV.

My Skin Is at War With a World of Data is a collective enterprise conceived of by Kate Cooper, Marianne Forrest, Andrew Kerton and Jess Wiesner (commissioned by Artissima LIDO, 2012). Comprising moving image work, image production and performance, it explores the possibility for images to induce paranoia in our digital networked society. Using the visual language of motion capture, beauty marketing campaigns and stock imagery, the collaboration investigates the relationship of images to the production of our own bodies.

Exploring the internet as a key platform for the circulation of images and artwork, the work presented in Viewing Copy is rooted in the performance of the self: the physical, bodily impact inflicted by our image-saturated society and how we can work and produce within it. Through the translation and re-interpretation of material, Viewing Copy layers language, time and geography to create a critical insight into the work and practice of Auto Italia.

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